theresmagicinthewords

[pebblegalaxy]

Hari Singh Nalwa - A Prominent Military Commander of the Sikh Empire

Hari Singh Nalwa was a prominent military commander and general of the Sikh Empire in northern India, during the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. He served as the Commander-in-Chief of the Sikh Khalsa Army and was known for his bravery, military tactics, and administrative skills. He fought in several battles and campaigns, including the First Anglo-Sikh War, and expanded the boundaries of the Sikh…

[illustratus]

'At Bay', British Soldiers During the Second Anglo-Afghan War by William Heysham Overend

[goddessofwisdom18]

Empire of Storms doodles

[cid5]

circa 1919: Afghan officers stand in a line in front of a rocky hill during the Third Anglo-Afghan War.

[vulturesouls]

Khyber Chiefs and Khans with Captain Tucker, Political officer in Jamrood Fort, Afghanistan, 1878

The Khan of Lalpura and followers, with Political officer, 1878

Peshawur Gate Jellalabad City, and surroundings, 1878

From the album Afghan War 1878-79. Peshawur Field Force. J. Burke., Getty Museum

[hechiima]

Watched great mouse detective this weekend and I had a great time but lmaoooo forgot how racist it was and how dark older Disney movies were.

[mysterioushimachal]

Chapslee Estate: Home of the Historic Shimla Manifesto Declaration

[psychotrenny]

The thing with 9/11 is that no one cares that much about the death and destruction itself. Buildings fall down and people die all the time, including in the US. Like at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic you had entire 9/11s worth of USamericans dying on a regular basis. If all that damage was caused by an earthquake or faulty building practices or whatever, there wouldn't have been nearly as much fuss about it. It's not as if the insane response from US population was a matter of "two building fall down"

The reason why 9/11 was so upsetting to the US population was their widespread feelings of Imperialist Chauvinism and the subsequent outrage at seeing it so openly and violently defied. The US was at the height of its Imperialist power at the turn of the millennium, a hegemonic superpower that was dominant in some way over more or less the entire world. Whether they'd phrase it in such a way or not, most people in the US were very well aware of this; as far as they were concerned the US was truly the greatest country on the Earth. For some this was a point of pride, for others it was a simple fact of the world. This made them feel secure; bombings and mass killings might happen in those "shithole nations" of the earth but it couldn't happen over there. The US military could wipe entire cities off the map and like maybe that was good, maybe that was unfortunate and maybe it meant nothing at all. Either way that was normal; the violence flowed from the Core to the Periphery.

Until one day it didn't. One day a group of people from that Periphery, from some shithole group of nations, struck back. Now the sorts of destruction they'd seen on TV were happening right outside their window; the US got the smallest taste of the sort of brutality they had long inflicted on the rest of the world. And they did not like that taste at all. The US people as a whole went mad with grief and rage, not at the death of any people but the death of their sense of unquestionable safety and superiority. And the only hope of getting that feeling back was to inflict a revenge so terrible that no one would dare resist or retaliate again.

If bloodshed was how they'd built their empire, only more bloodshed could keep it safe. And this time they didn't even have to feel bad about it. It's not as if the US empire had ever given the world any peace, but now they had the perfect pretense to escalate it to levels not seen in decades. If they talked about this isolated and comparatively limited attack as though it was some great invasion, the US government and its supporters could take all the moral high ground of "self defence" even as they slaughtered impoverished peoples on the other side of the world. So it made sense to treat the 11 September attacks as though they were the greatest tragedy of all time. 9/11 didn't break the US psyche, it just made them express it in a more shameless way. It's not as though genocidal Imperialist violence was anything new to the USA. Afghans were just the new Apaches; the "Middle East" a new "Wild West"

[lightdancer1]

First book in a new sequence of history books wrapped up:

This one, as the title indicates, covers the first Anglo-Afghan War. At one remove it's a rare case where an Asian power outright defeated a European colonial adventure, in this case Dost Muhammad's Afghan Kingdom defeating the attempt to create a satellite state under Shah Shujah. The victory reflected as much the incompetence and weakness of British command, which had too few troops for the task, distributed in indefensible positions over too wide an area. Then compounded this with a retreat more ill-managed than Napoleon's in 1812. It also reflected that Afghan warrior traditions, as old-model as they are in a great many ways are formidable enough to face forces with superior technology and to negate those advantages, as they have against the great world powers of their day from the British Empire to the USSR and then the United States.

