>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
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>> Mary-Jane Deeb: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you all for coming to the African Middle-East Division.  I'm Mary-Jane Deeb, Chief of the Division, and I'm delighted to see you all.  We have with us -- I want to recognize Chris Murphy, who is the Head of the Near East Section here for many, many years, and a colleague, and also Michael Albin, who was a comrade in arms when we went to Iraq together.  And he was the Head of the Anglo-American Acquisitions, and also Director of our office in Cairo.  I want just to say a few words about our division.  Our division is made up of three sections, as I think all of you know.  But anyway, this is for the camera, so I always say that.  The African, the Near East and the Hebraic Section.  We collect from 78 different countries in Africa, in the Middle East, in Central Asia, in the Caucasus, and we collect materials primarily in this division, books, and [inaudible].  But we also have CDs, DVDs, music, photographs, et cetera, which are in formats that we don't usually collect, because there are other divisions that have them.  But we do have our own series of materials, and of course, we have manuscripts.  We have lithographs.  And I'm mentioning that in particular, because this would be part of the discussion of today's presenter.  These materials, we preserve, we keep, we share, we serve, but also, we like to have discussed.  We like to have -- to bring scholars.  We like to have people who have worked with these materials come to our reading room and talk to us about these materials, about the way they were made, where they were made, for whom they were made.  It gives greater depth to our collections, and it helps us understand what we have.  And it helps our patrons also get a better understanding of how these materials can be used, where they are, how accessible they are, sometimes how rare they are as well.  So we invite people to make presentations.  We do displays, and very often, we have displays in our reading room.  And we show icons that we collect.  We've had major exhibitions, both the Persian Book exhibit -- we had the Hebraic book exhibit.  We've had actually one on Afghanistan, and these were letters that were written by Afghans to Radio Free Europe that discussed various issues, various personal problems that people -- young people, older people face in Afghanistan.  It's a unique collection of letters that we have, in part, scanned, and that will eventually be made available digitally online.  But they've already been organized, collated, but still not in a fashion made available.  Afghanistan has been a very special focus of our collections, and we have acquired, from the Afghan Media Research Center in Kabul, over 95,000 photographs.  That's the largest collection ever on Afghanistan, which have been digitized.  Those photographs have been digitized in Kabul by the Afghan Media Research Center.  They cover a period from the late '70s to 2012.  We've got films -- a collection of films and videos from that center that are now in our research -- in our motion picture collection.  And we have sound recordings as well.  That's in addition to the books, the serials, the journals, and the lithographs and manuscripts.  I also want to recognize Hirad Dinavari, who's been in charge of our Afghan collection, who's done a fantastic job in organizing and having a lot of our materials digitized and reviewed.  And we have here Jan Lancaster, who, herself, has gone through all our manuscripts, Persian manuscripts and Afghan manuscripts and lithographs, and identified the problems with them.  We have the Preservation Division here, that has looked at our materials and advised us about what to do with them.  So collecting is just the beginning of the process by which we integrate the new collections into our system, and sharing with us today is Elham Bakhtary, who has worked with these materials, and who will be sharing his research and his work on these materials.  And to introduce him today is our own Hirad Dinavari, our Persian specialist, who has done tremendous work in developing the collections and preserving them.  So I'll pass it on to Hirad.  Thank you.
>> Hirad Dinavari: Thank you, Mary-Jane, for a wonderful introduction, and I want to thank you all for being here on a busy lunch hour.  I'm sure you would be happier with food, but I also want to take a minute and echo what Mary-Jane mentioned before introducing our wonderful speaker, Elham.  This has been a personal passion for me in the last few years of working with materials, both manuscripts and lithograph from the region in a Persian language, as well as other regional languages, especially collections from Afghanistan.  I'm very delighted to say we have a good amount of lithographs, as well as some manuscripts and early imprints from Afghanistan that now are being digitized.  I cannot mention enough how the Upstarts work with World Digital Library began the process.  And we have a wonderful representative, Chris Masciangelo, here, who worked with us closely as we identified over 100 Afghan titles that we digitized for that project, in Pashtu and in Persian, Dari Persian, that are now being used.  And the positive side of that is researchers like Elham, who are now coming and are using our Afghan materials, and are delighted that this material is available online.  And whatever did not get under the -- get done under the WDL project, in the project we are doing now, the Persian -- rare Persian language digitization project, we are now going to digitize in the next few years, from the whole region.  Persian materials from Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, India and beyond.  So with that, I want to take a minute and introduce Elham.  Elham is a doctoral candidate who was awarded a Mellon Fellowship in the past year at the Library's Preservation Division to conduct research on early Afghan lithography and printing press.  He made extensive use of Ahmed's rare Persian language materials, lithographic and early imprint, as well as some Pashtu, and even, I would say, some regional publications in Persian from all over, as well as Arabic and even Central Asian material.  Prior to beginning his doctoral program and GW in the fall of 2012, he completed a B.A. in History at the University of California, Davis Campus, where he focused on Middle Eastern and South Asian history.  After finishing his undergraduate work, he went to complete his M.A. in History in San Francisco State University, where he began to focus on Islamic intellectual thought in the British Empire.  His research draws heavily on English, Persian and Arabic sources, and I also want to mention that he has published an official subaltern in Islamic modernist narratives of the first Anglo-Afghan War, the 44th Annual Conference on South Asia.  And this was done in Madison, Wisconsin, produced by them, Center for South Asian Studies in Wisconsin University.  Thank you, Elham, and again, I look forward to working with you.  I hear that Elham will be coming back soon to do some more work at the Library, and I am looking forward to working with you on -- closely on better understanding and appreciating our Afghan -- rare Afghan collections here at the Library.  Thank you.
