Kandahar Lady of Rank, Engaged in Smoking

Image: from the lithograph on plate 29 of 'Afghaunistan' by Lieutenant James Rattray, 1848, source: British Library

The subject of this portrait, Begum Jan, had been described by James Rattray only by a vague reference as a 'Lady of Rank in Kandahar', giving no further information about her real identity, and leaving much to speculation. As the title indicates, and as the other images of Afghan ladies in the other plates show, the woman is seen with a hookah for smoking tobacco (or sometimes cannabis).

However, Rattray followed it up with unrelated references to historical Afghan ladies such as Wafadar Begum (or, Wafa Begam, the favorite and senior most wife of Shuja Shah Durrani, the ruler of the Durrani Empire), and "the brave widow" of Muhammad Akram Khan (1817-1852), the powerful chief of Zamindawar, a historical region to the south of Kandahar.

According to Rattray, many of these Afghan ladies attained historical status because of their "conjugal attachment and devotion" to powerful rulers and clan leaders. For example, he refers to the "the brave widow" (unnamed) of Akram Khan, who was executed in 1842 after he refused allegiance with Shah Shuja. The bereaved widow threw off her burqa, organised his tribesmen and led them to battle with the forces of Shah Shuja, riding her husband's horse, though she was driven back after a desperate battle.

Afghan Refugee Girl

Photo: Afghan refugee girl waiting for clothing and school supplies

This is a photo of an Afghan refugee girl taken on 10 April 2012 in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. She was one of the 400 refugee children who were waiting to receive clothing and school supplies being made available by international donors in association with Aschiana School in Kabul, run by one of the country’s well respected NGO.

According to the United Nations, about 35,000 internally displaced persons live in camps in Kabul as of 2015, with only tents and mud huts as their homes. Winters are very harsh, given the living conditions and standard of living in the country, though geographically being mountainous, Kabul winter is described as mild. But last year, January witnessed the harshest winter in two decades with night temperatures plummeting below 20 degrees.

Kabul occasionally is hit by heavy snowstorms that worsen the plight of the camp-dwellers, with the porous walls and roof letting in cold winds and moisture and the un-cemented mud floors getting wet.

The children are the worst sufferers, who already suffer because of lack of proper schools, healthcare, food shortages and all kinds of shortages that can be associated with depravity.

The death rate of children in these camps is the highest, much more than the figure for the country, which has one of the worst statistics in the world in this regard. With another January round the corner, it is time for the governments, NGOs and even the able among Afghan IDPs to plan and get prepared for facing the winter hardships.

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Sultan Bayezid in the Captivity of Tamerlane by Stanislaw Chlebowski

Photo: Sultan Bayezid in Captivity of Timur (1878) by Stanislaw Chlebowski, oil on canvas painting, 70 × 112 cm, Lviv National Art Gallery, Ukraine

In this painting, often titled as “Bayezid I Held Captive by Timur”, the Polish painter Stanislaw Chlebowski (1835-84) depicts two of the most dreaded conquerors of his times.

The painting, the title of which is variously translated also as “Sultan Bayezid Prisoned by Timur”, or “Bayezid I At The Hands Of Timur”, depicts Timur (also known as Tamerlane and or Timur the Lame) as the figure standing in the fore, wearing a kimono-styled mongoloid tunic. As he is lame*, he is supporting himself with a cane. Bayazid is the declining old man with downcast eyes and apparently suffering from a bout of depression.

Bayezid I (1360-1403), the Ottoman Sultan from 1389 to 1402, had the reputation of having one of the largest and best armies in the Islamic world. He had leaded many military campaigns and unsuccessfully besieged Constantinople.

The Battle of Ankara, fought on 20 July 1402, ended in a major victory for Timur, and it marked the worst crisis for the Ottoman Empire, though it gradually recovered and flourished for two more centuries. But it was the beginning of the end of the Timurid Empire that disintegrated following Tamerlane's death on 18 February 1405.

