Afghanistan: Land of Discord
The Western World knows little about the peoples and cultures of Afghanistan. This ignorance stems, in part, from Afghanistan’s location and turbulent history. Over the last 2000 to 3000 years, Afghanistan has been invaded numerous times. Outsiders have traveled through this region along the historically important route to the Far East called the Great Silk Road. Britain and Russia drew its modern boundaries in the nineteenth century. The country did not achieve independence until the early twentieth century. A short-lived constitutional monarchy was dismantled by a coup d’etat and the Soviet invasion of 1979. Intense fighting during the Soviet occupation and the civil war that followed Soviet troop withdrawal in 1989 resulted in massive destruction and suffering. In the 1990s, Taliban -- a fundamentalist Islamic faction -- has gained control over the country.
Events in Afghanistan History
2000 B.C. |
Introduction of Buddhism to northern Afghanistan |
330-326 B.C. |
Invasion by Alexander the Great |
A.D. 550-650 |
Introduction of Islam |
A.D. 1219-1221 |
Invasion by Ghengis Khan |
A.D. 1200-1400 |
Invasions by Turko-Mongols |
A.D. 1500-1700 |
Invasions by Persians and Indians |
A.D. 1838 |
Invasion by Britain |
A.D. 1919 |
Afghanistan independence |
A.D. 1273-1300 |
Visit by Marco Polo |
A.D. 1964 |
Constitutional monarchy established |
A.D. 1973 |
Republic of Afghanistan established |
A.D. 1978 |
Soviet invasion |
A.D. 1989 |
Soviet withdrawal |
A.D. 1996 |
Taliban victory |
Afghanistan is located on the Asian continent. It is bordered by Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. The rugged Hindu Kush Mountains run through the center of the country and are surrounded by high altitude deserts. Most of the arable land is in eastern Afghanistan along the Amu Drya, Hari Rud, Hilmand, and Kabul rivers. The flow of water in these rivers varies seasonally, becoming strongest when the mountain snows melt. The area experiences four seasons, including very cold and snowy winters.
A Diverse People
The nearly 22 million people living in Afghanistan today belong to about twenty-one different ethnic groups. The four main groups are the Pushtan, Tajik, Hazara, and Uzbek. The Tajik and Uzbek live in the northern part of the country, while the Hazara reside in the central mountains. The Pushtan live primarily in the southern deserts and eastern foothills. Many of these groups extend into neighboring countries. The language of the Tajik-- called Farsi -- is most common.
Insert pie chart from old website
In a country that is divided into many ethnic, linguistic, and geographic groupings, one of the few things shared by most Afghans is their religion. Islam became the dominant religion in the seventeenth century. Most Afghan Muslims belong to the Sunni sect. Only about fifteen 
percent are members of the Shi’a sect.
Most people live in isolated communities, such as the village of Istalif. The villagers live in houses made with packed mud or pise and wood-beamed roofs. In the few cities such as Kabul, dwellings vary from mud homes to modern apartments and single family houses, often arranged in compounds surrounded by walls. Nomads who move their herds seasonally from pasture to pasture dwell in tents or yurts -- structures built around wooden frames with bent roof poles and covered with reed mats or felt.
Objects on display reflect the strong religious sentiments of the Afghan people. Displayed are an embroidered prayer cloth (dastmal); prayer beads (tasbah); three silver Uzbek amulets tied with cotton; an old coin used as a charm; a velvet cover for the Koran; a tassel for prayer beads (popak-I-tasbeh); and a red bead mystical charm.
Rampant Poverty
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, largely due to many years of warfare and political turmoil. About two-thirds of the people grow crops or herd animals for personal use. Subsistence crops include corn, rice, barley, wheat, vegetables, fruits, and nuts. Sheep, goat and, to a lesser degree, cattle are the chief source of food and income for nomadic pastoralists. Some Afghans sell food or crafts in markets to supplement their income.
The industrial base of the economy is weak due to the country’s isolation and political upheavals. Crops grown for export include cotton, tobacco, madder, castor, beans and sugar beets. Although large-scale manufacturing industries have been established, there is also an active cottage industry that produces woven and other goods for local and foreign markets.
Afghan homes come in many shapes and sizes, including yurts made of wood frames covered with felt, like this decorated piece, and urban homes made of stone and plaster, as shown by a plaster wall decoration. A carved wood post came from a house in the Afghan capital of Kabul.