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[ Applause ]
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>> Elham Bakhtary: Thank you, Mary-Jane, and thank you, Hirad, for that wonderful introduction.  I want to extend a warm thank-you to the entire Library of Congress for having afforded me the opportunity to do this research.  This has been an incredible resource, and I've been so fortunate to be located at an institution so close by to the Library of Congress.  I wouldn't have been able to do it without the Library of Congress, especially the African and Middle-Eastern Division, and with the help of wonderful staff.  I've done research in England, Afghanistan, India, and I can tell you for sure that there's not as helpful of a staff as the staff here at the African-Middle-Eastern Division.  So thank you again, Mary-Jane.  Thank you to Joan Weeks, and a special thank-you to Hirad Dinavari.  He really is the jewel in the crown of my research, if you will, and he's been with me every step of the way.  And I wouldn't be able to do it without the help of these people.
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And the Library of Congress has been especially helpful when it comes to the history of print in Afghanistan.  Now, print began during the reign of Emir Sher Ali Khan.  Let me pull up the PowerPoint real quick.  
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This handsome individual right here.  He -- his reign was split into two parts, because he was engaged in a civil war with his older brothers.  And he was the first one to actually bring the printing press to Afghanistan, but we don't actually have a whole lot of materials that are in existence from that time period, because when the British invaded Afghanistan in 1878 to dethrone him, they shelled the Bala Hissar, his fortress, where the printing house was located.  And the printing house was burned, and subsequently looted.  And so we don't have many materials from that time period.  Now, the Library of Congress has shown incredible diligence in collecting materials, and so they only have a few materials from this time period.  But I want you to understand that this is a huge share of the materials that exist.  There aren't that many at all.  And so I just want to quickly go through the ones that I analyzed.  These are just the ones from the period of Emir Sher Ali Khan.  There are many more materials from the -- from Afghanistan, from the reigns of Emir Abdur Rahman Khan, Emir Habibullah Khan, and going on forth.  So these are specifically amongst the first prints from Afghanistan's -- from Afghanistan.  And so the first is [foreign language], meaning the conclusive argument invalidating the misleading Wahabi creed.  The next item is "Shamsa Nihar," and we have two issues here at the Library of Congress, two original issues.  "Shamsa Nihar" meaning the morning sun, Afghanistan's first newspaper.  And the last one is [foreign language], which means gift to the Ulama.  Now, the first item, as the title suggests, is a polemic written targeting Wahabis.  The second two I would describe as mirrors for subjects.  These are materials that are instructing subjects, including the Ulama, on how to behave as Muslims, what are their duties and obligations as Muslims, and what are their obligations to the ruler.  And in this talk, I will suggest that, although the Emir's Court initially used propaganda to attack the Wahabis, it was the Wahabis that inspired these latter forms of propaganda in both form and substance.  Now, this project was a bit difficult to undertake, since there wasn't much existing scholarship on the history of print in Afghanistan.  There have been some developments in recent years studying the history of print in the Middle East and South Asia.  Unfortunately, Afghanistan is treated like a square peg in the study of the Middle East and South Asia, so much of this scholarship -- or, almost all of this scholarship doesn't really touch on Afghanistan at all.  And there have been recent developments in the study of Afghanistan in the 19th century, but most of this scholarship concerns the reign of Emir Sher Ali Khan's predecessor and father, Emir Dost Mohammad Khan, as well as his successor and cousin, Emir Abdur Rahman Khan.  But Emir Sher Ali Khan keeps getting skipped over.  So there wasn't really a whole lot of existing scholarship for me to work with.  So I want to give a brief survey of the history of print during Emir Sher Ali Khan's reign.  According to colonial sources, Emir Sher Ali Khan imports a printing press in 1869, and that's a lithographic press, [foreign language], as it's referred to in Persian.  And he imported this press for the purpose of printing stamps.  You see in the image on the left of a 19th century lithographic press in operation, the operator is rolling the ink onto the limestone, and to the right, you see an image of a stamp from Sher Ali's reign.  And in the center is actually the image of a lion, and this was a common symbol used throughout Emir Sher Ali Khan's reign.  