The “Rediscovering Afghanistan” Initiative

Volume One
Number Two
September 1,2005

At a reception for President Hamid Karzai, held at the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian
Institution in Washington on May 23, 2005, the chairman of the NEH, Bruce Cole,announced a new NEH initiative entitled “Rediscovering Afghanistan.” In his words,“The Rediscovering Afghanistan Initiat'ive will encourage scholars, museums,

AN OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER • NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Afghanistan’s Cultural Officials Visit the ADL
During August of last year, five Afghan cultural officials visited theUS under the auspices of the State Department. The purpose of thevisit was to study cultural heritage preservation, management, andadministration. Three of the five were directors of culture andinformation in their provinces—Abdul Majid Babay from Kandahar,Walishah Bahra from Herat, and Abdullah Roeen from Mazar-iSharif. The other two visitors were the Deputy Director of the National Museum, Mohammad Yahya Mohebzada, and the Director ofthe National Archives, Anwar Zalmaiyar. Having heard in advance oftheir trip, ADL asked the State Department to include the Digital
Library in their itinerary. Since the group was coming to New York
City to visit the Statue of Liberty and the New York Public Library,
the State Department agreed they could spend the morning of August
27th with us. The Dean of the Library, Dr. Carol Mandel, hosted themeeting and the entire digital team was assembled to give apresentation of the ADL to the group. Afterwards, the dean, theDirector of Collections and Research Services, Dr. Michael Stoller,
and Robert McChesney, the Project Consultant, met with the Directorof the National Archives to discuss possible collaboration and cooperation. While talks were going on with Mr. Zalmaiyar, (con’t p. 3)

NEH Awards the ADL a Major Preservationand Access Grant
In March 2005, the National Endowment for the Humanities
announced that New York University was awarded a two-year grantof $298,115 to further the work of the Afghanistan Digital Library.
The grant, coming from the Division of Preservation and Access ofthe NEH, will allow for creating the fully functional website thathas been designed (including translations, author biographies andPDFs of the digitized works) as well as providing part-time support
for the Middle East cataloguer, since many of the works have noexisting catalog records, and the conservator for stabilizing
materials before digitizing.

Cooperation Between the ADL and the Afghan
Ministry of Information, Culture,and Tourism
As a result of the visit of the Afghan cultural officials in August andthe talks with the Director of the National Archives, Anwar
Zalmaiyar (see related story), on January 20, 2005 Dr. Sayed
Makhdoom Raheen, Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism
came to New York from Kabul to visit the Afghanistan Digital
Library and to discuss cooperation between the ministry and theADL. He and the Dean of the Library, Dr. Carol Mandel, signed a“Memorandum of Understanding” at the conclusion of the talks.
(con’t. p. 3.)

More on the ADL and NEH

From the left; Mohammad Yahya Mohebzada, Anwar Zalmaiyar,Walishah Bahra, Abdullah Roeen, Robert McChesney, and Abdul
Majid Babay-August 27, 2004.

The “Rediscovering Afghanistan” Initiative
At a reception for President Hamid Karzai, held at the Freer Galleryof the Smithsonian Institution in Washington on May 23, 2005, thechairman of the NEH, Bruce Cole, announced a new NEH initiative
entitled “Rediscovering Afghanistan.” In his words, “The‘Rediscovering Afghanistan’ Initiative will encourage scholars,museums, filmmakers, and archivists to promote research,education, and public programs about Afghanistan's history andculture. And it will encourage American institutions to assist their
Afghan peers in efforts to preserve and document culturalresources. My hope is that this collaborative effort will educate
more Americans about the beauty and power of Afghanistan's
precious heritage.” (con’t p. 3)

Survey of the National Archives and National Library Turns Up
Important New Material for the ADL
In mid-June of this year, Dr. Amin Tarzi, an ADL board member andregional analyst on Afghanistan for RFE/RL, traveled to Kabul on
behalf of the ADL. His trip was a follow-up to the Memorandum ofUnderstanding between NYU Libraries and the Ministry of Culture,
Information, and Tourism signed in January (see related story in thisissue). Over a ten-day period, Dr. Tarzi carried out a preliminary
survey of the holdings of the National Archives and the National
Library as they relate to the Afghanistan Digital Library. In addition,
thanks to the cooperation of the rector of Kabul University, Dr. Ashraf
Ghani Ahmadzai, Dr. Tarzi was also able to check the University’slibrary holdings as well. As it turned out, although each institution has
some material relevant to the ADL, the National Library is the main
repository. Dr. Tarzi discovered a number of items which we had not
yet identified as publications of the period including an enormous
collection (more than 200 volumes) in the National Archives ofadministrative manuals sent during Amir Amanallah’s time (19191929) to the provinces. Among the significant holdings of theNational Library are some of the very earliest works published inAfghanistan, such as Muhammad Ibrahim “Ajitan”’s Kitâb qawâ’id-irisâlah (n.d.). The National Library has the book and the Archives has
the manuscript with painted illustrations (see illustration on page 4 ofthis issue).
Most significantly, this preliminary survey made clear theproblems faced by the Archives and the National Library which affecttheir ability to protect and preserve these artifacts of Afghanistan’scultural heritage. The Archives, for example, has two subterraneanvaults, one for printed materials and the other for manuscript books.
Both are served by an air-handling system that has not worked since
the Soviet period. The vents open on a busy road, and pollutants,
particularly dust and diesel soot, have been pouring through thoseducts into the vaults. As things now stand, there is very little provision
for conservation at either institution. The National Archives employsa full-time bookbinder but lacks staff, equipment, and materials forpaper conservation. Dr. Tarzi’s report stressed the high priority ofboth institutions for facilities to conserve and protect books anddocuments. In response to this need, ADL’s latest application for
funding to NEH includes funds to set up a conservation laboratory for
the National Archives and the National Library, and to train staff andprovide equipment and materials for conservation and for digitizing
and cataloguing.