Afghan Nomads and Farmers
Men of the nomadic tribes -- chiefly Pushtan, Baluch, and Kirghiz -- herd sheep and goats along ancient migration routes, following the seasonal availability of pasture through high plains and rugged mountains. Some become wealthy from trading animal products and lending money to settled farmers.
Other nomads do not own property but perform services and peddle goods along migration routes. The Shaykh Mohammadi peddle cloth, hats, and households utensils. The Shadibaz sell trinkets and perform with trained monkeys, while the Jailai sell fruit. The Ghorbat manufacture and sell sieves, drums, and tambourines. Others tell fortunes and beg. These itinerant craftsmen and laborers are held in low esteem in Afghan society.
Farmers continue to use traditional equipment such as wooden plows and hand sickles. To thresh crops, a field is cleaned, compacted, and smoothed with mud. Oxen or donkeys are tied side-by-side, and walk through the stacked sheaves, breaking the spines from the straw. Next, farmers use wooden pitchforks to fling the straw into the wind. The remaining spikes are threshed with wooden flails that loosen the grain from the spikes. Winnowing-trays or chaj separate the grain from the empty spikes and the grain is cleaned using fine-mesh sieves. Grain is prepared by the Musallis, a poor rural group with Indian ancestry.
For most jobs, Afghan men use primitive tools, including a bricklayer’s trowel, metal tongs, and a butcher’s knife with an engraved bone handle.
To hunt for food or defend himself and his family, Afghan men often carry daggers, powder horns, and matchlock rifles. Tools for hunting game include a sling bow, hunting hood, and fox and jackal trap.
Tools to plant, harvest and process grain include a hand sickle; metal and wood winnowing tools; and a metal hoe blade. Grain sifters of different mesh sizes were made by itinerary craftsmen of the Ghorbat tribe and used by the Musalli to sieve grain.
Trappings for animals include the rope and metal stirrups for a horse’s saddle; the bag that was slung across a donkey’s back; the brass horse bit; and the tether used to secure animals. Afghan men also add elaborate tassels to animal trappings.
Tribal Warfare
Tribal warfare has been endemic in Afghan life for centuries. To this day, most men under arms belong to various tribal militias. Afghan men over the centuries have also had to face numerous foreign invasions, partly due to their geographic situation astride an ancient migratory crossroad connecting the Near East with Eastern Europe and Asia. As a result, proficiency with weapons has long been a necessary and much-admired skill for Afghan men.
Men’s Clothing
Traditionally, men wear loose, long-tailed cotton shirts reaching to the knees and covered with a vest or waistcoat. Trousers are often tied by a drawstring and worn baggy, although horsemen prefer form-fitting pants. Nuristani men wear wool shirts and below-knee length pantaloons, sometimes with leggings. Coats are made with sheepskin, embroidered wool, or quilted cloth. Hat styles vary from turbans, felt-rolled caps, and cylindrical kolahs to fur-trimmed, quilted hats.
Northern Afghan men prefer to shave their heads. South of the Hindu Kush Mountains, men let their hair grow to the earlobe. In remote parts of Nuristan, some men grow a lock of hair on the back of the head.
Footgear varies in Afghanistan from these rubber and leather shoes to the embossed slippers. Groups like the Tajik wear wooden clogs to walk in mud. Nuristani often go barefoot, even in winter.
Uzbek menwearquilted and embroidered coats like this chapan. Afghan men wear a variety of hats, including embroidered caps and wool hats. The razor blade to the right is an essential toiletry for a man.
Horsemanship in Afghanistan
Horsemanship is highly valued throughout Eurasia. Modern domesticated horses are probably descended from a wild population that roamed the Eurasian grasslands about 7,000 years ago. In Afghanistan, portrayals of riders have been found on 3500-year-old sculptures and seal impressions.
The importance of horsemanship and prowess in warfare is expressed in the game of Buzkashi, which means “goat-grabbing”. To Afghan men, buzkashi is not simply a sport but it is essential to their way of life. Competition during peaceful times helps to maintain their skills on horseback. To play buzkashi, a headless goat or calf carcass is placed in the center of a circle surrounded by mounted players from two opposing teams. To score, the carcass must be lifted up on the saddle and carried to the scoring area past the other team. The sponsor of the match and the spectators vocally decide whether a goal has been scored. The crashing of horses and slashing of whips can cause serious injury. Champions are held in high esteem and win prizes of robes, cash, turbans, or rifles. Anyone can play in local matches but only champions participate in important matches.