His name, Sher, meaning lion.  And that he imported the press to print stamps is telling, in that it shows that the press was not originally intended for propaganda.  It's not until two years later, actually, that we have the first works of propaganda.  So why did he decide to start using the press for propaganda?  Well, to answer that question, we look at the first works of propaganda, both of which were religious polemics targeting the Wahabis.  Now, these are not the Wahabis you might be thinking of, the Arabian Wahabis founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab of Najd.  This is actually referring to the Tariqah-i-Muhammadiyah who were a militant revivalist movement founded in India by Syed Ahmad of Raebareli, and Shah Ismail of Delhi.  And they were a militant revivalist movement, and they were called Wahabis because of the similarity of their ideas and actions to the Arabian Wahabis.  But they actually had no organizational ties.  The actual forerunner to the movement was a contemporary of Mohammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab.  They were actually born in the same year, and his name was Shah Wali Allah of Delhi.  And Shah Wali Allah of Delhi, we could describe more or less as a salafi, meaning someone who believed that the society of the Prophet Mohammed and the Rashidun Caliphate were a model for contemporary Muslims, and that contemporary Muslims could and should emulate that society.  And they would do that by purging themselves of innovations that had cropped into the religion since that time period.  And some of these innovations, the ones that he went after the most, were what he referred to as pseudo-Sufi practices in society at large.  Oh, sorry.  It's a little high.  Okay.  Sorry about that.  So, some of the practices that he went after he referred to as pseudo-Sufi practices that were common throughout British India.  And these practices revolved around Sufi saints, both past and present, and these included acts like asking saints for intercession between them and God, shrine-oriented worship, the wearing of towels, [inaudible] and charms.  And Shah Wali Allah believed that these practices were very prevalent because Muslims actually didn't know the Quran.  Very few Muslims actually were able to read the Quran, because of it being in Arabic.  And he believed that if they knew the Quran, they wouldn't be doing these practices.  If they actually knew what the contents of the Quran were, they would immediately stop all these kind of shrine-oriented activities and what have you.  Now, the issue was, in India and most of the Islamic world, it was taboo to translate the Quran.  The consensus was that you could not translate the Quran without distorting the meaning.  But Shah Wali Allah, being very confident in his skills in Arabic and Persian, decided to translate the Quran from Arabic to Persian.  And this was really the first translation of the Quran in South Asia.  And he translated this Quran specifically for Mughal Court officials and elite military officers.  And my theory is that he did it just specifically for them because they were the decision makers in India.  And he believed that the decline of Muslim political power in India had to do with this improper practice of Islam.  He believed that if you get the decision makers of India to practice Islam correctly, they could understand what Islam -- the true message of Islam was, and they could potentially administrate the country better and right the ship, if you will.  The Tariqah-i-Muhammadiyah take this message, but they want to expand it beyond the court.  They want to take it to the streets, if you will, and they believed that, for society to change, everyone needed to be involved.  It couldn't just be something that was top-down.  It really had to be bottom-up to a certain extent.  And scholars theorize that they believed that this was possible because of the printing press, okay?  That the printing press inspired them, that Shah Wali Allah's reformation could be expanded to society at large.  And so they used print relatively early in their movement.  Starting in 1824, they established a printing press in Calcutta.  Subsequently, they established presses in Delhi, Lucknow, Lahore and other cities.  And they write pamphlets that almost anyone could understand.  If they couldn't read them, if they were read to them, at least they would be able to understand the language.  And they used a simplified form of Persian in their initial pamphlets.  Now, when Shah Wali Allah wrote, he wrote in Arabic and Persian, and he wrote in a very sophisticated form of Arabic and Persian.  So even if it was read to you, you might not actually understand what he was talking about, but they wrote with the masses in mind.  And eventually, they started writing in Urdu, which was a spoken language among some Indian Muslims.  So it was not just simply an acquired language like Persian was.
