Download or read book Charles Masson of Afghanistan written by Gordon Whitteridge and published by Orchid Press Incorporated. This book was released on 2024-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biography of Charles Masson, a remarkable 19th century Brisish explorer and antiquarian in Afghanistan. In addition to his discovery of ancient coins and other artefacts, he was a reluctant player in the Great Game between Britain and Russia.
Download or read book Alexandria written by Edmund Richardson and published by . This book was released on 2022-05-12 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ariana Antiqua written by Horace Hayman Wilson and published by . This book was released on 1841 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan Afghanistan and the Panjab written by Charles Masson and published by . This book was released on 1842 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The King s Shadow written by Edmund Richardson and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Impeccably researched, and written like a thriller, Edmund Richardson's The King's Shadow is the extraordinary untold and wild journey of Charles Masson - think Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid meets Indiana Jones - and his search for the Lost City of Alexandria in the "Wild East" during the age of empires, kings, and spies. For centuries the city of Alexandria Beneath the Mountains was a meeting point of East and West. Then it vanished. In 1833 it was discovered in Afghanistan by the unlikeliest person imaginable: Charles Masson, deserter, pilgrim, doctor, archaeologist, spy, one of the most respected scholars in Asia, and the greatest of nineteenth-century travelers. On the way into one of history's most extraordinary stories, he would take tea with kings, travel with holy men and become the master of a hundred disguises; he would see things no westerner had glimpsed before and few have glimpsed since. He would spy for the East India Company and be suspected of spying for Russia at the same time, for this was the era of the Great Game, when imperial powers confronted each other in these staggeringly beautiful lands. Masson discovered tens of thousands of pieces of Afghan history, including the 2,000-year-old Bimaran golden casket, which has upon it the earliest known face of the Buddha. He would be offered his own kingdom; he would change the world, and the world would destroy him. This is a wild journey through nineteenth-century India and Afghanistan, with impeccably researched storytelling that shows us a world of espionage and dreamers, ne'er-do-wells and opportunists, extreme violence both personal and military, and boundless hope. At the edge of empire, amid the deserts and the mountains, it is the story of an obsession passed down the centuries.
Download or read book Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan Afghanistan the Panjab Kal t During a Residence in Those Countries written by Charles Masson and published by . This book was released on 1844 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Masson (alias of James Lewis) was a traveler and explorer who was the first European to appreciate the archeological heritage of Afghanistan. Not much is known about his early life. He was born in London in 1800 and by all accounts received a good education that included Latin, Greek, and French. After a quarrel with his father, in 1821 he enlisted as an infantryman in the army of the East India Company. He sailed for Bengal in early 1822. In July 1827, he deserted his regiment, changed his name, and traveled westward to escape British jurisdiction. After wandering through Rajasthan and the independent Sikh territory, he crossed into Afghanistan via the Khyber Pass. Over the course of the next decade he traveled extensively throughout Afghanistan. He also spent time in Persia (present-day Iran) and Sind (present-day Pakistan). He began his archeological explorations in 1832 with a survey of the Buddhist caves at Bamyan. In 1833 he discovered the ruins of the ancient city of Alexandria ad Caucasum, founded by Alexander the Great. He collected more than 80,000 silver, gold, and bronze coins and made a particular contribution to science by recognizing the importance of bilingual bronze coins, whose Greek inscriptions could be used to decode unknown scripts that appeared on the reverse side. Masson's real identity was discovered by the British authorities, but he received a pardon in recognition of his archeological work and the valuable intelligence about Afghanistan he provided. He left Afghanistan in October 1838. Living in Karachi, he wrote an account of his archeological investigations and completed his three-volume Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan, and the Panjab, which was published in London in 1842. With the first Anglo-Afghan War (1839-42) underway, in early 1840 he attempted to return to Kabul, but was caught up in the siege and insurrection in the Khanate of Kalat (in present-day Pakistan) and for a time was imprisoned as a spy. Following his release in January 1841, Masson wrote Narrative of a Journey to Kalât, which was published in London in 1843. In 1844 his publisher reissued Narrative of Various Journeys, with Narrative of a Journey to Kalât added as a fourth volume to the original edition. Volume four opens with a large fold-out map showing Masson's journeys. Presented here is the complete 1844 edition.