In 1402, Bayezid was trying to conquer Hungary, when Timur found it the right opportunity to invade the Ottoman Empire. The Sultan rushed back to confront the Timurids, who were slaughtering people and plundering cities and towns on their way. The Sultan withdrew his forces from the siege of Constantinople and deployed them against the Timurids.

By the time, the brother-in-law and a vassal of the Sultan, the Serbian prince Stefan Lazarević and his forces, along with the Wallachia forces, were already fighting off the invaders. Bayezid joined forces with Lazarević who advised him to break out with him, but the sultan declined. Eventually, Taimur defeated the Ottoman forces and took the sultan prisoner on 20 July 1402.

Along with the sultan, one of his wives, Despina Hatun (Mileva Olivera Lazarević, the younger sister of Stefan Lazarevic) and one of the sultan’s sons Mustafa Celebi were also captured by Timur. Olivera was freed after the death of the sultan in captivity in March 1403. But Mustafa Celebi was held prisoner in Samarkand until 1405.

The battle is of special significance in Ottoman Empire’s history as it is the only time a ruling Sultan was captured and made prisoner. The battle also fractured the empire and ignited a civil war among Bayezid's sons for power, which continued for 11 years.

Some historians estimate that both the armies together had nearly one million soldiers, though claims regarding the exact strengths widely vary. It has been claimed that over 50,000 Turks were killed in a few hours of the war.

Earlier, Timur massacred over 100,000 people (various estimates put the figure between 100,000 and 200,000) in the city of Delhi, after a battle on 17 December 1398 in which he defeated the army of Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq who ruled the Sultanate of Delhi. According to historians, Timur’s invasions caused the deaths of 17 million people, about 5% of the world population of the time.

Timur continued to expand his empire until his death. After three months of battles against the Ming Dynasty of China, Timur died of fever on 18 February 1405.

Soon after Timur's death, his empire fell apart. But Shahrukh Mirza, the youngest son of Timur from one of his concubines, ruled the eastern region of the fractured empire, ruling from Herat in Afghanistan. After a string of weak rulers, the Timur dynasty’s rule ended in 1507.

Tamerlane’s descendents include Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire, and the Timurid ruler Ulugh Beg.

* In 1363, it is believed, Timur tried to steal a sheep when a shepherd shot two arrows, injuring his right leg and right hand where he lost two fingers. These injuries crippled him for life, and earned him the names Timur the Lame and Tamerlane.

Ladies of Caubul by James Rattray

Ladies of Caubul: A 1842 lithography work by James Rattray showing a Persian (Qizilbash) woman in Afghanistan with a burqa next to her, source: The British Library. This lithograph is taken from plate 24 of 'Afghaunistan' by James Rattray.

A political mission consisting of Doctor Lord and Captain James Rattray was established at Afghanistan’s Bamiyan, the first spot which could be invaded by the Russians. It also had the only road by which the exiled Dost Mohammed could revisit his kingdom.

The region was famed for its Buddhist statues. Some of the tallest rock-cut standing Buddha statues, known as Bamiyan Buddhas, were blasted off with heavy artillery fire by the Taliban during their reign of Afghanistan, disregarding international outcry against destruction of the ancient statues.

The subject of the lithograph, Shakar Lab ('Sugar Lips'), was the favourite wife of a former governor of Bamiyan and niece by marriage to Dost Mohammed. As a great favor, Rattray was introduced to her in Kabul. Describing her as ‘a Qizilbash belle of the first water’, Rattray wrote, "Afghaun ladies exercise more control over their husbands than is usual in Eastern countries."

According to Rattray, though Afghan women of higher classes were strictly under purdah as in some parts of Hindustan, they certainly enjoyed life more than the Hindustanis. He wrote, Afghanistan women were seen making constant pleasure trips into gardens and bazaars, and they threw off their veils and restraint in secluded spots, and he had often come upon them thus and found Afghan women strikingly beautiful.

A burqa (also transliterated as burkha, burka or burqua from Arabic ‘burqu’ or ‘burqa’) is an outer garment plus a head-covering and the face-veil (niqab) worn by women in some Islamic traditions for hiding a female body. The burqa is worn by Muslim women over the usual daily clothing such as a long dress or a salwar kameez, and removed when they return home, out of the view of men who are not their husbands, fathers, uncles, brothers, sons and grandsons.

