I would like to introduce you to two people. The first of these was called Iohannes Glafchyrno. Glafchyrno appears in the historical record...
By Sara Peterson In recent years, the cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan has become a news item, with reports from the United Nations and the United States Government documenting record highs (no pun intended) in opium production. Now we…
By Nancy Lindisfarne-Tapper In 1971 and 1972 Richard Tapper and I lived with Afghan villagers for nearly a year. The Piruzai, some 200 families, lived in two small settlements near the town of Sar-e Pol in northern Afghanistan. They were…
By Namatullah Kadrie The COVID-19 pandemic is only the latest of many public health crises that have struck Afghanistan—and that have made the country a site of international intervention by medical experts. Indeed, it was the fifth international cholera epidemic…
Read the blog post to find out more about writing the newly published book Remapping Persian Literary History, 1700-1900 by Kevin L. Schwartz. Remembering Iran, Forgetting the Persianate There was a time – roughly from 1000 to 1850 – when…
Kharita dispatching On 2 Ramadan 1316 AH/ 15 January 1899, Amir Abdul Rahman Khan of Afghanistan (r. 1880–1901), sent an official letter, categorised as murāsala, to Lord George Nathaniel Curzon, Viceroy of India (in office, 1898–1911). Eventually, the ceremonially-illuminated letter…
How did Abū Naṣr Yehuda, a Jewish landowner from 11th-century Bāmiyān, conduct his business affairs with his Muslim neighbors? What was the role of Shujāʿ al-Dīn Muḥammad in the administration of Bāmiyān prior to its destruction by Genghis Khan in…
By Marc Abramiuk, archaeologist and applied anthropologist The central Helmand Valley of Afghanistan is the name I use to describe the section of the Helmand River basin lying between the confluence of the Arghandab and Middle Helmand in the north,…
As it enters its second year of publication, Warwick Ball reflects on the emerging themes and (accidental) article pairings in both the October 2018 and April 2019 issue of Afghanistan, the new journal of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies.…
It is a pleasure to see the launch of the first issue of Afghanistan, a journal to showcase the country’s exceptional cultural diversity. It is the first scholarly journal devoted to the country since the demise of Afghan Studies in…