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This is an image of a Tariqah publication.  This is a work by Shah Abdul Aziz, who was actually not a member of the Tariqah.  He was the son of Shah Wali Allah, and he was revered by the Tariqah.  And so they made efforts to publish his work.  This one, [foreign language], and most of their lithographs look like this.  And you kind of see the variety of scripts being used, [foreign language] here, and so this kind of gives you the idea of what they look like.  But most of their publications, especially their initial publications, were works that were dedicated to attacking the pseudo-Sufism that Shah Wali Allah spoke of.  And the most important work in the initial period is a work called [foreign language], "The Strengthening of Faith," by Shah Ismail.  So in this book, he goes after these rituals that he considers innovations, [foreign language] in Islam, but he also challenges traditional theological positions.  And what he does is, he accuses scholars, past and present, of having put limits on God's power.  He says that they mistake the impossibility of God doing something for being the inability of God to do something.  He gives the case, for example, that although God would not create another prophet, Mohammed being the final prophet, God still has the ability to create another prophet, even another Mohammed.  Thousands of Mohammeds, if he wills.  This sets off a firestorm of debate in India.  Some of the established Ulama, like, flipped their lid over this, and this debate rages on for three decades, and even continues to this day, really.  I mean, you can go on forums today, and people are still having these kinds of arguments.  But really, from the 1830s to the 1860s, all kinds of works, massive volumes, are being written about this subject.  Now, Kabul, Afghanistan wasn't really involved in these debates, but that didn't mean that they weren't aware of these individuals.  Emir Sher Ali Khan's father actually, on two occasions, had military alliances with the Tariqah-i-Muhammadiyah.  So the Tariqah-i-Muhammadiyah actually established a militant wing in the frontier between the Punjab and Afghanistan.  And the reason they did this is because, in the early 19th century, the Sikhs had taken over the city of Peshawar, and they had banned Muslims there from consuming beef and performing the Adhan, the public call to prayer.  And the Tariqah had said that these were grounds for jihad, and therefore they went there, and they set up a base to fight the Sikhs.  And the Afghans were interested in fighting the Sikhs because they had last Peshawar to the Sikhs.  And so they found common ground, and they allied.  But it doesn't seem like they really had any theological discussions in all this chaos, jihad being the priority.  The effort fails.  Syed Ahmad and Shah Ismail are both killed in 1831, and the Afghans give up on their attempt to take back Peshawar.  However, in 1839, when the British invaded Afghanistan to dethrone Emir Dost Mohammad Khan, again, they strike up another brief alliance.  Hundreds of Tariqah members go to the city of Ghanzi to help put up a stand with the locals there, and that fails, as well.  And, according to reports, they all returned back to the frontier.  So none of them remain in Afghanistan.  And Kabul doesn't really hear about them much until 1871.  And, according to those sources, they state that in that year, or sometime before, some Punjabi and Peshawari Ulama had forwarded a request to the Kabul Court for a refutation of the Tariqah's beliefs, and the Tariqah's doctrine.  Which raises the question, why would they send this to the Kabul Court?  There had already been volumes of works refuting these individuals' ideas, authored by well-respected scholars, scholars that were more imminent than anyone in Kabul, including Maulana Hidaboudi [assumed spelling].  My theory is that, traditionally, if you read the works in Islamic scholasticism by authors like Imam Ghazali or Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, they make it very clear that it's the prerogative of the Islamic ruler to deal with heretics.  It's the Islamic ruler that has to commission the Ulama to right heresiographies.  It's the job of the Ulama to administer the punishment, whether that be humiliating them, imprisoning them, or executing them.  And the problem for the Punjabi Ulama is that the British rule India, and they thus cannot give those refutations the official stamp of approval that was traditionally required.  Emir Sher Ali Khan was the nearest independent Muslim ruler to the Punjab, and it helped that he had a printing press as well.  Therefore, he was the natural choice to commission these works.  And so, two refutations were issued from the Kabul Court in the same year, 1871.  And so, the work on the left is [foreign language], the one I mentioned earlier.  This one was a scholarly work.  It was authored by Maulana Abdur Rahman, who was the Chief Kazi [assumed spelling] during the reign of Emir Sher Ali Khan, and it's in Persian and Arabic.  It uses a lot of classic text, scholarly sources, a lot of logic.  The source on the right is [foreign language], "The Piercing Flame."  This one was actually authored by the Emir himself, and it was not scholarly at all.  And the Emir explains in the tract as to why.  He states, "In this tract, I have not entered into discussion of many Islamic sciences.  I believe the Ulama in every country have already crafted responses to this [foreign language], this disbelief.  But because those writings include scientific terminology, the masses cannot understand them.  Hence, it is not the Ulama that are falling into the claws of these owls.  Rather, the hunt of these enslavers is after the mice who are ignorant.  This is a teeth-shattering response to the infidels that no one has yet to give, which will render the infidels without the strength and ability to speak."  And what's interesting about that work is how much it mirrors Tariqah literature.  The Tariqah, they would focus on the Quran and Hadith.  