Dr. Amin Tarzi and Anwar Zalmaiyar, Director of theArchives, June 2005

National Archives, entrance (above); rear view (below)

National Archives, the manuscript vault

NEH and ADL (con’t)

Afghan Cultural officials (con’t)

In reviewing what the NEH has done to promote culturalpreservation in Afghanistan, the chairman gave prominent
mention to the ADL. “Last year, NEH awarded $25.5 million
for research, education and public programs of international
topics, including the preservation and documentation of theart and artifacts of Afghanistan. For example, a grant of$298,000 was awarded to New York University to create adigital library of Afghan works from 1871-1930.”
The day after the announcement, Robert McChesney,
Project Consultant to the ADL, met with the Deputy Chairmanof the NEH, Lynne Munson, and was told that Afghanistan
projects would be given priority in reviewing applications tothe various divisions of the NEH but unfortunately no newfunds were planned at that point for the initiative, unlike thecase of the Iraq initiative of 2003.

the other members of the delegation visited the Digital Studiowhere the Afghanistan Digital library is being created. They
were also taken to the Rare Books Collection which includes
some unique Afghanica. As a token of the visit, each memberof the group was given a copy of Robert McChesney’s book
Kabul under Siege: Fayz Muhammad’s Account of the 1929
Uprising and promised a CD-ROM of eight of the books that
had been digitized to that point. These CD-ROMs weredelivered by Deputy Minister of Culture, Information, andTourism, Omar Sultan, when he left the States to take up hispost in February.

ADL and the Ministry of Information,Culture and Tourism (con’t)
NYU made a commitment to offer 4-6 weeks of training on-site
at NYU in materials conservation, digitizing, and digital librarydevelopment for one or two staff members of the National
Archives each year for up to four years as well to provide thenecessary equipment for managing digital archives. In turn, theMinistry of Information, Culture and Tourism committed itself
to permitting NYU to examine the material housed in theNational Archives and published between 1871 and 1930 for
the purpose of identifying material to include in the ADL. The
Ministry also promised to permit the ADL to digitize any
material to which it otherwise has no access. Digitizing would
include stabilization and conservation of materials according to
the standards established for the handling of all ADL materials.
In addition, both parties agreed in the memorandum to explore
the possibility of establishing provincial branches of theNational Archives to identify and collect related materials.

Want to Participate in the ADL?
The Afghanistan Digital Library now has commitments fromowners for 60-65% of the titles published between 1879 and1931. But there still remains that 35-40% of works we know
were published but for which no original copies have yet been
located. In addition, there are probably items not on thebibliography because the project team has not found any
reference to them. If you have an item that you think would beappropriate for the ADL, that is anything printed inAfghanistan between 1871 and 1930 (between 1288 and 1349
on the Hijri/Qamari calendar and up to 1309 on theHijri/Shamsi calendar) please let us know! We are particularlyinterested in Pashto materials. There is good reason to believethat many of the published works were simultaneously ornearly simultaneously printed in both Persian (Dari) andPashto. Email the Project Consultant, Robert D. McChesney, atrobert.mcchesney@nyu.edu or call (212-998-8902).

Afghan Visitors with the Dean of the NYU Libraries, Dr. CarolMandel, and the Digital Library team, August 27, 2004

Some Important Recent Additionsto the ADL and Now Online
Since the last newsletter a year ago, (we did deliberatelylabel it “occasional!”) much has been added to the website
http://afghanistandl.nyu.edu. One of the most significant
works from the standpoint of Afghan history is Fayz
Muhammad Katib’s Sirâj al-tawârîkh, a massive
documentary history which is particularly important for thereign of ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan (1880–1901). The author,
nicknamed “Kâtib” (the Writer or Secretary) was a Hazarah
from a village outside Ghazni. Fayz Muhammad was court
historian to Amir Habib Allah Khan (1901–1919). The work
was never completely published. Two quarto volumes(covering Afghanistan’s history from 1747 until 1880) wereissued in one binding of 377 pages. Then, for reasons not at
all clear, the presses were stopped abruptly in mid-sentenceon page 1240 of volume three and nothing further waspublished. It is estimated that 200 of the incomplete volumes
were rescued by concerned individuals. Thanks to a private
lender all three of those original volumes are now on line.
Another significant publishing achievement, thegazetteer of the provinces of Badakhshan and Qataghan(Râhnumâ-yi Qataghan wa Badakhshân with its many highly
detailed and hand-colored fold-out maps has also been
digitized and uploaded to the web. In addition, the team has
begun to digitize and upload the legislative decrees of Aman
Allah Khan (r. 1919–1929), known generally as his nizâmnâmahs. Of the more than 200 that have been identified,eighty-seven have now been digitized and eighteen of thoseare now on the web.

The Afghanistan Digital Library http://afghanistandl.nyu.edu

Illustrations from manuscript of the Pashto version of Kitâb-i qawâ‘id-i risâlah(An army training manual circa 1871)

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