Life in an Afghan Home
The roles of men and women in Afghanistan are well defined and separate. In accordance with Muslim beliefs, the life of women revolves around the home and children. Beginning in the late 1950s, urban women from privileged families were permitted to work outside of the home and had access to higher education. This loosening of the rules did not extend to women living in smaller rural communities or among nomadic tribes. With the attainment of political control by the Taliban militia, a strict interpretation of Islamic law has resulted in the imposition of limits on women’s behavior and dress.
Women devote most of their time to domestic tasks, such as cooking, housework, and childcare. Some of this work is delegated to servants in wealthy families. Women provide their families with two meals each day as well as snacks. Traditional meals include pilau -- rice with meat or vegetables; mutton, poultry or wild game kebabas; hot soup; yogurt; and nan -- a flat bread. Chutney and hot chili sauce add spice to the food. Except in wealthy homes, food is cooked over a fire. Bread is baked on an iron plate placed on supports over fire or in coal ovens.
Common household items used by Afghan women include a gourd container, a brass wash basin, a wooden ladle, a nan par (for puncturing bread to let steam escape), a soapstone lamp, a sugar axe, and a brass water jar. The axe is used to break sugar loaves during weddings.
Women’s Dress
Until recently, Western dress was common in towns. Today, women are required by Islamic law to don a veil that hides their features when in public. The chadri, a full-length, sack-like garment with a lattice work eye mask, is worn by women in Afghanistan and other parts of the Islamic world. 
Choice of dress and jewelry is often dictated by a woman’s ethnic group membership. Many women wear white or colorful cotton shirts and baggy trousers or ankle-length skirts. In Nuristan, trousers are more form-fitting under full skirts. Married Pushtan women dress in blue pantaloons under long, loose black shirts that reach the ankle. Unmarried women wear red pantaloons. Wealthy nomadic women don burgundy and green velvet dresses embroidered in gold and decorated with coins. An Uzbek woman wore the silver-trimmed hat on display. The tassels are wool hair pieces. Women store cosmetics in pouches and metal containers, and care for their hair with decorated combs.
On special occasions, Turkoman women wear tall hats covered with silver ornaments, whereas Nuristani womendon hats decorated with cowrie shells. Among the Pushtan, women embellish their clothing with embroidery; wear jewelry of precious metal and semi-precious stones; use cosmetics; and are tattooed. They favor motifs of flowers, mountains, birds, the tree of life, and fish that symbolize fertility. Women wear long hair in pigtails or braids. Shoe styles vary from elaborately carved wooden sandals to rubber shoes.
Mothers and Children
Female status is contingent on motherhood. In fact, women seek magic cures and medicines to overcome barrenness. After childbirth, women traditionally remain in isolation for forty days and are only visited by female relatives and the midwife. Mothers breast-feed their babies until they teeth or another baby is born. Unfortunately, infant and mother mortality is high in Afghanistan due to disease and unsanitary conditions.
Mothers and other female relatives supervise children until they are nine years old. Boys and girls mix freely and learn by doing chores. Starting around age nine, girls learn to cook, sew, wash laundry, and embroider. They often help care for younger siblings. By the time a girl marries at the age of fifteen or sixteen, she is capable of running a household. Boys help their fathers in the fields and move into the adult world at ten or twelve years old.
Although Afghan children take on responsibilities early, they have time to play games. In kite-fighting, children try to cut off strings coated in powdered glass hanging from opponents’ kites. Buzul-bazi is a game played with sheep knucklebones that is similar to marbles. The wooden cradle and airplane, and marionette are typical of children’s toys.
Marriage and Markets
The lives of men and women converge in marriage and the marketplace. Marriage is considered a transaction between families, not individuals, and involves sizeable financial commitments on both sides. The groom’s family pays a bride-price to the bride’s family. The dowry that the bride brings with her is equal to or exceeds the groom’s outlay. The dowry consists of functional and decorative items needed to establish a household. It includes goods such as clothing, bedding, utensils, wall hangings, jewelry, and fans. Men attending weddings are given gifts such as turban caps or embroidered handkerchiefs. Assembling a dowry can take a long time and great effort, so it is started when a girl is quite young. The bride’s female relatives help spin, weave, embroider, and sew items.
