Word Finder - afghan

definition

A blanket or throw, usually crocheted or knitted.

definition

A type of iced chocolate biscuit, sometimes containing cornflakes and topped with a walnut.

Afghan conqueror, was born on the 2nd of October 971.

There are also versions of them in the modern Persian, Malay, Mongol and Afghan languages.

The remaining three clans are Afghan subjects.

The chief, whose title is nawab, is a Mahommedan, of Afghan descent.

It is navigated from the mouth of the Surkhan, and steamboats ply on it up to Karki near the Afghan frontier.

He reported the gradual formation of an anticlinal or ridge extending longitudinally through the great Balkh plain of Afghan Turkestan, which effectually shuts off the northern affluents of that basin from actual junction with the river.

The Kabul (ancient Kophes), which is the most important (although not the largest) river in Afghanistan, rises at the foot of the Unai pass leading over the Sanglakh range, an offshoot of the Hindu Kush towards Bamian and Afghan Turkestan.

Bhopal state was founded in 1723 by Dost Mahommed Khan, an Afghan adventurer.

It leaves the Hindu Kush near the Dorah Pass at the head of one of the minor Chitral affluents, and passing south-west divides Kafiristan from Chitral and Bajour, separates the sections of the Mohmands who are within the respective spheres of Afghan and British sovereignty, and crosses the Peshawar-Kabul route at Lundi-Khana.

His youngest son, Mahomed Omar Jan, was born in 1889 of an Afghan mother, connected by descent with the Barakzai family.

There is a respectable amount of Afghan literature.

From this central point great lines of communication radiate in all directions to Russian, British, Persian and Afghan.

Little control was exercised by the rulers of Kabul, and the country was administered by local chiefs or Afghan Sirdars very much as they pleased.

The result of this minute was that a frontier commissionership, including Sind, was sanctioned by the home government, and Sir Frederick (afterwards Lord) Roberts had been designated as the first Commissioner, when the outbreak of the Second Afghan War caused the project to be postponed.

He was supposed to have died on the Afghan frontier in 1825 on his second journey; but if Huc's story is true he reached Lhasa in 1826, and did not leave it till 1838, being assassinated on his homeward journey, when maps and drawings were found on him, and his identity was for the first time suspected by the Tibetans.

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 Aeimak and Hazara tribes and the Afghans generally, while the latter is not beyond striking distance from Kandahar.

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.

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.

In the years1872-1878the Afghan Jamal ud-Din, a professor in the Azhar mosque at Cairo, attempted to read Avicenna with his scholars, and to exercise them in things that went beyond theology, bringing, for example, a globe into the mosque to explain the form of the earth.

The most notable episode in the history of the place is the famous defence by Sir Robert Sale during the first Afghan war, when he held the town from November 1841 to April 1842.

The attitude of the government on the Afghan question and generally in regard to Russia was held by many to have been perceptibly stiffened owing to Lord Rosebery's influence.

Russian explorers and natives of India trained for geographical reconnaissance, and employed in connexion with the great trigonometrical survey of India, had done so much towards clearing away the mists which enveloped the actual course of the river, that all the primary affluents were known, although their relative value was misunderstood, but the nature of the districts which bordered the river in Afghan Turkestan was so imperfectly mapped as to give rise to considerable political complication in framing the boundary agreement between Great Britain and Russia.

From Lake Victoria (Sor-Kul) in the Pamirs, which was originally reckoned as the true source of the river, to Khamiab, on the edge of the Andkhui district of Afghan Turkestan, for a distance of about 680 m., the Oxus forms the boundary between Afghanistan and Russia.

These slopes represent the extent of Afghan territory which exists north of the Hindu Kush between Kala Panja and Ishkashim.

Throughout the plains of Afghan Turkestan the drainage from the southern hills is arrested and lost in the desert sands.

A wide belt of blown sand (or Chul), sprinkled with sa.aul jungle, separates the swamps on the south side of the river from the cultivated plains of Afghan Turkestan; but in places, notably for Cultiva= about 12 Tn.