Download or read book Lost World of the Golden King written by Frank L. Holt and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-10-18 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on ancient historical writings, the vast array of information gleaned in recent years from the study of Hellenistic coins, and startling archaeological evidence newly unearthed in Afghanistan, Frank L. Holt sets out to rediscover the ancient civilization of Bactria. In a gripping narrative informed by the author’s deep knowledge of his subject, this book covers two centuries of Bactria’s history, from its colonization by remnants of Alexander the Great’s army to the kingdom’s collapse at the time of a devastating series of nomadic invasions. Beginning with the few tantalizing traces left behind when the ‘empire of a thousand cities’ vanished, Holt takes up that trail and follows the remarkable and sometimes perilous journey of rediscovery. Lost World of the Ancient King describes how a single bit of evidence—a Greek coin—launched a search that drew explorers to the region occupied by the tumultuous warring tribes of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Afghanistan. Coin by coin, king by king, the history of Bactria was reconstructed using the emerging methodologies of numismatics. In the twentieth century, extraordinary ancient texts added to the evidence. Finally, one of the ‘thousand cities’ was discovered and excavated, revealing an opulent palace, treasury, temple, and other buildings. Though these great discoveries soon fell victim to the Afghan political crisis that continues today, this book provides a thrilling chronicle of the search for one of the world’s most enigmatic empires.
Download or read book Kalash Siaposh Kafirs History and Customs by Charles Masson written by Charles Masson and published by . This book was released on 2017-09-07 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is one chapter, Chapter XI, of the book "Narrative of various journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan, the Panjab and Kalat 1826-1838" by Charles Masson. This chapter describes the "Siaposh Kafirs" or "Wearers of the Black Robes." The Siaposh Kafirs are now known as the Kalash. They inhabit three valleys in Chitral in NorthWest Pakistan. The valleys are Bumboret, Birir and Rumbur. There are now only three thousand of these Kalash left. The rest have converted to Islam. However, their numbers are increasing, with more babies being born and a decline in the infant mortality rare. There are two kinds of Kafirs: Red and Black. The Red Kafirs are now called the Nuristanis. They inhabit the area of Nuristan in Afghanistan. There are also some Nuristani villages in the far upper parts of Bumboret, Birir and Rumbur. The Black Kafirs are known for wearing Black dress. You will see references to the color Black in the pages here. For example: "The males of the infidels, whose souls are said to have been more black than their garments," This book was first published in 1844. In spite of the passage of 127 years, little has changed. The females still wear the same black outfits with a headdress made of corwie shells and they dance in the same way. There are differences of opinion as to whether the Kalash have or had the same religion as the Nuristanis and whether they are the same people. The similarities between them are that they both do not bury their dead but put their dead in wooden boxes above ground, and both sit on small wooden stools and do not sit on the ground.
Download or read book Charles Masson of Afghanistan written by Gordon Whitteridge and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a biography of an enigmatic (some might say dubious) character of indistinct origins who became one of the most remarkable British explorers of his era, wandering over Punjab, Baluchistan and Afghanistan between 1827 and 1840, usually alone and on foot. In doing so, he provides an illustrated documentary of ancient religious and cultural artifacts and buildings of the region, many of which have subsequently been lost to the depredations of war and the Taliban.
Download or read book Charles Masson Collections from Begram and Kabul Bazaar Afghanistan 1833 1838 written by Elizabeth Errington and published by . This book was released on 2020-08-31 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book discusses and catalogues Charles Masson's 1833-8 collections from the urban site of Begram and Kabul bazaar now in the British Museum, supplemented by illustrated coins recorded in Masson's archival manuscripts and in H.H. Wilson, but no longer in the collection.
Download or read book Connecting Histories in Afghanistan written by Shah Hanifi and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-11 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published online in 2008 by Columbia University Press.
