Under the absolute Amir

by Frank A. Martin

There are no measures in Kabul for grain, liquids, etc., and all things are sold by weight. The weights differ from those used in India, and are built up from the nukhut, a description of pulse about the size of a pea, the weight of each seed of which is fairly equal. Twenty-four of these nukhuts go to a miskal (six and one-sixth miskals nearly equal an ounce); ninety-six miskals equal one pau, which is slightly less than an English pound; sixteen pau equal one seer, and eighty seers equal one kharwar. Excepting in the Government stores there are no exact weights made and used; the people in the bazar taking stones of different sizes and using them as weights, the difference between the stone and the true weight being on the side of the shopkeeper of course. In lineal measure there are two different yards, or guz, as they are called. The one used by surveyors and builders is nearly twenty-eight inches, and the other guz for measuring cloth, etc., is nearly forty-two inches. The kro, or mile, is, as I have already mentioned, an indefinite quantity, but is usually taken to be about one and a half English miles.

The Government offices are controlled and worked by the mirzas, or clerks. The mirza is looked upon as an educated man in the country, but his education is limited to Persian literature, a smattering of the old Arabic, and the first four rules of arithmetic; but even in these first four rules he is far from proficient, and when it comes to a fraction being included in the calculation, he is hopelessly lost. I was present once when some eight or ten of them together tried to solve a calculation which involved multiplication only, and all of them arrived at different results, while the man who was nearest the correct answer took a good deal of credit to himself for being so nearly right. The mirzas are a class of themselves, although drawn from all classes, and they differ from the rest of the population in their nervous and soft manner, at the back of which, however, is a nature as cruel and heartless as any in the country. It is not the cleverest mirza in his work who comes to the front and has charge of departments, but the one who is cleverest in deceit and intrigue, and it is to excellence in these respects that the young mirza gives attention, when he listens to his elders making up a case, with words and meaning purposely involved, to give them a loophole of escape should their scheme fall through. The mirzas are full of cunning, and difficult for the layman to trap, and they are ever scheming one against the other, or against other people who have money, that they may in one way or another get them in their coils and squeeze them (as they put it).

The work they prize most is taking the accounts of one of themselves, or of some official whom they have already reported to the Amir, as swindling the Government of lakhs of rupees, and undertaking in their report to prove what they say. After reporting such a case, they are generally given the task of proving their accusation, and this necessitates the accused person’s accounts being gone through. In doing this they are weighed by no consideration of the figures shown in the books and papers under examination, but search their minds for an idea of some allegation which will involve the accused and be difficult for him to refute, and then, for proof of lesser wrong-doing which will give colour to the greater alleged wrong, they look through the papers, and, as no official is guileless in the conduct of his duties, it is usually easy to get up a few bad-looking cases against him. Then they go into figures, and I have known men accused of swindling more than double the amount which has actually passed through their hands; and to do this without being detected is simpler than it appears, for very few persons besides the mirzas can do more than count up to twenty, and the mirza’s papers give the figures and other proofs of the huge sums swindled. Then all of them go before the Amir, together with the papers and other proofs (?), and in the end the accused is put in prison together with his family, and all his money and other property is confiscated. To be correct, not all is confiscated, for a good deal of money has already gone into the investigating mirza’s hands in a vain attempt to induce him to withdraw his charge, or at least reduce his figures; but although the mirza will hold out hopes until he gets the money, he knows that, having begun, he must ruin the man and have him put where he is harmless, or else there will be an ever active enemy lying in wait for him. However, there is always requital, for no one mirza holds any position for long, and a day comes when the intriguer is himself treated in the same way, and is put in prison or killed. Two or three years is the usual limit of a mirza’s tenure of high office, for their methods of attracting money to themselves soon lead to exposure by other mirzas who become envious and want the position themselves, in order that they, too, may make something, and have a merry, if a short, life.

In getting up cases, the mirzas do as others do, and pay false witnesses, and this leads at times to the Amir being at a loss to know which side is right, and ordering them all to be tortured with the fanah in order to find out the truth. I saw two mirzas, who were accused of falsifying accounts, being publicly fanah’d in the bazar one day as I rode through; but they were making statements very rapidly with the minimum of pressure on the fanah. Their endurance is less than that of the other men of the country, and this is no doubt due to a sedentary life and incessant smoking, for wherever you see a mirza, there, too, you will see a chillum.

GROUP OF KABUL MIRZAS (WRITERS, OR CLERKS).

[To face p. 248.

The mirzas have various ways of making money, and one is in the collection of customs duties and various taxes, when they make all they can out of the people who have to pay. If they have to give a receipt to any man for money paid, or goods delivered, they will keep the man waiting all day for it, or even for a few days, if he gives them nothing. The equivalent of a penny is accepted if the man is poor and they see he can give no more. Men coming into Kabul and having to travel two or three days to get there to pay some duty or tax of less than a rupee, have been kept waiting for days because they refused to give the mirza a few annas; so the people see that it saves money to give to the mirzas, and if they complain to a higher authority the mirza and all in his office will swear that the man never came near them. Again, if money has to be paid to a man from the Government treasury he must give some of it to the mirza who pays it out, and this is taken so much for granted that the mirza usually hands it over one or more rupees short, according to the amount of money that has to be paid.