Afghanistan today is—in the eyes of politicians, pundits, soldiers, scholars, and many others—a medieval space. It is all too often described as “a broken 13th-century country” (Liam Fox); a place “delayed by a few centuries” on the developmental scale (Thomas Barfield); one that has “regressed to a medieval environment” (General McKenzie) now ruled by “a medieval band of degenerate savages” (Senator Cotton). In other words, Afghanistan is an aberration in time through which the medieval past can suddenly burst into our modern present. It is one of the most significant codes through which Global North audiences have come to understand the meaning of the term medieval.
How did this come to be? And where do we go from here? Join us here for a discussion of how Afghanistan has been made out to be medieval from the days of the British Empire up through the War on Terror; and how the many manifestations of Afghan historical writing offer escape hatches through which we can evade such historiographical traps.
Sabauon Nasseri focuses on the political and cultural history of Afghanistan, the broader Middle East, as well as South and Central Asia in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He has taught courses on Islam and literature, globalization, intellectual history, and environmental history at Beloit College.
Tanvir Ahmed is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. His academic work focuses on rebellion, thaumaturgy, and historiography across Central Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. You can find his scholarship at History & Theory, the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
Additional resources:
References
“Afghanistan has regressed to ‘medieval environment’: Gen. McKenzie, Fox News, 17 August 2022(https://www.foxnews.com/video/6311012137112).
“Senator Cotton calls for unanimous consent for his bill to designate the Taliban as a foreign terrorist organization,” Webpage of Tom Cotton, 23 September 2021 (https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/speeches/senator-cotton-calls-for-unanimous-consent-for-his-bill-to-designate-the-taliban-as-a-foreign-terrorist-organization)
Anwar, Raja. The Tragedy of Afghanistan: A First-Hand Account. New York: Verso Books, 1990.
Azoy, G. Whitney. Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan. Waveland Press, Inc., 2011.
Barfield, Thomas. “Is Afghanistan ‘Medieval?’” Foreign Policy. 2 June 2010 (https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/06/02/is-afghanistan-medieval-2/)
Biden, Joe. “Remarks by President Biden on the Drawdown of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan.” The White House. July 8, 2021. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/07/08/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-drawdown-of-u-s-forces-in-afghanistan/ (accessed July 16, 2021).
Burns, John F. “Afghan Rebels, Divided but Resolute, Fight On From Peak Above Jalalabad.” New York Times, August 12, 1989.
Churchill, Winston. The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War. London: Longman, Greens, and Co., 1898.
Bahādur, Muḥammad Ḥayāt Khān Ṣāḥib. Ḥayāt-i Afghānī, ed. Munshī Pyārī Laʿl Prinṯar. Lahore: Kūh-i Nūr, 1867.
Hamilton, Angus. Afghanistan. London: William Heinemann, 1906.
Kipling, Rudyard. The Man Who Would Be King, and Other Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Macmunn, George Fletcher. Afghanistan: From Darius to Amanullah. Lahore: G. Bell & Sons Ltd., 1929.
Martin, Frank A. Under the Absolute Amir. London: New York: Harper & Brothers, 1907.
Mehrdad, Mujib. 2010. “Gulnār wa āyina wa dīdgāhā-e muntaqedān.”Review of Gulnār wa āyina, by Rahnaward Zaryab. Kabulnath, February 2010. https://www.kabulnath.de/Salae_Panchoum/Shoumare_114/MojeebMredad-Golnar.html.
Mousavi, Sayed Askar. The Hazaras of Afghanistan: An Historical, Cultural, Economic and Political Study. New York: Routledge, 2016 (1998).
Pennell, T. L. Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier. London: Seeley, Service & Co. Limited, 1922.
Rashid, Ahmed. Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. New York: Viking Penguin, 2008.
Zaryab, Rahnaward. Gulnār wa āyina. 4th ed. London: Afghanān Muqīm-e London, 2016 (2003).
Further Reading
Bashir, Shahzad. A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2022.
Bashir, Shahzad and Crews, Robert D. (eds.). Under the Drones: Modern Lives in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Borderlands. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012.
Caron, James M. “Afghanistan historiography and Pashtun Islam: modernization theory’s afterimage”, History Compass 5/2, 2007: 314–29.
Crews, Robert D. Afghan Modern: The History of a Global Nation. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2015.
Ghumkhor, Sahar. The Political Psychology of the Veil: The Impossible Body. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
Hanifi, Shah Mahmoud. Connecting Histories in Afghanistan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.
Hanifi, Shah Mahmoud (ed.). Mountstuart Elphinstone in South Asia: Pioneer of British Colonial Rule. London: Hurst & Company, 2019.
Manchanda, Nivi. Imagining Afghanistan: The History and Politics of Imperial Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
Osman, Wazhmah. Television and the Afghan Culture Wars: Brought to you by Foreigners, Warlords, and Activists. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020.
Sherman, William E. B. Singing with the Mountains: The Language of God in the Afghan Highlands. New York: Fordham University Press, 2023.
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