They wouldn't really use the other materials -- auxiliary materials for understanding Quran, you know, these Tasfird [assumed spelling] and so forth.  They would try to make it all about the Quran and Hadith.  And if you look at the difference in materials that are used in "Hijat a Kawia" [assumed spelling] versus "Shihadist al Qib" [assumed spelling], the ones I have listed here for Hijat [assumed spelling] are just a fraction.  There are actually many more sources that are used.  But in "Shahab es Alqib" [assumed spelling] there are only two sources used, and they're not even really cited.  They're just kind of mentioned.  Like, I'm not a crazy man making all this up.  If you want to read further, you can find these ideas in the Tasfird [assumed spelling] and Eshapudi [assumed spelling] and Albezawi [assumed spelling].  So otherwise, the text is really very similar to the kinds of literature that are produced by the Tariqah, such as "Taquiet el Iman" [assumed spelling].  It's written for society at large, and it's written in accessible language.  And the Emir informs the reader that he did this intentionally.  "For the honor of the strong Mohammed religion, I have decided to present in some plain words, in simple, fluent Persian, the beliefs and opinions held by these unfortunate people."  And so, he was essentially combating Tariqah propaganda with the same -- with a similar structure, if you will, fighting fire with fire.  Now, interestingly, after these polemics, the Emir decides to produce more propaganda, not to go after the Tariqah -- he actually never mentions them ever again in the remaining publications.  Who he does go after is Afghanistan's own Ulama, and I suggest that, although both of these texts went after the Tariqah viciously, the Emir learned from the Tariqah just how effective print propaganda could be in changing the minds of society, and challenging recalcitrant Ulama.  The Tariqah had really shaken the authority of the traditional Ulama in India.  They had drawn tens of thousands of followers, including seminary students, away from imminent Ulama.  Some prominent scholars even became members.  As a result, some member -- some major mosques were reoriented towards Tariqah doctrine.  The Tariqah also inspired the non-militant Deobandi and Ahl al-Hadith movements, which today are major schools of thought in India, throughout South Asia, and including Afghanistan as well.  Now, why was the Emir interested in challenging the Ulama?  Historically, the Ulama in Afghanistan were central to the legitimacy of the Shahs and Emirs, also instrumental in conscripting volunteers to support them in civil wars, or foreign invasions.  Now, the Emir really needed their help, because he was trying to centralize the government, primarily through a central, modern army.  And the problem was that a lot of Ulama were financially independent of the Emir.  They really didn't need his support, and in turn, they really didn't have any need to give him support for this project.  They had other sources of patronage.  Tribal chieftains, local rulers, even the Emir's brothers, who were rival claimants to the throne.  And these reforms threatened to disenfranchise the Ulama's patrons of their traditional military authority and revenue.  Historically, these chieftains and rulers provided military levies to the Shahs and Emirs in exchange for revenue and autonomy, but the Emir was looking to circumvent them and reduce them to pensionaries.  And so the Ulama, almost like representatives, articulated opposition to the Emir's reforms, but rather than cry disenfranchisement, they made a religious argument that the Emir's reforms were actually innovations, [foreign language], with no precedent in Islam.  Therefore, the Emir was in need of a way to respond to that argument, and after the Wahabi debates, he begins printing materials that targeted that opposition.
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So we look at some of the latter forms of propaganda, and this is the cover from an issue of "Shamsa Nihar," "The Morning Sun."  "Shamsa Nihar" was Afghanistan's first newspaper, but it was more -- really like a gazette.  The earliest issue we have in existence is from November 6, 1873.  That's number five.  This here is number seven, which is housed here at the Library of Congress.  And this newspaper only has a run of about three years.  And my theory is that it was founded on the Emir's intelligence network.  The newspaper talks about, for example, having foreign correspondents, but these correspondents were actually in the same locations the Emir would send envoys and diplomats to.  And so I feel like these were -- these were likely the same people that were sending the reports back to the Emir on the ongoing [foreign language], and then once the Emir was done looking at these reports, he would then forward them to the office of "Shamsa Nihar."  Of course, edited for any sensitive information.  Now, when it came to news around the world, the Emir didn't have agents beyond the neighboring countries of Afghanistan, but what he relied on were foreign newspapers, especially British Indian newspapers.  And I've provided here a table of some of the newspapers that were used.  There were many more that were cited in "Shamsa Nihar."  But you can see that these newspapers come from many different parts of India, Qureshi, Lehore, Bombay, Calcutta.  You get a pretty good spread there.  In different languages, Persian, English, and Urdu, and also there were a few newspapers that have come from London itself, including "The Illustrated London News."  And "Shamsa Nihar" had a staff to translate these materials.  There were a few people there that were educated in English.  They had mostly been brought over from British India to work specifically in this respect.  And so, although these -- although "Shamsa Nihar" would reprint these stories -- and they were clearly not original stories in "Shamsa Nihar" -- the selection of them is quite interesting.  There was news from all over the world.  