Volume One
Number One
July 1, 2004

AN OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER • NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Afghanistan Digital Library Now On Line!
On June 15, the permanent website of The Afghanistan Digitallibrary was launched at:

http://afghanistandl.nyu.edu

This is the beginning of what will be a permanent, easily accessible,
collection of the works published in Afghanistan between 1871, the dateof the first known publication, and 1930. The collection will provide to
the general public free and unfettered access to an intellectual legacy
that is virtually unknown and has suffered much during the last quartercentury of turmoil in the country. Afghanistan’s two major libraries, theKabul Public Library and the Kabul University Library, have endured
vandalism, book-burning and the collateral effects of years of war. Therewas severe damage to their collections by looting and vandalism andfrom the explosion of rockets and heavy weapons’ fire. In the case of thePublic Library, we know that at least some of the works from Kabul’spresses of the period 1871–1930 were in its collection. That information
is found in a three-part article on early publishing in Afghanistan writtenby Kazem Ahang in 1970 and published in the journal Aryana.
The books that will appear online came mostly but not exclusively
from the Government Press in Kabul or from one or two presses run bymembers of the royal family, the Shirkat-i Rafiq press, for example. Today these books are found only rarely in public repositories and researchlibraries and then in very small numbers. Most of the works that will
be digitized come from private collectors. The director of the project,
R. D. McChesney, a professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
at New York University, has compiled a bibliography now approaching
600 titles and is continually finding new items to (See “Digital LibraryOn Line,” p. 3).

Advisory Board Member Nancy Dupree
Profiled in The New York Times
In the May 8 edition of the The NewYork Times, the subject of “TheSaturday Profile” was Advisory Board Member, Nancy Hatch Dupree.
Calling her a “a chronicler of Afghan culture” the article provides an
encapsulated view of the adventure-filled and productive life she has
led since first arriving in Afghanistan in 1962. It concludes with anaccount of her plans for the construction in Kabul, (See “An AfghanChronicler,” p. 2)

Amir ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan’s Books
First to Be Digitized
The “Iron Amir,” ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan (r. 1880-1901), wasa firm believer in the power of the press, as long as it was in
his hands. He inherited some of the printing capability thatAmir Shayr ‘Ali Khan (r. 1863–6, 1867-73) first introduced
late in his reign and then upgraded state publishing in 1884
with a new lithograph press purchased in India.
The output of thepress was used,among other purposes, to train hisadministration,
to provide manuals for the armedforces, and to address the problem
of being a Muslim
nation sandwiched
between Christian
empires. But other royal interests
are reflected inthe publications
as well.
The ADL has digitized a number of his works, four of which(perhaps more by the time this newsletter reaches you) areavailable now on the Internet, works which seem particularly
germane to the condition of Afghanistan today. These are:Kalimat amır al-bilad fı targhıb ila al-jihad, a work advising
his countrymen on the need to be prepared to fight holy war
against the aggression of Christian imperial powers; Taqwımal-Dın, a work written by thirteen Islamic scholars and divided into three sections (maqalah)—1) on the virtues of jihad,2) on the necessity of having an amir and the obliga¬tion ofobedience to him, and 3) refutation of the doctrines of theWahhabis; (See “‘Abd al-Rahman Khan,” p. 3)

Want to Particpate in the ADL?
The Afghanistan Digital Library now has commitments fromowners for about 60-65% of the titles in the bibliography.
But there remains that 35-40% of titles we know were published but for which we do not have original copies offeredto the project. In addition, there must be items not on thebibliography because the project team has yet to find a reference to them. Any of you who have items that you thinkwould be appropriate for the ADL (anything published orprinted in Afghanistan between 1871 and 1930 or between
1288 and 1349 on the Hijri/Qamari calendar and up to 1309
on the Hijri/Shamsi calendar) please let us know! We areparticularly interested in Pashto materials published during
this time. There is some reason to believe that ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan, for example, published many works in both Dariand Pashto but the Pashto works have so far eluded us. We
need your help! The project director, R. D. McChesney, may
be reached at:
robert.mcchesney@nyu.edu
or by phone/fax at 212-998-8902/212-995-4689.
Copies of the ADL bibliography are available on request.
There is a slightly older version now available on line indownloadable format at jennifertnaylor.com/isis/ (click onbibliography [pdf]). Anyone who would like a hardcopy ofthe bibliography, please ask. At the moment, for technicalreasons, the bibliography is in transliterated Latin script. But
eventually we will have it in full Arabic script.

Want to Support the ADL?
This project is costly. The ADL team includes a conservator, cataloguer, digital specialist, and web programmer, as
well as the director. Currently, these are full-time employees
of New York University who devote a percentage of theirtime to the project. In addition, there are non-personnel costs
such as travel to collections, courier costs for transporting
the materials, and equipment. To digitize the large format
publications (the 5X5 foot map of ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan, forexample, or the law codes or farmans of Amir Habib AllahKhan), New York University Libraries must purchase newoverhead scanning equipment.
The NYU Libraries development staff is working to identify and solicit help from foundations with an interest in thekind of work we’re doing. But we are always looking forhelp. If you know of an individual, foundation, or a company
that might have a particular interest in supporting the development of the ADL, please
PAGE 2let us know.

