Kandahar Circa 1885
KANDAHAR, the largest city in Afghanistan,
situated in 31° 37' N. lat. and 65° 43' E. long., 3400
ft. above the sea. It is 370 m. distant from Herat on the N.W., by
Girishk and Farah — Girishk being 75m., and Farah
225 m. from Kandahar. From Kabul, on the N.E., it
is distant 315 m., by Kalat-i-Ghilzai and Ghazni —
Kalat-i-Ghilzai being 85 m., and Ghazni 225 m. from Kandahar.
To the Peshin valley the distance is about no m., and
from Peshin to India the three principal routes measure
approximately as follows: by the Zhob valley to Dera
Ismail Khan, 300 m.; by the Bori valley to Dera Ghazi
Khan, 275 m.; by Quetta and the Bolán to Dadar, 125 m.;
and by Chappar and Nari to Sibi, 120 m. The Indian
railway system extends to New Chaman, within some 80 m.
of Kandahar. Immediately round the city is a plain,
highly cultivated and well populated to the south and
west; but on the north-west barren, and bounded by a
double line of hills, rising to about 1000 ft. above its
general level, and breaking its dull monotony with
irregular lines of scarped precipices, crowned with
fantastic pinnacles and peaks.
To the north-west these hills form
the watershed between the valleys of the Arghandab and
the Tarnak, until they are lost in the mountain masses of
the Hazarajat — a wild region inhabited by tribes of
Tatar origin, which effectually shuts off Kandaharfrom
communication with the north. On the south-west they lose
themselves in the sandy desert of Registan, which wraps
itself round the plain of Kandahar, and forms another
impassable barrier. But there is a break in these hills
— a gate, as it were, to the great high road between
Herat and India; and
it is this gate which the fortress of Kandahar so
effectually guards, and to which it owes its strategic
importance. Other routes
there are, open to trade, between Herat and northern
India, either following the banks of the Hari Rud, or,
more circuitously, through the valley of the Helmund to
Kabul; or the line of hills between the Arghandab and the
Tarnak may be crossed close to Kalat-i-Ghilzai; but of
the two former it may be said that they are not ways open
to the passage of Afghan armies owing to the hereditary
hostility existing between the Aimak and Hazara tribes
and the Afghans generally, while the latter is not beyond
striking distance from Kandahar. The one great high road
from Herat and the
Persian frontier to India is that which passes by Farah
and crosses the Helmund at Girishk. Between Kandaharand India
the road is comparatively open, and would be available
for railway communication but for the jealous
exclusiveness of the Afghans. To the north-west, and
parallel to the long ridges of the Tarnak watershed,
stretches the great road to Kabul, traversed by Nott in
1842, and by Stewart and subsequently by Roberts in 1880.
Between this and the direct route to Peshin is a road
which leads through Maruf to the Kundar river and the
Guleri pass into the plains of Hindustan at Dera Ismail
Khan. This is the most direct route to northern India,
but it involves the passage of some rough country, across
the great watershed between the basins of the Helmund and
the Indus. But the best known road from Kandahar to India
is that which stretches across the series of open stony
plains interspersed with rocky hills of irregular
formation leading to the foot of the Kwaja Amran (Khojak)
range, on the far side of which from Kandahar lies the valley
of Peshin. The passage of the Kwaja Amran involves a rise
and fall of some 2300 ft., but the range has been
tunneled and a railway now connects the frontier post of
New Chaman with Quetta. Two lines of railway now connect Quetta
with Sind, the one known as the Harnai loop, the other as
the Bolán or Mashkaf line. They meet at Sibi (see BALUCHISTAN).
Several roads to India have been developed through
Baluchistan, but they are all dominated from Kandahar.
Thus Kandahar becomes a sort of focus of all the direct
routes converging from the wide-stretching western
frontier of India towards Herat and Persia, and
the fortress of Kandahar gives protection on the one hand
to trade between
Hindustan and Herat, and on the other it lends to
Kabul security from
invasion by way of Herat.
Kandahar
is approximately a square-built city, surrounded by a
wall of about 3 and 3/4 m. circuit, and from 25 to 30 ft.
