The Amir was a good judge of character, and was fond of reading the characters of men he had never seen from their photos, and in those cases where I knew the men, whose photo he was studying, his reading of their character was mostly correct. He had a great admiration for Gladstone, Bismarck, and McMahon, and said they were the leading men of their time. There were few generals he admired, subjecting most to a good deal of adverse criticism, but General White’s defence of Ladysmith, he said, was the most brilliant achievement of the Boer War.
CHAPTER VIII
AMIR ABDUR RAHMAN—continued
Amir’s sons and his treatment of them—Princes and their duties and durbars—Food supplied by Government to members of royal family—How officials are paid—Civil and military titles—Court life and officials—Law courts—Amir’s lingering illness, death and burial—Rumours of rising—Fears of populace—Burial of household treasures—Plots to get body—Coronation of Amir Habibullah—New Amir’s promises of reform—Amusements.
There are five sons of the Amir living; Habibullah (the present Amir), and Nasrullah (who was sent to London), both sons of one wife; Aminoolah, the son of a Chitrali wife; Mahomed Ali, the son of a Turkestani wife, who has lived mostly in Turkistan, and is seldom heard of; and Mahomed Omar, the son of the Queen-Sultana. The Amir, although always treating his sons in a kindly manner, was never familiar with them, and his attitude towards them was that of king to subject, rather than father to son. If they committed a blunder or offended in the discharge of their duties, he punished by ordering them not to show themselves in durbar, and so kept them under the ban of his displeasure for a longer or shorter time, which he ended by sending them an order to come to him, and then the one in disgrace would come and kneel before his father, and be allowed to kiss his hand in recognition of forgiveness.
PRINCE INIATULLAH (ELDEST SON OF AMIR HABIBULLAH KHAN) AND STAFF.
[To face p. 120.
The Amir gave his sons high official positions with proportionate salaries, but in no way allowed them to become influential, or to exercise unlimited power. Many of the chief officials had greater authority than the Amir’s sons, and treated the princes with scant courtesy, particularly towards the end of the Amir’s reign. Sirdar Habibullah was the nominal head of the army, and chief officer of all workshops; Sirdar Nasrullah was head of all the offices and mirzas (writers or clerks), and the others held minor appointments.
The princes held their own durbars, which many officials and officers attended, either in connection with their duties or to “salaam” the princes. They all had separate houses situated in the new part of the city, and the two elder ones had country houses also, in which they used to spend part of the summer. Sirdar Nasrullah, after his return from London, had his salary increased, and shortly afterwards built a new house for himself on the lines of the house he had stopped in during his stay in London (Dorchester House in Park Lane). In arrangement and upholstery, the house was the best in Kabul, and on its completion, the Amir stopped there for a few days as the prince’s guest, and was delighted with it all, for the Amir greatly admired good architecture, and his own buildings were the only innovations on the old mud and brick dwellings common to the country, which had sufficed for former rulers.