The face-veil (niqab) is usually a rectangular piece of cloth top side of which is sewn to the head-scarf, and it can be turned up if the woman desires to reveal her face. The niqab is also called purdah, a Persian word meaning ‘curtain’.

The veil and similar type of dress was worn by some Arab and Persian women long before Islam, as historical references show. The Roman African Christian Tertullian (around 200 AD) praises the modesty of those ‘pagan women of Arabia’ who ‘not only cover their head, but their whole face... preferring to enjoy half the light with one eye rather than prostituting their whole face’, in Chapter 17 of ‘The Veiling of Virgins’. Strabo (1st century AD) also writes about covering the face as a practice of some Persian women (Geography 11.13. 9-10).

Before the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, the Afghan veil, chadri, was not frequently worn in cities, but it was made compulsory for all Afghan women to wear chadri in public under the Taliban rule. Officially it is not compulsory under the present Afghan regime.

Tora Bora Mountains in Afghanistan

Photo 1: Tora Bora Mountains in Afghanistan

Photo 2: US air strikes on Tora Bora

Tora Bora is a cave complex situated in the White Mountains, sometimes called Tora Bora Mountains, in eastern Afghanistan, in the Pachir Wa Agam District of Nangarhar province, approximately 50 km (31 miles) west of the Khyber Pass and 10 km north of the border of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan. During the US invasion of Afghanistan it was one of the strongholds of the Taliban and its Arab Al Qaeda allies. As the suspected hide-out of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, it was the location of the December 2001 Battle of Tora Bora.

Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16 over Afghanistan

Photo: This Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter plane was conducting a mission over Afghanistan on May 28, 2008 after receiving fuel from a KC-135R Stratotanker aircraft. The KC-135R is assigned to the 22nd Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron, 376th Air Expeditionary Wing deployed from Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington, USA. Author: Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway.

The rough mountainous terrain of Afghanistan can be seen in the background, well below the fighter plane, as you see in a relief map.

Fighter planes of the class F-16s have been used by the United States in Afghanistan since 2001. In 2002, a tri-national detachment, the European Participating Air Forces, consisting of Denmark, The Netherlands and Norway forces, of 18 F-16 fighter planes in the ground attack role deployed to Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan to support Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

Here is a bit of history of involvement of F-16s in Afghanistan. Since April 2005, eight Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16s, joined by four Royal Norwegian Air Force F-16s in February 2006, have been supporting International Security Assistance Force ground troops in the southern provinces of Afghanistan. On 31 August 2006 a Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16AM crashed in Ghazni province and the pilot, Capt. Michael Donkervoort, was killed, but the cause of the crash could not be determined. However, the investigation report referenced the fact that a camel spider and other creatures had been found recently in the cockpits of Dutch aircraft in Afghanistan. Could it be that the spiders and other creatures in the cockpit had bitten the pilot of the crashed aircraft?

Camel spider is also known as wind scorpion, jerrymuglum, sun scorpion, red Romans, haarskeerders, baardskeerders and sun spider. Scientifically, they are Solifugae, an order of Arachnida with over 1,000 species in about 140 genera.

Camel spiders have appeared in many urban legends. In the Middle East and to some extent in Afghanistan, it is rumored among American and coalition military forces stationed there that camel spiders will feed on living human flesh. The foreign forces there believe that the creature will inject an anesthetic or venom into the skin of its sleeping victim, and then feed voraciously, leaving the victim to awaken with a gaping wound. However, they do not have such an anaesthetic or poison, excepting some species found in India. And they do not attack humans unless threatened.

Other stories about camel spiders say they leap into the air, disembowel camels, scream, and run alongside moving humvees. The greatest threat they pose to humans is their bite in self-defense. There is no chance of death directly caused by the bite, but, due to the strong muscles of their chelicerae, they can produce a proportionately large, ragged wound that is prone to infection.

Click HERE to view Camel Spider.