For example, they would talk about some of the wars that were going on in Europe, such as the Carlist wars in Spain.  They would also talk a lot about imperialism going on in the rest of the world -- Dutch Imperialism in East Asia, British Imperialism in West Africa.  And so it really pushed the idea that imperialism was a problem throughout the world, and that Afghanistan likewise was under a threat, both by the Russians and eventually by the British as well.  There were also articles on science, and articles for general knowledge.  There's an article about the Pacific Ocean, just explaining what the Pacific Ocean is, how big it is, what are some of its features.  But most importantly, there were a number of think pieces in "Shamsa Nihar," and these were reflections on the news items, or they were printed speeches of the Emir, or his Chief Secretary Kazi Abdul Khadr Khan [assumed spelling].  Or they might've been -- even been original articles.  But all of them had the common theme of enjoining the Emir's subjects to take the example of other countries, and pursue knowledge, and show dedication and loyalty to the Emir.  And many of these think pieces also contained criticism of the country's Ulama, and responding to the opposition of the country's Ulama.  There was even a book published in 1875 specifically for this task, this book being called [foreign language], "Gift to the Ulama."  And you can see it's in pretty rough condition.  These lithographs have been through wars, going back to the Second Anglo-Afghan War, and up to the present war today in Afghanistan.  So I know they look rough, but just try to understand that they've seen a lot of destruction.  And this work -- it opposes the Ulama in a similar way to how the Tariqah opposed the Ulama of India.  And my dissertation will look at the ways both "Shamsa Nihar" and [foreign language] used the discursive methods of Tariqah literature.  But for now, I just want to discuss -- for the time remaining, I wanted to discuss the staff that was involved in the production of these lithographs.  And we don't have a lot of info about them.  The British weren't very interested in the press in Afghanistan, at least not until they started producing materials talking about jihad.  Once they started producing materials about jihad, then they started paying a little closer attention.  But we don't really have much knowledge about the staff that actually operated the press, and was responsible for creating these materials.  All we know is what we can gather from these materials themselves.  And it's -- very interesting is that we see a very clear Shia and Iranian element in the production of these lithographs.  For example, the two works against the Wahabis, "Hijat a Kawia" [assumed spelling] and "Shahab es Alqib" [assumed spelling], were produced by a man named Mirza Mohammed Saldit ab Izi [assumed spelling].  Now, that he was from Tabriz is not a surprise, because Tabriz was the first site of printing in Iran, both for typography and lithography.  And Tabrizis would go to other parts of the Islamic world, establish presses and newspapers.  The newspaper "Akhtar" in Istanbul, for example, was founded by a Tabrizi.  And there was a Tabrizi diaspora throughout the Ottoman Empire, also in parts of India.  So the fact that Mirza Mohammed Saldit [assumed spelling] was from Tabriz, and probably helped found the printing press in Afghanistan and operate it, shouldn't be that surprising.  There was another Iranian associated with the production of this work, "Tu Fatul Ulama" [assumed spelling], Mirza Baizahan Shirazi [assumed spelling], and Shiraz also had printing established there long before Afghanistan.  So it probably appears that the Emir sought out people that could help run the press.  Since Afghanistan had not had a press before his reign, there was no one there really adequately trained to operate it, and so he needed to import labor that was familiar with that.  With "Shamsa Nihar," interestingly, though, the name that is associated with it as the director and editor is Mirza abd el Ali [assumed spelling], and he does not have a nispa [assumed spelling].  He is not identified with a city in Iran.  So my guess is that he was Kizilbash, of the Kizilbashia, Kizilbash community in Afghanistan who had a long history in that area, since of the time of Nader Shah Afsharid, as mercenaries, and then later as mirzas, secretaries and clerks.  And he was put in charge specifically of "Shamsa Nihar," and its content, and editing it.  I'm not sure if he was actually involved in the process of producing "Shamsa Nihar," but it's possible that he learned it from Mirza Mohammed Sald et Tarbrizi [assumed spelling] or Mirza Baizah Han Sher Azi [assumed spelling].  Now, it's interesting how this Shia individuals are helping the production of works that are challenging the Tariqahalan Ulama.  And it appears that their religious beliefs might have risked discrediting the authority of the materials produced.  And what was interesting as I was going through them, I noticed that, in the kalathan [phonetic] of Shihab es Alhib [assumed spelling], the one authored by Emir Sher Ali Khan, you read [foreign language], "by the effort of Mirza Mohammad Sal et Tabrizi [assumed spelling]."  However, in the kalathan [assumed spelling] for "Hijat a Kawia" [assumed spelling], we see [foreign language].  The Tabrizi was left out, interestingly.  And the author of "Hijat a Kawia" [assumed spelling] was an established Alim in Afghanistan, a traditional Alim, Maulana Abdur Rahaman Khan.  His father had actually written heresiographies against the Shias of Iran during the Kadjar Sarazai [assumed spelling] over Heerat in the early 19th century.  And so, it seems that he actually requested that the Tabrizi be left out, because it would be a dead giveaway that a Shia was involved in the production of this work.  And that would highly discredit its authority, almost.  However, the Emir left it in, and it kind of shows you the difference in mentalities between the Emir and a traditional Alim in Afghanistan.  