high; with an average breadth of 15 ft. Outside the wall
is a ditch 10 ft. deep. The city and its defenses are
entirely mud-built. There are four main streets crossing
each other nearly at right angles, the central
"chouk " being covered with a dome. These
streets are wide and bordered with trees, and are flanked
by shops with open fronts and verandas. There are no
buildings of any great pretension in Kandahar, a few of
the more wealthy Hindus occupying the best houses. The
tomb of Ahmad Shah is the only attempt at monumental
architecture. This, with its rather handsome cupola, and
the twelve minor tombs of Ahmad Shah 's children grouped
around, contains a few good specimens of fretwork and of
inlaid inscriptions. The four streets of the city divide
it into convenient quarters for the accommodation of its
mixed population of Duranis, Ghilzais, Parsiwans and
Kakars, numbering in all some 30,000 souls. Of these the
greater proportion are the Parsiwans (chiefly
Kizilbashes). It is reckoned that there are 1600 shops
and 182 mosques in the city. The mullahs of these mosques
are generally men of considerable power. The walls of the
city are pierced by the four principal gates of " Kabul,"
" Shikarpur," " Herat " and the
" Idgah," opposite the four main streets, with
two minor gates, called the Top Khana and the Bardurani
respectively, in the western half of the city. The Idgah
gate passes through the citadel, which is a square-built
enclosure with sides of about 260 yds. in length. The
flank defenses of the main wall are insufficient; indeed
there is no pretence at scientific structure about any
part of the defenses; but the site of the city is well
chosen for defense, and the water supply (drawn by canals
from the Arghandab or derived from wells) is good.
About
4 m. west of the present city, stretched along the slopes
of a rocky ridge, and extending into the plains at its
foot, are the ruins of the old city of Kandahar sacked
and plundered by Nadir Shah in 1738. From the top of the
ridge a small citadel overlooks the half-buried ruins. On
the north-east face of the hill forty steps, cut out of
solid limestone, lead upward to a small, dome-roofed
recess, which contains some interesting Persian
inscriptions cut in relief on the rock, recording
particulars of the history of Kandahar, and defining the
vast extent of the kingdom of the emperor Baber. Popular
belief ascribes the foundation of the old city to
Alexander the Great.
Although
Kandahar has long ceased to be the seat of government, it
is nevertheless by far the most important trade centre in
Afghanistan, and the revenues of the Kandahar province
assist largely in supporting the chief power at Kabul.
There are no manufactures or industries of any importance
peculiar to Kandahar, but the long lines of bazaars
display goods from England, Russia, Hindustan, Persiaand
Turkestan, embracing a trade area as large probably as
that of any city in Asia. The customs and town dues
together amount to a sum equal to the land revenue of the
Kandahar province, which is of considerable extent,
stretching to Pul-i-Sangin, ID m. south of
Kalat-i-Ghilzai on the Kabul side, to the Helmund on the
west, and to the Hazara country on the north. Although
Farah has been governed from Kandaharsince 1863, its
revenues are not reckoned as a part of those of the
province. The land revenue proper is assessed in grain,
the salaries of government officials, pay of soldiers,
&c., being disbursed by " barats " or
orders for grain at rates fixed by government, usually
about 20 % above the city market prices. The greater part of the
English goods sold at Herat are imported by Karachi
and Kandahar— a fact which testifies to the great
insecurity of trade between Meshed and Herat. Some of the
items included as town dues are curious. For instance,
the tariff on animals exposed for sale includes a charge
of 5 % ad valorem on slave girls, besides a charge of I
rupee per head. The kidney fat of all sheep and the skins
of all goats slaughtered in the public yard are
perquisites of government, the former being used for the
manufacture of soap, which, with snuff, is a government
monopoly. The imports consist chiefly of English goods,
indigo, cloth, boots, leather, sugar, salt, iron and
copper, from Hindustan, and of shawls, carpets, "
barak " (native woolen cloth), postings (coats made
of skins), shoes, silks, opium and carpets from Meshed, Herat and Turkestan.
The exports are wool, cotton, madder, cumin seed,
asafoetida, fruit, silk and horses. The system of coinage
is also curious: 105 English rupees are melted down, and
the alloy extracted, leaving 100 rupees' worth of silver;
295 more English rupees are then melted, and the molten
metal mixed with the 100 rupees silver; and out of this
808 Kandahari rupees are coined. As the Kandahari rupee
is worth about 8 annas (half an English rupee) the
government thus realizes a profit of I %. Government
accounts are kept in " Kham " rupees, the
" Kham " being worth about five-sixths of a
Kandahari rupee; in other words, it about equals the
franc, or the Persian " kran."
Immediately
to the south and west of Kandahar is a stretch of
well-irrigated and highly cultivated country, but the
valley of the Arghandab is the most fertile in the
district, and, from the luxuriant abundance of its
orchards and vineyards, offers the most striking scenes
of landscape beauty. The pomegranate fields form a
striking feature in the valley— the pomegranates of Kandahar,
with its " sirdar " melons and grapes, being
unequalled in quality by any in the East. The vines are
grown on artificial banks, probably for want of the
necessary wood to trellis them — the grapes being
largely exported in a semi-dried state. Fruit, indeed,
besides being largely exported, forms the chief staple of
the food supply of the inhabitants throughout Afghanistan.