Craft Production
The participation of women in economic activities outside of the home varies by ethnic group and region. Both men and women produce fine crafts for sale in the market as well as household use.
Afghan pottery is traditionally fashioned by men who teach their sons the craft. 
When he is older and fully trained, a boy he will take over his father’s pottery production business. Potters make a variety of objects for household use and sale in the markets. They turn clay on a potter’s wheel set into the ground and shape it with various tools. To decorate, potters may use molds. Sometimes women embellish pottery with decoration using leaves, cord, or everyday household objects.
Potters throw pots on a wheel below the ground. They use a variety of tools, such as the wooden paddle and smoother to the left, to shape pots depending on the desired size and form of the product. To make water pots like the one to the right, the potter builds the body first and then adds the neck and foot. They flatten the outside with a paddle and smooth the interior with a round implement. The potter then adds a thick coil by hand to form the top of the jug.
Glazed pottery is usually used as decoration. The turquoise glaze on the pipe base is used by the potters of Mazar il Sharif, including Muhammed Safir. The colorful spitoon to the right was probably sold to tourists. Laborers carry undecorated spitoons for use in the field during the day.
By firing numerous pots at one time in large kilns, potters can produce large quantities of items for sale in a short period of time. An earthenware cooking pot called a deg would have held stew for sale in the marketplace.
In Afghanistan, Uzbek women do most of the weaving and embroidery, even for women of other ethnic groups. Competition over their handiwork is fierce. Women spin wool and silk for embroidery yarn while visiting each other. Marriage dowries include lots of textiles. Married females help relatives and friends accumulate dowries by spinning. Young female relatives gather together to produce intricately embroidered rectangular wall hangings that are used as decoration, canopies, or curtains for bridal wedding beds.
To prepare household items and their dowries, female relatives teach Afghan girls how to make and decorate clothing by puberty. Women sew and embroider cloth with cotton and silk thread, which the woman spins herself. They color the thread and material with imported dyes bought in the bazaars. Women create designs that are drawn onto fabric by specialists using quill and ink. Until the introduction of the sewing machine, all clothing was made by hand.
Women of ethnic groups such as the Turkoman are well known for their artistry and skill in weaving kilims for use as rugs and dust covers; saddlebags, halters, tassels, and straps for animals; bags to hold water bottles; and grain, salt, and other precious goods. To make cloth, an Afghan woman uses a spinning wheel, a horizontal loom, a heddle, and a spindle with bobbin. On display are spindle whorls, spindles, and silk cocoons.
Afghan women produce a variety of cloth items. They embroider or applique cloth to hang on walls or divide space into rooms. Curtains are hung between the private female and public male sections of the home. Family members sit on decorated mattresses and pillows to eat. Women of some nomadic tribes are renowned for weaving tents, bags, and rugs as well as halters, straps, and tassels for the animals. Uzbek women made fringed cloths to decorate a house for a wedding. Embroidered handkerchiefs are given to men who attend Afghan weddings. Women make potholders and padded sleeves called austinchah to protect their arms when removing bread from the oven. Clothing was stored in this carpet bag, called a mafraj.
Today, men weave some items on large vertical looms in factories. Women wash, card and spin raw sheep wool into different strengths depending on its use as warp, weft, or pile. Wool is spun into thread using a spindle whorl. To create the weave, it is attached to a shuttle that is pulled through the vertical warp. Wool was traditionally treated with vegetable dyes.
The Collectors
The late Louis Dupree, an expert on Afghanistan, and his wife, Nancy Hatch Dupree, collected most of the objects in this exhibit. Mrs. Dupree, an associate professor of anthropology, obtained the items made and used by women who are inaccessible to foreigners.
Louis Dupree earned a Ph.D. in anthropology at Harvard University. He taught at Penn State from 1957 to 1966 and then went to Duke University. Dupree was a consultant on Afghan affairs to the U.S. State Department, the Peace Corps, the National Security Council, the CIA, and the United Nations. He wrote several books and many articles about Afghanistan.
Dr. Frederick Matson, and Dr. and Mrs. Arthur Mekeel provided the photographs. Dr. Matson contributed the pottery. Mr. and Mrs. Mekeel donated the large donkey bag. We thank all of these individuals for sharing their knowledge and love of Afghanistan.
