Fayż Mu?ammad K?tib Haz?rah's Sir?j al-taw?r?kh
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Translation and edited by: R.D. McChesney and M.M. Khorrami The Sir?j al-taw?r?kh is the essential text for any scholar wishing to understand Afghanistan’s history. It forms the core text of historical writings from within Afghanistan for the period, 1747-1919. Mystery surrounded the work for decades to how many volumes existed. After the discovery of suppressed parts of the third and missing fourth volumes, Brill can now offer this extended resource, as it was originally envisaged by its author, in an accessible English language translation. The Sir?j al-taw?r?kh is the most important history of Afghanistan ever written. For many decades, Afghanistan’s history had been recounted through records of the experiences and policies of the British in India. And yet the country has a rich historiographic tradition of its own; the work we present here is the pinnacle of Afghanistan’s own writings. The Sir?j al-taw?r?kh was commissioned as an official national history by the Afghan prince, and later amir, Habib Allah Khan (reign 1901-1919). Its author, Fayz Muhammad Khan, better known as “Katib” (The Writer), was a Shi?i Hazarah of the Muhammad Khwajah clan and scribe at the royal court. For more than twenty years he had full access to government archives and oral sources. His seminal work, the Sir?j al-taw?r?kh, offers us an unparalleled picture of the country through his eyes. The roots of much of the fabric of Afghanistan’s society today— tribe and state relations, the rule of law, gender issues, and the economy—are elegantly and minutely detailed in this preeminent text. The work is of unparalleled significance to anyone studying the social, political, and economic history of Afghanistan as well as its relations with British India, Qajar Iran, Tsarist Central Asia, and the emirate of Bukhara. The extraordinary level of detail make it a fundamental resource for all scholarship on Afghanistan. The History of Afghanistan Online is annotated, fully indexed, and includes introductions, twelve appendices, Persian-English and English-Persian glossaries, and a bibliography. The History of Afghanistan is also available as a set of 11 volumes in print, covering all four volumes of this unique resource on Afghanistan.
Readership
All interested in the history of Afghanistan, and anyone concerned with modern Afghan society and its roots in tribe and state relations, the rule of law, gender issues, the economy.
For more information, open free trial or to place an order, contact: Jacek Lewinson Mobi:+48 502 603 290, skype:jacek.lewinson , Email:Jacek@jaceklewinson.com