On the whole, it's less that Afghanistan is the graveyard of Empires and more that imperial hubris and dispatching too few troops to too wide an area under conditions of the greatest arrogance lead to predictable failure. At the most abstract, detached level this is the same pattern gripping Russia in Ukraine, as this particular rule hasn't changed since the first humans formed states and armies to replace older raids.

9/10.

[pebblegalaxy]

Hari Singh Nalwa - A Prominent Military Commander of the Sikh Empire

Hari Singh Nalwa was a prominent military commander and general of the Sikh Empire in northern India, during the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. He served as the Commander-in-Chief of the Sikh Khalsa Army and was known for his bravery, military tactics, and administrative skills. He fought in several battles and campaigns, including the First Anglo-Sikh War, and expanded the boundaries of the Sikh…

[illustratus]

Statue commemorating the defence of the British Embassy, Kabul, by Lieutenant Walter Hamilton and soldiers of the Queen's Own Corps of Guides, 1879

[apas-95]

Idk how to feel about China opening diplomatic relations with the Taliban. Yes Afghanistan's assets should be unfrozen and the entire reason the Taliban runs Afghanistan now is the fault of the US, but they are still an extremely brutal reactionary theocracy enforcing the most extreme gender apartheid in the world. It's not China's (or anyone's) place to change that obviously, but I can't bring myself to celebrate China opening diplomacy with them as a win for the third world.

So, in a word: non-interference.

You're right that the Taliban are a reactionary organisation, and you're right that they're in power because of US interference and invasion. Furthermore, you correctly point out that China should not attempt to change the internal political structure of Afghanistan, but the reason for that is much more than an abstract notion of sovereignty or respect - it is moreso a matter of practicality.

The Taliban are in power because they are the Afghan-nationalist group most favourable to US interests. The US would prefer its puppet government be in power, but failing that, there are groups it very much does not want to take power, such as Afghan communist organisations. The US directs more resources to undernining those groups than it does the Taliban. In any case, the Taliban are still better for Afghanistan than the US-comprador government is, but they are still ultimately in power due to continued US intervention. The US refusal to recognise the Taliban is an element in a continuum of intervention, attempting to tip the scale towards US-favourable groups - it is, counter-intuitively, an element of the exact strategy that is keeping the Taliban in power.

China's non-interference policy not only does not influence the internal affairs of other countries - inherently, it actively *weakens* US influence in those countries. If the threat keeping US-favourable groups in power is sanctions, blockade, and international non-recognition, then the credible promise that China, an incredibly useful partner, will engage with *whichever* domestic group takes power, no matter their ideology, allows for organic Afghan interests to express themselves and bring about organic Afghan political goals. Similarly, the provisioning of no-strings-attached investment, infrastructure, etc, makes US support of preferred groups less effective, as Afghanistan is both less desperate for support, and also has less incentive to take aid packages that include 'restructuring' demands.

In essence: refusing relations with the Taliban, like the US is doing, is part of the exact gradient of political-economic pressures that keeps the Taliban (the group least threatening to US interests, other than an unsustainable puppet) in power. Opening non-judgemental relations to *whoever* achieves power weakens that gradient, and strengthens the ability for the genuine interests of the Afghan people to determine who achieves and retains power. China refusing to open relations with the Afghan government because they do not align ideologically would not change that gradient at all, and could only add yet another set of foreign interests overriding those of the people (interests which could not be more commanding than those of the US military empire, in any case). Free and non-judgemental relations with a reliable trading partner is precisely the environment that weakens the political base of reactionary organisations, and strengthens genuinely revolutionary ones.

