Abstract
Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779-1859) was the first British Envoy to the Kingdom
of Kabul in 1808–1809. He was deputed by the East India Company to carve an
alliance with Afghanistan to counter possible French and Russian military march
against British India which was the jewel of the British Empire. With other
members of the mission, Elphinstone went as far as Peshawar where he spent four
months and collected primary and secondary data on the human and natural
geography, economics, politics, history and inhabitants of Peshawar and Kabul
valleys in early 19th century in his travelogue, kingdom of Caubul. That was the era
of the tournament of shadows between British and Russian Empires for political
ascendancy in South and Central Asian region. In that game of high stakes Tsarist
Russia occupied Central Asia and British India expanded its western borders to the
Durand Line. The first and second Anglo-Afghan wars were launched by the
British Raj to expand its influence to Afghanistan. By 1820s the British
conceptualized Afghanistan as the highway of conquests. Elphinstone reflections
on Pakhtun way of life and his comments on the government and society of the
region mirror his perception and approach. The paper is an attempt to objectively
analyze Elphinstone`s views in the Kingdom of Caubul on the region and its
inhabitants in the context of Edwards Said`s Orientalism.
Waqar Ahmad, Prof. Dr. Zahid Anwar . (2020) ORIENTALISM AND THE DEPICTION OF MUSLIMS: A TALE OF TWO CITIES IN ELPHINSTONE’S “KINGDOM OF CAUBUL”, Journal of Islamic Civilization and Culture, Volume 3, Issue 1.
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