Pages from Sar-rishtah-i Islamiyyah Rum,undated, ca. 1304–05/1887“An Afghan Chronicler” (cont’d)
next to the university, of a new center for Afghan research.
The new center will ultimately replace the library andcenter in Peshawar and house the 25,000-book collection
now in Pakistan.
The article can be retrieved through the NY Timeswebsite.

“Digital Library On Line” (cont’d)
add to the list. The bibliography is divided into three
sections—books, documents, and serials.
The documents section is limited to printed documents. These
include, for example, the great map/proclamation that ‘Abd
al-Rahman issued on October 29, 1898. (The map has been
recently analyzed with a translation in David Edwards’s Heroes of the Age.) This approximately five-foot-square document was sent out to all the amir’s governors to be posted ina public place for the edification of his subjects. New York
University Libraries has an original copy of this map which
will be digitized for the project. Other noteworthy items in
the “documents” bibliography are farmans of Amir Habib Allah Khan (r. 1901-1919) and the numerous laws issued by hissuccessor Amir Aman Allah Khan (r. 1919-1929). With some180 of these laws (nizâm-nâmahs) in hand for the project webelieve that once these are digitized they will form the mostcomplete collection of the reformist amir’s nizâm-nâmahs
available anywhere in the world.
The serials list includes newspapers like Shams al-nahâr, thefirst newspaper published in Afghanistan. (It should be noted,
though, that the project has no original copies of this extremely rare publication available for digitizing.) Other noteworthy
items is a nearly complete collection of Sirâj al-akhbâr missing only vol. 1, no.1 and a newspaper published in Mazar-iSharif in the early 1920s, Ittihâd-i Islam.
One hardly knows where to start with the list of books. Moreabout these as the digitization process moves forward. We will
be giving brief descriptions of these books (see article on page1) as they go on line.

“‘Abd al-Rahman Khan” (con’t)
Â’yinah-i Jahân-numâ selections from Wa‘iz-i Kashifi’ (d.
1504), Anwâr-i suhaylâ, which is in turn a reworking of theanimal fables that came into Islamic culture from India under the name Kalîla wa Dimna. The fact that this work wasdeemed important enough to publish by ‘Abd al-Rahman Khanis symptomatic of his near-obsession with the proper and justconduct of his officials. These animal fables are a kind of commentary on politics and a guide to more universal principles ofjustice. The fourth work that is online as this newsletter goes topress is Risâlah-i maw‘izah a work whose stated purpose is tocultivate the requisite virtues of citizenship in the subjects of
Afghanistan through a recounting, in twenty-four paragraphs(about 100 pages), of the accomplishments of Amir ‘Abd alRahman during the first thirteen years of his reign. A reader
would presumably acquire a better understanding of what it
meant to be a good Muslim and would learn of the need to be
grateful to the sovereign for setting the example.

The Genesis of the Afghanistan
Digital Library (as recollected)
Before my memory manages to completely distort the beginnings of the ADL, let me dredge it now for its current takeon the subject. In the spring of 2002, a conference on Afghanistan was held at the College of New Jersey. One of thespeakers, now a board member of the ADL, Dr. Amin Tarzi,
happened to mention a project to create a digital library for
Afghanistan led by Houchang Chehabi at Boston University.
I was then editor of the journal Iranian Studies and Houchang
was a member of the editorial board so I called him and asked
what his plans were. He said nothing had taken much shapeat that point but the idea was a kind of portal to provide web
links to other websites with information on Afghanistan. The
idea I had begun to form was based on my more traditional
conception of a library, that is, a collection of actual books.
In light of the interest then in Afghan reconstruction, especially cultural reconstruction, it seemed to me that individuals (and I knew of several, including myself) with collections of books purchased in Afghanistan and from Afghanpresses might be willing to lend them for the creation of adigital library. Shortly before the conference in New Jersey,
or shortly after, again memory is not very reliable here, Dr.
Carol Mandel, Dean of the New York University Libraries,
made a presentation to a group of chairpersons of the Facultyof Arts and Science at NYU about a new digital studio set up
in Bobst Library and she asked her audience to suggest projects for it. This serendipity led me to make a proposal to her
about establishing a library of early Afghan books to which
her response was immediate and enthusiastic. I then began
the work of creating a bibliography of all works printed in
Afghanistan from the dawn of the printing press there. I also
started soliciting private collectors as potential sources forthe works that needed to be included. In many ways the birthof the ADL was a genuinely “auspicious conjunction” of anidea with the emergence of the kind of technology neededto carry it out. More on the technology involved in futureissues. (R. D. McChesney)
International Advisory Board
Dr. Ludwig Adamec, University of Arizona, emeritus
Nancy Hatch Dupree, ARIC, Peshawar and Kabul
Dr. Ravan Farhadi, Ambassador, Mission of Afghanistan to the UN
Dr. M. Jamil Hanifi, Michigan State University
Dr. M. Hasan Kakar, Kabul University, emeritus
Dr. May Schinasi, Nice, France
Richard Tapper, SOAS, University of London
Dr. Amin Tarzi, RFE/RL, Prague
Project TeamR. D. McChesney, Project Advisor
Jerome McDonough, Digital Library Team Leader
Melitte Buchman, Digital Conversion Specialist
Erika Lindensmith, ConservatorPeter Magierski, Middle East Librarian and Cataloguer
Michael Stoller, Director, Collections and Research Services

PAGE 3

Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
New York University
50 Washington Square SouthNew York, NY 10012