Under the absolute Amir

by Frank A. Martin

The Amir, after the style of the Mikado of dramatic fame, always tried to let the punishment fit the crime, although his punishments were sometimes such as to make one think that he greatly exaggerated the crime. For instance, a man who stole the food of some poor children, leaving them nothing, was put in a cage, in the bazar, and there starved; but to make the punishment fit his crime more closely, bread and water were brought to him two or three times each day, and placed just out of his reach, and this was continued until the man died of starvation.

In another case, a man and a woman, who loved not wisely but too well, both being married people, determined on running away together, hoping thereby to secure their future happiness in each other’s society, but in their endeavour to reach India, where they intended living together, they were caught and brought back. The Amir, in ordering their punishment, said that, as the man was so fond of the woman, he should have her as completely as was possible. So the woman was thrown alive into a huge cauldron of boiling water, and boiled down to soup, and a basin of this soup was given to the man, who was forced to drink it, and after drinking it he was hanged. In this case the Amir’s object was to punish, not only in this life, but in the next, for a cannibal cannot enjoy the delights of Paradise as depicted in the Koran.

Another man and woman, who were caught in the act of loving unwisely, were, by the order of the Amir, who appropriately said he would let them live together until death, put on top of the Asman Heights, tied back to back with ropes, and kept there until they died of exposure and starvation, and sepoys were put on guard to see that no one interfered with the fulfilment of the punishment. The woman died first, and the man was allowed a day longer to die in, but as he lingered he was helped on his journey.

In ordinary cases, when a man and woman are caught, as in the last instance, both are ordered to be taken to the scaffold, and there the rope is adjusted round the man’s neck ready for him to be strung up, and he stands there while the woman is put in a sack, the mouth of which is tied, and the sepoys thrust their bayonets through it and the woman until no further cry being heard it is known that death has occurred; then the man, who has witnessed his mistress’s death, is hauled up and hanged. In similar cases where the relatives of the ruling family are implicated, the man is imprisoned, and no one knows what becomes of him, except that he is never heard of again, and the woman is blinded or has her nose cut off, or some similar disfiguring punishment is inflicted, and after the punishment she is allowed to die or get well as nature orders without being nursed; mostly they die, and it is said that those who were once fond of them, help them to death with a dose of poison, which is perhaps the kindest thing they could do.

It is a common matter for a man who has grave suspicion that his wife is unfaithful to cut off her nose; sometimes they bite it off, as a sign to all of her unfaithfulness, and to spoil her beauty. This is, of course, when the lover cannot be located, and there are no proofs obtainable of her wrong-doing.

In those cases where men were convicted of outraging girls or women, the Amir was very savage in his punishments. In one case three men, so convicted, were buried in the ground up to their chins, and left there until dead, after which the dogs were allowed to come and eat them, or as much as they could get of them. For the body to be eaten by dogs is regarded as worse than the punishment causing death, because it cuts off all hope of Paradise.

“To fit the crime,” the Amir has in some cases where men are very much married, and are too fond of spending most of their time with their wives to the neglect of their Government duties, given camphor to the men as a punishment, camphor being known in the country to be antiaphrodisiac.

As a means of putting a stop to the constant robbing of Government money in the different factories, the late Amir had some men who were in charge of the soap shops and were convicted of swindling, thrown alive into the soap boiler (which is one of a large capacity) when in full blast, to make up the deficit by boiling them down into soap. The Amir also had men thrown into boiling oil on occasions; but this was as a punishment, and had nothing to do with the manner of the crime.

To punish stealing, one of the usual penalties ordered by the Amir, besides hanging, was to have the hand cut off. On the occasion of my first visit to Kabul in 1889, I was given tents in the garden adjoining the workshops to live in, it being summer time; and one day one of the workmen, who are always searched before being allowed to pass through the gate when work is over, was found to have a piece of leather the size of a man’s hand concealed under his coat. The Amir ordered the man to be hanged in the factory as a warning to the others, but on representations being made to him by the Englishmen who were working in the shops, the Amir commuted the sentence to the man’s hand being cut off. Hands are cut off by a butcher, and usually the stumps, when the hands are off, are plunged into boiling oil to stop the hemorrhage. This workman died a couple of days afterwards.

Another common punishment is that of blinding people. This is the usual punishment of those who try to escape from prison or from the country—synonymous terms almost. The manner of doing this is to lance the pupils of the eyes, and then put in a drop of nitric acid, and, to guarantee no sight being left, quicklime is afterwards added. The agony endured must be frightful, and in one case when fifteen men were blinded together in Sherpur cantonment, where these punishments are usually carried out, the men were seen on the third day after being blinded all chained one to the other, and sitting in a row on the ground; they were unable to go elsewhere to obey the calls of nature, and consequently were filthy beyond description. Three of them were lying dead still chained to the living, and some of the living, too, were lying unconscious, while the others were moaning and rocking themselves backwards and forwards.