>> Mary-Jane Deeb: And the styling.
>> Elham Bakhtary: And the style, yeah.  
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[ Inaudible Speaker ] 
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Very different, yeah.  Absolutely.  Yeah.  [Foreign language]  Absolutely.  Absolutely.  So I hope this gave you some understanding of the origins of print in Afghanistan, and I look forward to any questions you might have.
>> Hirad Dinavari: I have [inaudible] question.  A lot of what you were examining, these [inaudible] prints, binding, things of that sort, and I know that you didn't have enough time to focus on that.  But just to give an overview, what did you find from looking at all these Afghan and other regional lithographs?  
>> Mary-Jane Deeb: Could you repeat the question for the [inaudible]?
>> Elham Bakhtary: Okay.  Okay.  So Hirad is referencing my research that I did this past year, working with the Preservation Research Testing Division of the Library of Congress, and we were trying to establish the provenance of the printing press itself, and of the papers used.  And originally, I was intrigued by this topic because of these Iranian staff members of the printing press, because Iran really learned the printing press from Russia.  People were -- had been sent there to learn the printing press.  They'd imported the printing press from Russia, and they also would import materials from Russia.  So I was curious if -- where were the materials coming from?  Were they coming more from British India?  Were they coming from Russia?  Possibly Iran as well, because Iran started producing its own paper in this time period as well.
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What we discovered is that more or less, the materials did come from British India, and we had a chance to look at a number of watermarks that were in some of these, especially "Hijat a Kawia" [assumed spelling] and "Shamsa Nihar."  They had wonderful watermarks, and all of them came from mills in London.  And we believe that this paper had been sent to British India, and then purchased from British India.  And this is a good indication that the printing press itself also came from British India.  It was definitely transported to Afghanistan through British India, and it was prob -- it was likely created in British India as well.
>> Thank you very much for a very good speech, and a very [inaudible] subject.
>> Elham Bakhtary: Right, right.
>> Full of questions.  But what about Pashtu publications?  Were there Pashtu publications?  Were the publications sold?  How were they distributed?  In other instances, [inaudible] primarily in the early days, where [inaudible] focus of printing was a modernizing impulse.  This doesn't seem to be necessarily the case here.  So could you discuss Pashtu versus Persian, and how the materials were distributed and [inaudible]?
>> Elham Bakhtary: Okay.  So in regards to Pashtu, yes, in this period of time, the first materials of Pashtu are being printed as well.  But these were mostly military manuals that were translated from English.  The Emir wanted Pashtu to be the official language of the military.  Which is ironic, because all the other publications are in Persian.  So this -- you can kind of see some of the contradictions that are already starting to emerge in the ideology of the Afghan state.  And so you have one -- you have Persian as sort of the language of culture, the language of politics and diplomacy, but on the other hand, you're trying to make Pashtu the language of the military.  And there are actually exams being given in Pashtu as well, so -- and a lot of the generals and officers in the military were actually Kizilbash who were not really Pashtu speakers.  And so you can kind of imagine what kind of tensions these might have created.  Unfortunately, we don't have any of these manuals, these military manuals that are in Pashtu.  But under Emir Abdur Rahman Khan, similar manuals were produced, and those are available.  The British Library has some of those, and I had a chance to look at some of them.  But otherwise, they're really just straight translations of the British Indian manuals.  And as far as --
>> Sale, sale.
>> Elham Bakhtary: The sales of these materials, I would say that the polemics were distributed throughout Afghanistan to provincial rulers, to be read in public, either in the bazaars or in the masjids, in the mosques.  As for "Shamsa Nihar," it was available for purchase.  Actually, info about how to subscribe was in every issue.  Based on what I understand about subsequent newspapers in Afghanistan, and other newspapers in the region, such as Iran, usually these newspapers would be forced upon people in the government.  And they would be automatically docked from their pay.  So there was that, but also, in "Shamsa Nihar," it does mention that you could -- anyone could kind of go to a seller of hundis in Kabul, a [foreign language], and they could purchase a hundi, and they would get a subscription of "Shamsa Nihar" every week, or every month.  Actually, it was never printed regularly, but the idea was that it was going to be printed every week, at least initially.  And that they could sign up, and they could get it.  It's not clear if that shop that gave the hundis also had individual issues.  It does list the price of an individual issue, but we don't really have much indication as to whether this was something that would be sold on the streets, like a modern newspaper.  There was also the possibility of purchasing the newspaper from British India.  So it gives you instructions on how to purchase it if you're in Peshawar, but it's not really clear how far it was distributed into India.  You could purchase it from Peshawar, but we don't really have any info -- idea of how far or widely it was distributed.  So we could -- we would limit the readership to the area of Afghanistan and the immediate area in British India.