[bizarrebazaar13]

ok so due to the sleepy I might not be able to elaborate on this as much as I wanted. but.

given that the honey addled detective is a Sherlock Holmes reference, isn’t it weird that we don’t see a Watson counterpart? especially given that “Holmes and Watson but supernatural” is an established adaptation genre (the particular crossover of the Holmes stories and Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos is more common and more popular than you might expect).

however. Holmes and Watson meet essentially by chance; Watson returns from war in Afghanistan and is looking for a place to live, and runs into an old acquaintance, who introduces him to another man looking for someone to share rent payments. that man is, of course, Sherlock Holmes, and from there both of their lives change drastically.

in mask of the rose, Harjit comments that with London (and crucially, its rulers) now underground and cut off from the surface, England’s colonial influence is much weaker. Watson was wounded in the battle of Maiwand, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. the war was fought as part of the real life “Great Game”: a power struggle between the Russian and British empires in Central Asia.

so, in the Fallen London universe, would the battle of Maiwand ever have happened? maybe not. is it possible that Watson and Holmes might have met some other way? of course. but specifically in the context of Fallen London, it seems unlikely. Watson says that he “had neither kith nor kin in England” upon his arrival in London in A Study in Scarlet, and he specifically made his way to London in order to recover from his wounds. a spooky underground cavern is probably not conducive to rest and recovery.

assuming Holmes was born in 1854, he would have been only eight years old in 1862, when the fall happened, which (to me) rules out any possibility of him and Watson meeting before the fall. for context, A Study in Scarlet takes place in 1881, well after London has fallen. so we are left with a Holmes without a Watson.

Jeremy Brett, who played Holmes on screen for a decade, once compared Holmes’s relationship to Watson to “a drowning man clinging to a raft”. if the honey addled detective is indeed a direct reference to Sherlock Holmes, he makes for a very tragic one indeed, and that makes him extremely compelling to me.

[reveriedraffs]

I think i know why Christian was set to Marry Devi... (My theory i uploaded on reddit was removed by the admin idk why?)

It was bugging me from the moment when Christian said that he wanted to marry Devi from the very beginning although dozens hid this fact from her to spar her to get married to Christian. But why he wanted to marry her? Christian didn't know Devi and the latter came way before Devi met Ian. so what was he insisted to marry on marrying and devi only. also if it was because he show her portrait then he could've remember her when they meet for the first time.

After thinking about it so much i couldn't come to theory or connect the dots that not until i was sitting with my dad watching the news (I am Indian btw) and suddenly the news was talking about the most famous and precious jewel of india "Kohinoor" i am not sure how many of you know about this but this diamond it very "precious", "Priceless" and "CURSED" yes this diamond is "cursed" it was called cursed because of that soley diamond in the past war has fought for 500 years or more. and it has killed everyone who tried to posses that diamond the biggest empire has collapsed because of this mere diamond although it's not a mere diamond. because in reality, this diamond belongs to the gods.

The Koh-i-Noor Diamond isa a 186-caratt diamond with a curse affecting only men. According to folklore, a Hindu description of the diamond warns that “he who owns this diamond will own the world, but will also know all its misfortunes. Only God or woman can wear it with impunity.” Throughout history, the gem traded hands among various Hindu, Mongolian, Persian, Afghan and Sikh rulers, who fought bitter and bloody conflicts to own it. Every prince whohadf the diamond would ultimately lose his power if not his life. For over 500 years the stone changed hands in gruesome battles and vicious coups.

The kingdom of Golconda(current day state of Telengana,India), The khilji Empire,The Tughlaq Empire,The Lodhi Empire,The Mughal Empire,The Maratha Empire,The kingdom of Persia,The Durrani Empire,The Afghan Khanate,The Sikh Empire all collapsed one behind the other while owning the Koh-i-noor Diamond.The height of the curse can be seen in the fact that even World level Empires crumbled below the weight of the curse.The British East India company owned the Jewel since the Annexation and Disbandment of the Sikh Empire. But only 7–8 years following the looting of the jewel,the revolt of 1857 literally destroyed the east IndiaCompanyy from its roots.

Historical records indicate the diamond was acquired by the British in 1849 and given to Queen Victoria in 1850. To heed its legend, the diamond has since only been worn by women, including Queen Alexandra of Denmark, Queen Mary of Teck and the late Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, wife of King George VI.

In 1936, the stone was set into the crown of the wife of King George VI, Queen Elizabeth (later known as the Queen Mother). The British Royal family was aware of the Curse of the Koh-i-Noor, and from the reign of Queen Victoria the Kohinoor diamond has always gone to the wife of the male heir to the British throne

Currently, it is set as one of the jewels within a British monarchy crown that is kept at the Tower of London Jewel House.