Since the treaty of Gandamak, which was signed at the close of the first phase of the Afghan War in 1879, the Bolan route has been brought directly under British control, and it was selected for the first alignment of the Sind-Pishin railway from the plains to the plateau.

The Arms Traffic. - During the 3rd Afghan War the trade in modern arms and ammunition in the Persian Gulf attracted the attention of the British and Indian Governments for the first time.

There are few residents in the country from the more eastern parts of Asia - if we except the Turkoman settlements in the Jaulan, a number of Persians, and a fairly large Afghan colony that since 1905 has established itself in Jaffa.

Since that date it has been largely settled by the amir with purely Afghan tribes.

At Haibak there is a very perfect excavation called the Takht-iRustam (a general name for all incomprehensible constructions amongst the modern inhabitants of Afghan Turkestan), which consists of an annular ditch enclosing a platform, with a small house about 21 ft.

The second Afghan war of 1878-80 afforded an opportunity for the extension of wide geographical surveys on a scientific basis.

From Kushkinski the boundary runs north-east, crossing the Murghab river near Maruchak (which is an Afghan fortress), and thence passes north-east through the hills of the Chul, and the undulating deserts of the Aleli Turkmans, to the Oxus, leaving the valleys of Charshamba and of Andkhui (to which it runs approximately parallel) within Afghan limits.

Bending back westwards upon itself, the line of Afghan frontier now follows the water-parting of the Hindu Kush; and as the Hindu Kush absolutely overhangs the Oxus nearly opposite Ishkashim, it follows that, at this point, Afghanistan is about io m.

Thus a small and highly elevated portion of the state extends eastwards from its extreme north-eastern corner, and is attached to the great Afghan quadrilateral by the thin link of the Panja valley.

Two points of this part of the Afghan boundary are notable.

It leaves some of the most fanatical of the Durani Afghan people on the Baluch side of the frontier in the Toba district, north of the Quetta - Chaman line of railway; and it passes 50 m.

Within the limits of this boundary Afghanistan comprises four main provinces, Northern Afghanistan or Kabul, Southern Afghanistan or Kandahar, Herat and Afghan Turkes Ghilzai and Hazara Highlands, Ghazni, Jalalabad and Kafiristan.

The Herat province is largely Persian, while Afghan Turkestan is chiefly Usbeg; and in neither is the sentiment of loyalty to the central government very strong.

The Kabul river drains Northern Afghanistan, the Hari Rud the province of Herat, and the Oxus that of Afghan Turkestan.

Thus the main routes from Kabul to Afghan Turkestan must cross either one or other of these ranges, and must traverse one or other of the terrific defiles which have been carved out of them by the upper tributaries of the rivers running northwards towards the Oxus.

This appears to be the beginning of a new anticlinal which has altered the levels of the Balkh plain, and is indicative of those elevating processes which Afghan tan, together with the minor dependencies of the provinces.

There are no glaciers now to be found in Afghan Turkestan; but evidences of their recent existence are abundant.

The Jurassic beds are followed, generally with perfect conformity, by the Cretaceous, which covers a large part of Afghan Turkestan and probably forms the greater part of the ranges which run south and south-west from the principal watershed.

The entire system may be represented in the west, but in the Herat province and in Afghan Turkestan the middle Cretaceous seems to be absent, and it is probable that, as in other regions, the upper Cretaceous covers a much wider area than the lower beds.

The lower part of the Miocene is marine in Herat and Afghan Turkestan; but the upper Miocene is usually of freshwater or estuarine origin.

Kabul is linked with Afghan Turkestan and Badakshan by three main lines of communication across the Koh-i-Baba and the Hindu Kush.

This high road is stated (on Afghan authority) to be kept open for khafila traffic all the year round by the employment of forced labour for clearing snow.

There is not a pass of any great importance, nor a river of any great difficulty, to be encountered from end to end, but the route is flanked on the north between Kandahar and Girishk by the Zamindawar hills, containing the most truculent and fanatical clans of all the Southern Afghan tribes.

But the remarkable feature of Afghan climate (as also of that of Baluchistan) is its extreme range of temperature within limited periods.