The art of irrigation is so well understood that the
water supply is at times exhausted, no river water being
allowed to run to waste. The plains about Kandahar are
chiefly watered by canals drawn from the Arghandab near
Baba-wali, and conducted
through the same gap in the hills which admits the Herat
road. The amount of irrigation and the number of
water channels form a considerable impediment to the
movements of troops, not only immediately about Kandahar,
but in all districts where the main rivers and streams
are bordered by green bands of cultivation. Irrigation by " karez
" is also largely resorted to. The karez is a system
of underground channeling which usually taps a
sub-surface water supply at the foot of some of the many
rugged and apparently waterless hills which cover the
face of the country. The water is not brought to the
surface, but is carried over long distances by an
underground channel or drain, which is constructed by
sinking shafts at intervals along the required course and
connecting the shafts by tunneling. The general
agricultural products of the country are wheat, barley,
pulse, fruit, madder, asafoetida, lucerne, clover and
tobacco. Of the mineral resources of the Kandahar
district not much is known, but an abandoned gold mine
exists about 2 m. north of the town. Some general idea of
the resources of the Kandahar district may be gathered
from the fact that it supplied the British troops with
everything except luxuries during the entire period of
occupation in 1879-81 ; and that, in spite of the great
strain thrown on those resources by the presence of the
two armies of Ayub Khan and of General Roberts, and after
the total failure of the autumn crops and only a partial
harvest the previous spring, the army was fed without
great difficulty until the final evacuation, at one-third
of the prices paid in Quetta for supplies drawn from
India.
History. — Kandahar has a
stormy history. Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni took it in the
9th century from the Afghans who then held it. In the
beginning of the I3th century it was taken by Genghis
Khan and in the 14th by Timur. In 1507 it
was captured by the emperor Baber, but shortly afterwards
it fell again into Afghan hands, to be retaken by Baber
in 1521. Baber s son, Humayun, agreed to cede Kandahar
to Persia, but failed to keep his word, and the Persians
besieged the place unsuccessfully. Thus it remained in
the possession of the Moguls till 1625, when it was taken
by Shah Abbas. Aurangzeb tried to take it in 1649 with
5000 men, but failed. Another attempt in 1652 was equally
unsuccessful. It remained in Persian possession till
1709, when it was taken bv the Afghans, but was retaken
after a two years' siege by Nadir Shah. Nadir Shah was
assassinated in 1749, and immediately on hearing the
news of his death Ahmad
Shah (Abdali) seized Nadir Shah's treasure at Kandahar,
and proclaimed himself king, with the consent, not only
of the Afghans, but, strange to say, of the Hazaras and
Baluchis as well. He at once changed the site of the
city to its present position, and thus founded the Afghan
kingdom, with modern Kandahar as its capital. Ahmad Shah
died in 1773, and was succeeded by his son Timur, who
died in 1793, and left the throne to his son Zaman Shah.
This prince was deposed by his half-brother Mahmud, who
was in his turn deposed by Shah Shuja, the full brother
of Zaman Shah. After a short reign Shah Shuja was
compelled to abdicate from his inability to repress the
rising power of Fateh Khan, a Barakzai chief, and he took
refuge first with Ranjit Singh, who then ruled the Punjab,
and finally secured the protection of British power. Afghanistan
was now practically dismembered. Mahmud was reinstated by
Fateh Khan, whom he appointed his vizier, and whose
nephews, Dost Mohammed Khan and Kohn dil Khan, he placed
respectively in the governments of Kabul and Kandahar.
Fateh Khan was barbarously murdered by Kamran (Mahmud's
son) near Ghazni in 1818; and in retaliation Mahmud
himself was driven from power, and the Barakzai clan
secured the sovereignty of Afghanistan. While Dost
Mohammed held Kabul, Kandahar became temporarily a sort
of independent chiefship under two or three of his
brothers. In 1839 the cause of Shah Shuja was actively
supported by the British. Kandahar was occupied, and Shah
Shuja reinstated on the throne of his ancestors. Dost
Mohammed was defeated near Kabul, and after surrender to
the British force, was deported into Hindustan. The
British army of occupation in southern Afghanistan
continued to occupy Kandaharfrom 1839 till the autumn of
1842, when General Nott marched on Kabul to meet
Pollock's advance from Jalalabad. The cantonments near
the city, built by Nott's division, were repaired and
again occupied by the British army in 1879, when Sher
Shah was driven from power by the invasion of Afghanistan,
nor were they finally- evacuated till the spring of 1881.
Trade statistics of late years show a gradual increase of
exports to India from Kandahar and the countries adjacent
thereto, but a curious falling-off in imports. The
short-sighted policy of the Amir Abdur Rahman in
discouraging imports doubtless affected the balance, nor
did his affectation of ignoring the railway between New
Chaman and Kila Abdulla (on the Peshin side of the
Khojak) conduce to the improvement of trade.
The Imperial Gazetteer of India
Published by , 1885
|