I am telling you the whole story because?

here is the dots to this theory:

Sharma owns the mines for gemstones, diamonds, and crystals not only in Bengal but in very different places on all over India.

Devi's brother died while trying to save the bride.

Those who came to kill people talked about letting "Women alive and killing all the men" A simple person may think they said it to use them later on. if so then why was Rati killed?

Devi becomes the heir of the Sharma household, and Kamal insists on making Devi the heir why? i understand that is because Kairas was his best friend but he could've easily let Devi's uncle become the heir.

For some reason Kamal agreed to marry off Devi to Ian suddenly? like that man fought for 5 years against everyone then why did he turn his back suddenly?

Also I personally thin Ian chose devi for specific reasons too, like right now she is the head of Sharma's house but even when she wasn't he wanted to marry her and only her.

The Koh-i-noor might be found on devi's mine. as it holds the power of god and specifically it is cursed. As it said that "Only God or Woman can wear it with IMPUNITY" where Impunity simply means exemption from punishment or freedom from the injurious consequences of an action.

Or Devi personally is or is the koh-i-noor itself. Or Maybe British knew about the diamond and it's real power. They have stole diamonds from Taj Mahal too but they knew that the diamond who belongs to god holds its own power so they might need someone for that. Devi. Not only she is related to Maa Kali, she is girl and if they choose Devi and then found diamond form her mine then they can ask her to give it to them as in original i mean in reality that's how the koh-i-noor to the queen, they manipulate the royal family livin' in the England making them into thinking it was a simple diamond was given to the queen but in reality it was more then that!

I think they knew about the mines or something similar related to it.

[curtwilde]

i have a genuine question, what is arab colonisation? Is it a real thing? The context where I have read about it was a bigoted islamophic hindutvabadi page so I don't know if it's true or just part of their larger lie. Do you have any readings, sources on it?

According to Marriam Abboud Hourani, Arabization is a sociological process of cultural change in which a non-Arab society becomes Arab, meaning it either directly adopts or becomes strongly influenced by the Arabic language and culture. After the rise of Islam in Hejaz, there were a series of conquests in the Middle East and North Africa, after which the Rashidun Caliphate, the first Muslim empire was established. Arab culture spread through the Middle East and North Africa along with the spread of Islam, and in some places pre-Islamic religions and cultures were violently suppressed. These days, most Islamic countries have reconciled elements of their older traditions with Islam. The older religions survive among minorities in some places - Christians, Kurds, Ezidis and Mizrahi Jews for example and are still oppressed under some Islamic fundamentalist countries, like Iran.

Often, the term Arabization or Arab colonialism is used interchangeably with Islamic fundamentalism. On paper they mean entirely different things. However, in reality Islamic fundamentalists revere Arabic culture because the Quran was written in Arabic and events of the Quran are set in Arabia. The difference between the two is a slippery slope and I will let you decide on that.

The term colonization is such a red herring these days and is used to fit a lot of problematic narratives. It is a favourite with zionists, which is probably where these hindutvadis picked it up. And if you come across it on the internet I'd advise you to re-examine the source as they may have an anti-Muslim bias. That said, Islamic fundamentalism is very much a real thing and I wholeheartedly believe that any form of religious fundamentalism, and especially those fundamentalists that try to gain administrative and jurisdictional power for themselves, are a problem. All government and administrative bodies, across the world, should be compulsorily secular.

Now, in the context of South Asia, Arabization in it's strict meaning of the word, has nothing to do with our geopolitical history. Our Muslim rulers were all of Turkish, Afghan, and Central Asian origins with no connection to Arabia. Even culturally, elements of Indian Muslim culture can be traced back to Persia rather than Arabia; and linguistically the Persian influence on Hindi/Urdu is obvious. The term Arab colonization is often used by hindutvadis to mean the spread Islam in the subcontinent but of course they see the Islamic world as a monolith and I doubt they have the reading comprehension to know the difference even if they bothered to look it up.

Books:

The History of the Middle East by Peter Mansfield is a great place to start.

