Read Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan Online
Authors: William Dalrymple
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| akali | A strict and militant follower of Sikhism. In this period the term was used especially of nihangs, an armed Sikh military order who spearheaded attacks on the enemies of the Sikh religion. The word derives from Akal, the Eternal One or Supreme Being of the Sikhs. |
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| alam | A battle standard, also used by Shias as the focus for their Muharram venerations. Usually tear-shaped or fashioned into the shape of a hand, they are highly ornate and beautiful objects, and the best are among the great masterpieces of Islamic metalwork. |
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| amir | Commander, a shortened version of Amir al-Muminin, the Commander of the Faithful. |
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| beg | A chief or ruler. |
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| boosa | Hay or fodder. |
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| chela | A disciple or pupil. |
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| dak | Post, letters (sometimes spelt ‘dawke’ in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). |
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| Dasht | Literally ‘meadow’. The area that stretches from Spin Boldak at the foot of the mountains south of Kandahar. |
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| dharamasala | A pilgrims’ resthouse. |
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| diwan | Government office. |
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| dhoolie | A covered litter. |
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| durbar | A royal court. |
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| fakir | Literally ‘poor’. A Sufi holy man, dervish or wandering Muslim ascetic. |
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| fatwa | A legal ruling. |
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| firangi | A foreigner. |
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| ghazal | Urdu or Persian love lyric. |
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| ghazi | A holy warrior, someone who wages the jihad. |
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| Gholam Khana | The royal bodyguard of the Sadozais. |
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| hamam | A Turkish-style steam bath. |
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| harkara | Literally ‘All-doer’. A runner, messenger, newswriter or even spy. In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources the word is sometimes spelt ‘hircarrah’. |
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| haveli | A courtyard house or traditional mansion. |
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| havildar | A sepoy non-commissioned officer corresponding to a sergeant. |
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| iftar | The evening meal to break the Ramazan fast. |
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| izzat | Honour. |
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| jezail | A long-barrelled matchlock musket, heavy, slow and clumsy to load but deadly accurate at long distances in the hands of a practised handler. |
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| jezailchi | An Afghan infantryman armed with a long-barrelled jezail. |
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| jihad | Holy war. |
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| jihadi | A holy warrior. |
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| jirga | A tribal assembly; the council in which Pashtun elders settle disputes in accordance with the pashtunwali, the Pashtun code of laws and ethics. |
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| juwan | A young man. |
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| kafila | A caravan. |
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| kafilabashi | A caravan leader. |
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| kajawah | A wicker basket slung from the side of a camel. |
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| Khalsa | Literally ‘the pure’ or ‘the free’. In this period it was used about Ranjit Singh’s Sikh army, but it more properly refers to the whole Sikh nation. |
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| khan | The chief of a Pashtun tribe. |
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| khel | A Pashtun term for lineage. |
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| khutba | The sermon delivered at Friday prayers. |
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| kotwal | A chief of police. |
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| kumbukht | A rascal; a useless, hopeless or unlucky person. |
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| lakh | A hundred thousand. |
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| malang | A wandering fakir, dervish or qalandar. |
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| malik | A village headman or petty chief. |
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| masjid | A mosque. |
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| mooli | A radish. |
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| munshi | An Indian writer, private secretary or language teacher. |
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| naib | A deputy. |
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| namak haram | Literally ‘bad to your salt’ – someone who is ungrateful or disloyal. |
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| Nauroz | The Persian New Year festival, celebrated on 20 March. |
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| palkee | A palanquin or box litter for travelling in. |
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| Pashtu | The language of the Pashtun people of the North West Frontier of Pakistan and southern Afghanistan. |
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| pir | A Sufi master or holy man. |
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| pirzada | An official at a Sufi shrine, often a descendant of the founding saint. |
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| pishkhidmat | The personal servant of a sardar or king. |
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| pustin | An Afghan sheepskin coat (from ‘post’, Dari for skin). |
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| qalandar | A Sufi mendicant or holy fool. |
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| Qizilbash | Literally ‘redheads’, a name given to Safavid soldiers (and later traders), owing to the tall red cap worn under their turbans. These Shia colonists first came to Afghanistan from Persia with the armies of Nadir Shah and later acted as the royal guard of the Durranis. By the 1830s they formed their own distinct community with their own quarters, the Chindawol and Murad Khani, and their own leaders, and their loyalties had to be bought by any potential claimant to the throne. |
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| rahdari | The levy paid to the mountain tribes to keep the road safe and protect the armies and traders travelling along it. |
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| rundi | A dancing girl or prostitute. It has been suggested that this Hindi word could be the root of the English word ‘randy’. |
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| sangar | A shallow trench protected by a low mud wall, or breastworks, traditionally built by Afghan fighters to protect jezail snipers. |
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| sardar | A chief, commander or nobleman. Among the Sadozais, it was the military title held by the head of the Durrani clans and the title held by all members of the royal family. Among Sikhs the title was given to all followers of Khalsa, and the word survives in daily use in modern India as a respectful way to address any Sikh. |
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| sawar | A cavalryman. At this period also spelt ‘suwar’ or ‘sowar’. |
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| sepoy | An Indian soldier in the service of the East India Company. |
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| sayyed (f. sayyida) | A lineal descendant of the Prophet Mohammad. Sayyeds often have the title ‘Mir’. |
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| shahzada | A prince. |
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| shamiana | An Indian marquee, or the screen formed around the perimeter of a tented area. |
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| Shia | One of the two principal divisions of Islam, dating back to a split that occurred immediately after the death of the Prophet between those who recognised the authority of the Medinian Caliphs and those who followed the Prophet’s son-in-law Ali (Shi’at Ali means ‘the Party of Ali’ in Arabic). Though most Shi’ites live in Iran, there have always been a few in Afghanistan and India. |
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| shir maheh | An Afghan freshwater river fish not dissimilar in taste to trout. |
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| sipahee | The original Persian word for soldier, which was turned by British tongues into ‘sepoy’ and came to mean specifically an Indian soldier in the service of the East India Company. |
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| surwan | A camel driver. |
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| syce | A groom. |
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| talib | A religious student. |
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| takht | A seat or throne. |
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| thannah | A police post or police station presided over by a thanadar. |
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| toman | A Persian unit of currency. At the time of the First Afghan War five tomans were worth around £1. |
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| tykhana | A cool underground room or network of cool rooms. |
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| ‘ulema | In Arabic, this means ‘the ones possessing knowledge’, hence ‘the community of learned men’. In effect it means the Islamic clergy, the body of men with sufficient knowledge of the Quran, the Sunna and the Sharia to make decisions on matters of religion. The word ulema is an Arabic plural; the singular is alim, a learned man. |
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| vakil | Representative, headman or ambassador. In modern usage the word usually means lawyer. |
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| waqf | An inalienable religious endowment in Islamic law, usually a religious building or a plot of land reserved for Muslim religious or charitable purposes. |
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| wazir | A councillor of the state, a minister. |
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| Yaghistan | Pashtun notion of their territories as a ‘land of freedom and rebellion’. |
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| zenana | A harem, or women’s quarters. |
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| zikr | A trance or ecstasy in a Sufi ceremony. |