THE AFGHAN CLAIM TO DESCENT

FROM ISRAEL

THERE is many an ethnographical problem awaiting solution in Afghanistan, where the human flotsam and jetsam of past Asiatic principalities have drifted into the cracks and wrinkles of the mountains which are banded about the southern borders of the ancient kingdom of Baktria. Amongst them is that of the ruling clan of the Afghans, who are called Duránis and who call themselves Beni Israel.

In the winter of 1894-95 I happened to be in the Kunar Valley of Afghanistan a little to the south of the junction of the Kafiristan river Bashgol with the Chitral, the two combining to form the Kunar. Not far to the north the insignificant little mudbuilt fort of Chitral was being stoutly defended by a small contingent of British troops (under the military leadership of the same Townshend whose name is imperishably connected with Kut) against a wholly undisciplined but sufficiently well-armed mob of Chitrali and other tribesmen of the surrounding hills. I was attached to a boundary commission which was just then busy with the boundary between Afghanistan and those same truculent tribesfolk who were politically supposed to be within the sphere of British administration, but who were nevertheless thirsting for the blood of such representatives of the British Government as they might catch in Chitral. I do not think that there was any political connexion whatsoever between the two happenings in the same valley at so short a distance apart; but I have always been convinced that an occasional significant shortage in the strength of the Afghan escort that safeguarded the boundary commission under the burly Ghulam Haidar (the Amir's Commander-in-Chief) was due to the fact that some of them were as busy outside the walls of Chitral as they were on boundary duty. At any rate no messenger from us ever got through to Chitral, and sudden death befell one of them before he had even left the camp. Such procedure is so entirely Afghan in character that it need create no surprise. During the progress of demarcation I was occasionally invited by Ghulam Haidar to accompany him on short excursions into the neighbouring valleys

in order that he might ascertain my opinion as an engineer on certain irrigation works for which he was himself responsible. At least so he said, but as a matter of fact it is not possible to teach the Afghan anything in the matter of making the most of his often scanty water supply and of conducting it gently by irrigation cuts in the way it should go. They are admirable irrigationists and their aptitude may be said to be hereditary.

Whilst riding alongside that great big man on his gigantic horse in the early days of spring, when the valleys were taking on tints of purple and gold on their sunny sides, when green stripes were patterned on the hills and every streamlet sang its little song to the unfolding ferns on its banks, it was difficult enough to concentrate one's attention on ethnographical argument, especially when conversation was based on a very elementary knowledge of Persian. Nevertheless it appeared to be an opportunity. I was well aware that the Durani believed himself to be the modern representative of those Israelites who were deported from Syria after the destruction of Samaria by the Assyrians in the year 772 B.C., and I knew how fierce he could. be in maintaining his traditions, so I was glad to find Ghulam Haidar quite reasonable and pleased to tell me something of the groundwork of his faith. It amounted to very little beyond his insistence that where history is wanting tradition must be regarded as sacred. He drew a sharp distinction between the Israelite and the Jew (i.e. between the Durani and the Yahudi), and pointed out that the hatred between them which dated from the secession of the tribes under Rehoboam continued to this day. I was indeed aware that it is on record that Afghans have protected Christians from Jews in the city of Kabul. He said that the Afghans came from Roum, that is to say from the West, and that they traced their descent in direct genealogical succession from Kish. Regarding certain traces of Levitical ritual in their religious observances (such for instance as the sprinkling of blood on the doorposts) he would tell me nothing at all; nor did he depart in any way from the orthodox opinions of the educated Muhammadan of the Sunni sect. Such slight evidence of conformation to Israelitish custom would be worthless in support of a claim to descent from Israel were it not for the acknowledged value of genealogical tradition supported by the remarkable evidence of hereditary personality. The Hebrew characteristics in feature and idiosyncrasy are quite indestructible. In this instance at least the impress of heredity is not to be denied and the Durani is a typical Hebrew. Lord Roberts, who knew them well, always maintained that Duranis were Jews. They are not Jews-and they hate the Jews-but they are unmistakably Hebraic.

If however they are veritable Beni Israel how did they arrive in Kabul; by what road, and under what conditions could they have reached that part of Afghanistan (the basins of the Kabul and of the Swat rivers) where they are mostly to be found? There is not much difficulty about the road from Roum (Persia). Many centuries before the days of Israel that same great trade route across Asia which has been defined for all time by geographical conformation stretched away eastwards from Nineveh to the Persian plateau, and thence north to the central deserts under the shadow of the Elburz mountains to Herat, and from Herat to the Oxus regions, to Balkh (more recently the capital of the Greek kingdom of Baktria) and Eastern Turkistan. Of Balkh the 'mother of cities,' traditionally older than Nineveh, founded by Belus and once the centre of a mighty system of irrigation derived from the Oxus, we shall know more when Afghan politics admit of the exhaustive process of examination which has been applied to Nineveh and Babylon. All we know now is what may still be seen by any traveller who can reach those historic plains which are traversed and scarred by the remains of as mighty an array of old irrigation earthworks as may be seen between the Tigris and Euphrates. From the regions beyond the Euphrates' (probably what we know as Armenia) to which the captive Israelites were dragged from Samaria the way is yet more plain than it is from Nineveh. Tabriz and Tehran now stand on that highway and a telegraph line marks it. It was not only a trade route, it was the highway of Asiatic conquerors and the pilgrim route of hosts of captured slaves. Labour difficulties in those early days were solved by the bodily transfer of a nation of slaves from one end of the Asiatic world to another. That was the solution of the Assyrian demand for the creation of public works when Assyria dominated Asia from the Euphrates to the Indus. It is to the last degree improbable that such a valuable addition to the labour power of Sargon's administration was left idle in Armenia. Armenia indeed betrays remarkable evidence of Hebraic origin in some of her people. There is no mistaking it; but the greater crowd of weary-footed captives from Syria were almost certainly driven from Armenia and scattered over those distant provinces of Asia where the most could be made of forced labour.