Islam, a short history by Karen Armstrong - very quick read + unbiased take on the Arab conquests.

The Arabization of Islam by Al Mubarak Nadir Shabaz

History of North Africa by Charles Andre Julien

From the holy mountain: a journey among the Christians of the Middle East by William Dalrymple

The Kurds: a contemporary history by Patrick S. Clancy

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon for a general idea of colonization.

Mutuals if you have any other recommendations please feel free to add.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Matti Friedman

The little book may have been kept by a Jewish family in Bamiyan, the curator suggested, with different people adding new texts as the years passed. The hands of at least five scribes are evident in the pages. They were influenced by ideas and writing coming from both major Jewish centers of the time—Babylon, which is modern-day Iraq, and the Land of Israel, where Jewish sovereignty had been lost seven centuries before and whose people were now under Islamic rule.

The previously unknown poem shows the influence of a familiar biblical text, the erotic Song of Songs, according to Professor Shulamit Elizur of the Hebrew University, the member of the research team in charge of the poem’s analysis.  But it also shows the impact of an esoteric Jewish book that wasn’t part of the Bible, known as the Apocalypse of Zerubbabel. This book is thought to have originated in the early 600s, when a brutal war between Byzantium and the Sasanian empire of Persia generated desperate messianic hopes among many Jews. Whoever wrote the poem in the Afghan prayer book had clearly read the Apocalypse, Elizur said—giving us a glimpse of a Jewish spiritual world both familiar and foreign to the coreligionists of the Bamiyan Jews in our own times, 1,300 years later. The previously unknown poem shows the influence of a familiar biblical text, the erotic Song of Songs, according to Professor Shulamit Elizur of the Hebrew University. (Museum of the Bible)

Chapters of the book’s journey from Afghanistan to Washington are unclear—some because they’re simply unknown even to the experts, and others because that’s the way the people in the murky manuscript market often prefer it.  

When the book was discovered by the Hazara militiaman, according to Hepler, the tribesmen didn’t know exactly what it was but understood it was Jewish and assumed it was sacred. The local leader had it wrapped in cloth and preserved in a special box. At one point in the late 1990s, it seems to have been offered unsuccessfully for sale in Dallas, Texas, though it’s unclear if the book itself actually left Afghanistan at the time. 

After the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11 triggered the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the book disappeared for about a decade. In 2012 it resurfaced in London, where it was photographed by the collector and dealer Lenny Wolfe. 

Any story about Afghan manuscripts ends up leading to Wolfe, an Israeli born in Glasgow, Scotland. I went to see him at his office in Jerusalem, an Ottoman-era basement where the tables and couches are cluttered with ancient Greek flasks and Hebrew coins minted in the Jewish revolt against Rome in the 130s CE. It was Wolfe who helped facilitate the sale of the larger Afghan collection to Israel’s National Library. “The Afghan documents are fascinating,” he told me, “because they give us a window into Jewish life on the very edge of the Jewish world, on the border with China.” 

When Wolfe encountered the little prayer book, he told me it had already been on the London market for several years without finding a buyer. In 2012, the year he photographed the book, he said it was offered to him at a price of $120,000 by two sellers, one Arab and the other Persian. But the Israeli institution he hoped would buy the book turned it down, he told me, so the sale never happened. Not long afterwards, according to his account, he heard that buyers representing the Green family had paid $2.5 million. When I asked what explained the difference in price, he answered, “greed,” and wouldn’t say more. (Hepler of the Museum of the Bible wouldn’t divulge the purchase price or the estimated value of the manuscript, but said Wolfe’s figure was “wrong.”)

The collection amassed by the Green family eventually became the Museum of the Bible, which opened in Washington in 2017. The museum has been sensitive to criticism related to the provenance of its artifacts since a scandal erupted involving thousands of antiquities that turned out to have been looted or improperly acquired in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. The museum’s founder, Steve Green, has said he first began collecting as an enthusiast, not an expert, and was taken in by some of the dubious characters who populate the antiquities market. “I trusted the wrong people to guide me, and unwittingly dealt with unscrupulous dealers in those early years,” he said after a federal investigation. In March 2020 the museum agreed to repatriate 11,000 artifacts to Iraq and Egypt.