Afghanistan's Constitution and the Ottoman Empire | Faiz Ahmed

E443 | In this episode, Professor Faiz Ahmed recounts the fascinating history of Afghanistan’s first modern constitution, contextualizing it within a broader legal and political history. The constitution was developed by Afghan, Ottoman and Indian and other scholars, at the behest of the country’s monarch, between 1919-1925. After the first world war, Afghanistan was one of few sovereign Muslim countries. This was one factor which drew many scholars and activists to the court of Amanullah Khan — a “Young Afghan,” graduate of an Ottoman institution in Kabul, and a Muslim modernizer. We learn about the role of figures like Queen Soraya, her father Mahmud Tarzi, and myriad scholars and jurists in shaping the constitution. We discuss the nature of the constitution as a living document, which acknowledges its place within an Islamic legal heritage — as well as the fact that the constitution will evolve. Professor Ahmed also reads from one section of the constitution, which determines “Who is an Afghan?,” and shares his translation. We also learn how the history of the constitution is remembered in Afghanistan today. More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2020/01/afghanistan-rising.html Faiz Ahmed is Associate Professor of History at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and currently a Senior Fellow at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. He specializes in legal and constitutional history in the Ottoman Empire, Middle East, and South Asia, as well as diasporic communities connected to these regions. Shireen Hamza is a doctoral candidate in the History of Science department at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the history of medical exchange in the medieval Indian Ocean world. She is also the managing editor of the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies. Huma Gupta is a post-doctoral fellow at New York University–Abu Dhabi. In 2019, she completed her dissertation “The Architecture of Dispossession: Migrant Sarifa Settlements and State-Building in Iraq” at MIT. There, she was in the History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture + Art department and a fellow in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture. She has been an SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellow, Rabb Family fellow, and MIT Presidential fellow. CREDITS Episode No. 443 Release Date: 4 January 2020 Recording Location: Boston, MA Audio editing by Chris Gratien Music: Soft and Furious; Chad Crouch Images and bibliography courtesy of Faiz Ahmed available at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2020/01/afghanistan-rising.html