>> One other question, please.  The Ulama had no printing way of rebutting this, or participating in print in a debate with the Emir?
>> Elham Bakhtary: Not yet.  No, not yet.  Not the ones in Afghanistan.  The Tariqah had the capability, and it's interesting that they don't respond to these polemics, at least not that I know of.  And I think that part of the reason is because he was the lone independent Islamic ruler in the area.  This would open up another can of worms, if they tried to challenge him openly about his ideas, because he really is the authority on what is orthodoxy.  But they do not challenge him, and it's not until much later that you have private presses in Afghanistan, well into the 20th century.  
>> Hiram Dinavari: One more thing that came up in the work that you were doing is, it was curious that a lot of classics of Persian literature, [inaudible], et cetera, were -- we tend to find most of them are from India, really, and then partially Iran and Central Asia.  With the Afghan material, it seemed that there was an attempt to make it unique -- the content and subject uniquely Afghan.  Could you say a few words, as far as what your theory is, why these classics which were obviously used in Afghanistan and not in Afghanistan were not being produced [inaudible]?
>> Elham Bakhtary: Right, yeah.  So this is going to be a big part of my dissertation research, and most of those ideas are still in beta mode.  But I will speak to that a little bit.  So in [inaudible] Iran, for example, you do have reproductions of these epic works, of poets like Hafez-e Shirazi, of "The Shahnameh" being produced.  You don't have that in Afghanistan.  And my theory is that the Emir Sher Ali Khan, when he talks about the history of Afghanistan, he characterizes it as a terra nullius of savagery, that Afghanistan was basically an unknown land until he had come to power.  Afghans were ignorant.  Afghans lived in darkness, and I believe that he did not want to print these great works because it would remind people of Horsani [assumed spelling] civilization.  It would remind people of a time that, indeed, there was civilization in Afghanistan, and it was certainly better than anything the Emir was building.  The Emir wanted to portray the past as simply one of darkness, because it would sharpen the contrast of his own rule.  And I believe that, unlike the Punjabs were trying to associate their rule with earlier Iranian dynasties like the Saffarids, Emir Sher Ali Khan did not want any association with any previous rulers, both in Afghanistan and Islam.  Like the Tariqah, he actually really tries to associate his rule most closely with the Salaf, with the Prophet Mohammad and the Rashidun Caliphate.  That's really the history that he tries to attach his rule, and that's how -- and that's one of the connections I'm going to be trying to draw between the Tariqah and Emir Sher Ali Khan.  Sure.
>> Do we have a full list of the publications that came out of Sher Ali Khan's press?
>> Elham Bakhtary: So there's a lot of speculation about certain works that were produced, but have been destroyed.  So there are lists -- I have a list of works that do exist.  Robert McChesney at NYU has compiled a list of works that were produced from the time of Emir Sher Ali Khan.  But there are also other works that we don't have any extant copies of them, but people speculate -- especially Afghan scholars speculate them to have been produced.  And I have some information on that material, if you're interested, and I could share it with you.
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[ Inaudible ]
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>> Mary-Jane Deeb: With respect to using [inaudible] as the [inaudible] for propaganda, was he also pushing for reform, organization, changes in the society, and if so, what were the changes that he was trying to [inaudible] from the richest issue?  What social, economic, cultural changes was he pushing for?
>> Elham Bakhtary: Emir Sher Ali Khan is trying to really just create a central authority in Afghanistan.  So the Afghan kingdom was really founded on a series of partnerships with other chieftains in the Durrani tribe.  And so there was real no -- there was not really any central kind of leadership throughout the country.  There was much autonomy divided between the different tribes, and also between the different brothers, even, in the royal family.  And he's trying to centralize the entire country, and he's trying to do this primarily through an army.  And in "Shamsa Nihar," he tries to dress this up as creating civilization, as educating people.  But when you really look at it, the civilization that he's talking about, the education that he's talking about, the production in arts and crafts, it all has to do with the military.  
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When he talks about education, for example, and creating scholars out of Afghans, he's just talking about sending them to these military schools that he's established, and having them learn military formations, and drills along the British-Indian model.  When he talks about arts and crafts, right, bringing manufacturing, he's just talking about the factories that he's established to produce weapons.  Okay?  So even though he's trying to dress it up as civilization, what he's really just talking about is this militaries that he's trying to create, to consolidate his authority over the entirety of Afghanistan.
>> Hiram Dinavari: Okay.  Thank you, everyone, for coming.  Thank you, Elham, for a wonderful presentation.  And the work continues.  As we digitize, the material becomes available online on various platforms, and hopefully a library.  Soon, people from around the world can chime and use this material.  And Elham, we look forward to having you come and work more with our Afghan materials that are now being processed as we speak.  Thank you very much.
>> Elham Bakhtary: Thank you, everybody.
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[ Applause ]
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>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.  Visit us at loc.gov.
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