Mahommed Ayub Khan. Born 1856. Refugee, first in Persia and then in India, since 1881.
Wazir Mahommed. Akbar Kahn.
Sirdar Ghula Haidar.
The woman now filling the position of chief queen is the mother of Aman Ullah. She has recently given birth to a daughter. At a more normal season she strikes an interesting contrast with the daughter of Yusef Khan. She is a woman of ungovernable passions, wilful, domineering, and capricious—an odd mixture of the termagant and the shrew. She has killed with her own hands three of her slaves who had become enceinte through their intercourse with the Amir, and she chastises personally her erring handmaidens, purposely disfiguring any whose physical attractiveness may appeal to their master. Her influence over the Amir, however, is limited. She sings and dances, but she lacks the subtle craft of the Bibi Halima and the gentle dignity of the Hindustani queen. The four wives of the Amir occupy positions which are graduated to a recognised scale. The first wife, the mother of Aman Ullah, draws an allowance of one lakh of rupees annually; the second wife, Ulia Jancah, the Hindustani queen, 80,000 rupees; the third wife, the daughter of Ibrahim, 20,000 rupees; and the fourth wife, mother of Inayat Ullah, 14,000 rupees a year. The first queen resides in the harem serai of the Shah Ara palace where the two principal concubines, the mothers of Hayat-Ullah Khan[38] and Kabir Jan[39] and respectively former Badakshi and Tokhi slave-girls, are housed. The inmates of the harem are busy people, occupying themselves in knitting, embroidery and other feminine pursuits. The chief wife has a sewing machine and with it makes clothes for her children. The Hindustani Queen, who is of royal birth, lives in great style. She is an ambitious woman and wears English dresses although it should be said that they are costumes in the fashion of thirty years ago. Each of the Amir’s married wives, as distinct from the concubines, has a separate house, where she lives with her children.
HIS HIGHNESS HABIB ULLAH, AMIR OF AFGHANISTAN
The Queen Dowager, Bibi Halima, the mother of Sirdar Mahommed Omar Khan, a woman of engaging personality, at one time held a position not without close resemblance to those filled by the Empress Dowager of China and the Lady Om, queen to the Emperor of Korea. Her intrigues on behalf of her son were over-bold and she is now confined—her son, contrary to the energetic character of his mother, taking little interest in his situation. The Bibi Halima is a woman of considerable beauty, particularly intelligent and well informed. She is nearly forty-three years of age, and her sympathies are so distinctly British that her palace is regarded with as much suspicion as the British agency. The law of succession to the thrones in Mahommedan countries, apart from the exercise of opportunity which secures recognition upon the basis that might is right, entails the throne upon the son of the first woman whom the ruler may have married. The heir may be younger than sons born to other women, but, if such a marriage were the first alliance contracted by his father, the succession is seldom set aside. Abdur Rahman, however, departed from this custom as the Amirs of Afghanistan have power to appoint their successors.
Habib Ullah is the offspring of a Wakhan concubine named Gulriz with whom the Amir Abdur Rahman consorted. Bibi Halima, also the wife of Abdur Rahman, lays claim to it through her direct descent from the Amir Dost Mahommed Khan. She is of the Blood Royal indubitably; and, if she were in possession of her liberty, she would soon compel her son, Sirdar Mahommed Omar Khan, to take the field. His chances of success in any rebellion would be as great as those enjoyed by his half-brother, Nasr Ullah Khan, similarly a son of Gulriz and full brother to Habib Ullah. The disparity in the ages of these three sons of Abdur Rahman bears upon the present situation—Habib Ullah, born 1872, and Nasr Ullah, born 1874, being many years the senior of Mahommed Omar, who was born at Mazar-i-Sharif on September 15, 1889. By a strange irony, which may yet be not without its effect upon the succession to the throne, Inayat Ullah, the son of Habib Ullah and the lawful heir to the throne, was born in 1888, his uncle, the son of Bibi Halima and Abdur Rahman, being only six months younger.