Download or read book Travels in the Himalayan Provinces of Hindustan and the Panjab written by William Moorcroft and published by . This book was released on 1841 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Moorcroft (1767-1825) was a veterinary surgeon who, after maintaining a veterinary practice for a time in London, was engaged in 1807 by the East India Company to manage its breeding of horses. He arrived in India in 1808 and took charge of the company's stud operations at Pusa, Bengal. In 1811 and 1812 he undertook journeys to the northwest in search of larger and better stud horses than he was able to find in India. In July 1812 he crossed the Himalayas to become one of the first Europeans to enter Tibet by this route. By this time, his interests had expanded from the procurement of horses to include the opening of trade relations between Central Asia and Great Britain and the projection of British influence beyond the northwest of British India to counter what he saw as a growing Russian presence in the region. In May 1819 Moorcroft received permission from the East India Company to travel to Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan). He reached the city in February 1825 after a more than five-year journey that took him to Ladakh, Kashmir, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, into Afghanistan via the Khyber Pass, and through Kabul and Kunduz to his ultimate destination. He began his return journey to India in July 1825, but died of fever in Balkh, Afghanistan, on August 27. Travels in the Himalayan Provinces of Hindustan and the Panjab is Moorcroft's account of his journey of 1819-25. It was posthumously edited and published by Horace Wilson, professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford and a member of the Royal Asiatic Society, based on Moorcroft's voluminous notebooks and correspondence. Volume one is devoted entirely to Moorcroft's journey to and residence in Ladakh. Volume two completes the account of Moorcroft's time in Ladakh and recounts his journey to Kashmir, Kabul, and Bukhara. The book contains a detailed map of Central Asia compiled and drawn by the London mapmaker John Arrowsmith, based mainly on the field notes of George Trebeck, a young Englishman who accompanied Moorcroft on the journey and who recorded geographical details measured in paces combined with compass bearings.
Download or read book Kandahar in the Nineteenth Century written by William B. Trousdale and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-03-08 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive history of Kandahar uses unpublished and fugitive sources to provide a detailed picture of the geographical layout and political, social, ethnic, religious, and economic life in Afghanistan’s second largest city throughout the nineteenth century.
Download or read book Bazaar Politics written by Noah Coburn and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-28 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the fall of the Taliban, instability reigned across Afghanistan. However, in the small town of Istalif, located a little over an hour north of Kabul and not far from Bagram on the Shomali Plain, local politics remained relatively violence-free. Bazaar Politics examines this seemingly paradoxical situation, exploring how the town's local politics maintained peace despite a long, violent history in a country dealing with a growing insurgency. At the heart of this story are the Istalifi potters, skilled craftsmen trained over generations. With workshops organized around extended families and competition between workshops strong, kinship relations become political and subtle negotiations over power and authority underscore most interactions. Starting from this microcosm, Noah Coburn then investigates power and relationships at various levels, from the potters' families; to the local officials, religious figures, and former warlords; and ultimately to the international community and NGO workers. Offering the first long-term on-the-ground study since the arrival of allied forces in 2001, Noah Coburn introduces readers to daily life in Afghanistan through portraits of local residents and stories of his own experiences. He reveals the ways in which the international community has misunderstood the forces driving local conflict and the insurgency, misunderstandings that have ultimately contributed to the political unrest rather than resolved it. Though on first blush the potters of Istalif may seem far removed from international affairs, it is only through understanding politics, power, and culture on the local level that we can then shed new light on Afghanistan's difficult search for peace.
Download or read book A Personal Narrative of a Visit to Ghuzni Kabul and Afghanistan and of a Residence at the Court of Dost Mohamed written by Godfrey Thomas Vigne and published by . This book was released on 1840 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Mulberry Empire written by Philip Hensher and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling novel from the Man Booker Prize shortlisted author of The Northern Clemency and King of the Badgers.
Download or read book Daily Life in the Indus Valley Civilization written by Brian Williams and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2015-08 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores what life was really like for everyday people in the Indus Valley civilization. Using primary sources and information from archeological discoveries, it uncovers some fascinating insights and explodes some myths. Supported by timelines, maps, and references to important events and people, children will really feel they are on a time-traveling journey when reading this book.