From Balkh across the Hindu Kush to the Kabul River and the Indian border lands is not such an easy and open highway as that which traverses Asia from the west to the eastern limits of Turkistan, but it is a well-known and well-trodden route (or series of routes), and it is moreover deeply interesting from its historical associations with Indian invasions from the time of Tiglath Pilesar till now. The trail of the Greek is to

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be found on those plains reaching outwards from the northern slopes of the mountain masses which range themselves in a solid phalanx of obstructiveness on the northern flanks of the Hindu Kush, and that trail is distinctly recognisable in Kafiristan to-day. There is no record of that passing of the Beni Israel from the hills of Armenia to the plains of the Oxus, or from the Oxus to the Kabul, such as we have of the passing of the Greeks, but there is no difficulty in realising its probability. The way they came and the manner of their coming is written partly in geographical terms on the face of Asia, and partly in the traditional records of the customs of those early days; but is there no other evidence? I think there is, and for it I am indebted to the scholarly researches of Mr. B. W. Stainton, a gentleman who was resident in Persia for thirty years in an official capacity, and who devoted much of his time to philological study.

The traveller who wishes to reach the plains of Balkh from Herat first passes northwards over the low extension of the great Band-i-Turkistan and wends his way gently from the valley of the Kushk river towards the Russian frontier station of Kushk until (still following one of the central trade routes of the mediaeval Arab traders) he strikes eastward through low hills of loess formation to the Murghab river at Maruchak.

Here he finds a great trade centre of ancient Turkistan, for Merv-el-Rud (the Merv of the river), one of the most famous of Eastern marts some 1200 to 1500 years ago, is now identified with Maruchak; although nothing of the ancient city remains. Some ten miles above Maruchak the Murghab river receives an affluent from the east which affords the recognised opportunity for a road to Maimana and the Oxus country. The name of the meandering stream which snakes its way through the soft floor of the valley varies, but it is usually known as the Chahar Shamba, from a Jamshidi village near its head. It is quite a delightful road in the spring when under the clear blue of a northern sky the wayside is sprinkled with yellow and white crocuses or, a little later, when the soft sand-rippled hill sides are clothed with sheets of scarlet tulips and the light green curves of the nearer ridges are silhouetted against the purple sides of the flat-topped Band-iTurkistan to the south. Later again, the tulip is replaced by an equally vivid scarlet poppy, and thistles of all degrees of aggressiveness and infinite variety in colour run riot over the whole landscape. Autumn has its charm too, for then the reedy banks of the stream hide myriads of brilliant pheasants; clouds temper the fierceness of the sun and the light blue haze lends mystery to the tance. In winter all these roads are partly plated with a coatice, the landscape is picked out with white tracery, the the fresh snow is blinding, and the going is precarious. en a Jamshidi horseman laid out flat on the ice in such

fashion that not only the man but every scrap of harness that decorated the horse was scattered broadcast over the road.

Such is the variety that lends itself to all these Turkistan roads in which the old Arab geographers and merchants delighted to spend their days. A little south of this Chahar Shamba stream, some few miles from its confluence with the Murghab, there is visible a weird collection of the dry bones of a former city. Black and stiff they stand in broken columns of angular shape, but rounded and softened by the action of driving wind like a French orchard after a barrage. This indicates the probable site of a far older town called Talikan, once the capital of the ephemeral Central Asian Kingdom of Tachoristan.

It is not the history of this once dominant kingdom, which reached from the Murghab (and possibly from the Persian border) to Kabul, which concerns us now, but the meaning of the name, remembering that it is on the high road between Syria, or Armenia, and Balkh. The old Persian word Takhaureer, says Mr. Stainton, means 'strangers, aliens'; 'hauyah-ut-takhaureer they, the people, came, scattered and dispersed and distracted in mind.' Takhauristan would then signify the land of the scattered peoples. Perhaps more remarkable still is the archaic significance of the name Kabul. It is a curious coincidence that the only other Kabul known to geographers should be in Western Palestine. It was included in the lot of the children of Asher (Joshua xix. 27) and it was one of the cities which Solomon gave to Hiram (I. Kings ix. 13), who by no means appreciated the gift. Now Kaubool (I omit the Persian spelling and transliterate as well as I can) means the 'twine of a net' or 'a snare'; but Kaubul, a city on the borders of Takhorestan' means 'fettered or in bond.' Equally striking is the name Afghan. No inhabitant of Afghanistan from Kafiristan to the borders of Baluchistan calls himself Afghan so far as I know, and it was difficult to imagine the origin of the name until Mr. Stainton furnished the following clue : Afghan" or "Feghan" is a Persian word meaning loud lamentation.'

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Thus we find from Turkistan to the plains of Kabul the echo of a great captivity-a faint echo perhaps, but one which undeniably supports the claim of the Durani Sirdar to reckon himself a true representative of the Biblical captives. There appears to be yet another Israelitish remnant that has long settled near Bombay, and they too can advance a theory for their existence into which I cannot enter here. But beyond these two communities I know of no others, although I firmly believe that the modern Armenian also has some of the blood of Israel in his veins.

T. H. HOLDICH.