Under the absolute Amir

by Frank A. Martin

The late Amir used to give salaries to very few of the mirzas employed on Government work. He said they made money from the people whether they got a salary or not, and as the people would not complain to him, they might pay for the mirzas—an economical way of looking at the matter. The Government storekeepers are all mirzas, and apparently make a good thing out of it, for they wear good clothes, ride good horses, and have many wives and women in their houses, though their pay is seldom more than the equivalent of ten pounds a year. However, as there is no system of stock-taking, and no ones knows what is, or is not, in the stores, it is an easy matter for them to make money out of such a job, but their tenure of office is usually a short one, some one or other of those under them reporting their shortcomings, probably because they were given too small a share of the plunder.

If an Afghan owes money, it is similar to getting blood out of a stone to make him pay it; usually the odds in both cases are equal, unless a considerable amount of pressure can be applied. With many of them it looks as though their hearts were wrung when having to pay up, for it is done with a gloomy countenance and a display of considerable temper, as though they were being robbed by force of hard-earned gains. The method the late Amir inaugurated for the payment of debts was to send soldiers to the house of the debtor for the money, and if it was not at once forthcoming, the soldiers quartered themselves on the man, and partook of the best in the house, and if there was no best in the house, the man was made to get it as quickly as possible, or feel the weight of the butt end of a rifle. Under these circumstances the debtor lost no time in settling up, if only for the sake of getting rid of his unwelcomed guests, who turned the house upside down, and involved him in the loss of several rupees each day for their food and tobacco. Any person proving a debt could apply to Government for these soldiers, or mahsuls as they are called, and the soldiers employed for the purpose became quite experienced in turning these visits to their own advantage.

There is a colony of Hindoos in Kabul which has been there for many generations. They are the money-lenders to the people, as the Jews used to be in other countries. Also they do almost all the dealing in precious stones and jewellery, and of late years most families have been forced to sell much of the jewellery they possessed, the increased cost of living necessitating it, in order that they should not starve. Whatever a Hindoo offers for an article may be looked upon as being never more than two-thirds of its value, and the people, among themselves, when selling anything to one another, say that the Hindoos offer to give so much for it, and therefore it must be worth the money they themselves ask. Some of the Hindoos are employed in the Treasury offices as being more trustworthy than the mirzas, and also better accountants.

The money of the country is all coined in Kabul, the mint, with its up-to-date coining presses, being situated in the workshops, where the presses are at times kept working day and night when large sums of money are required quickly. When the late Amir, who wanted money badly, saw the revenues yearly dwindling, he cast about for means to increase it, and one day the idea of doing so in the following way occurred to him. The Kabul rupee used to be an irregularly shaped coin, hand-stamped, but it was made of pure silver, so the Amir had all these rupees collected and melted down as they accumulated, and as they were melted down a fairly high percentage of copper was added. This alloyed silver was then cast into bars, rolled, and coined afresh in the new mint, which turns out a rupee with a milled edge and pressed with nicely engraved dies. In this way, by melting down the old pure silver rupees and adding copper before re-coining, the Amir made a considerable amount of profit, and when the old rupees of his own country were finished, he collected Persian rupees and added copper to those; but, unfortunately, under one of the Shahs, the same thing had already been done, so that many of the Afghan rupees contain more than double the proportion of copper than is usual in the standard coinage of other countries. Thereafter the Amir ordered the collection of those Persian rupees which were coined under other Shahs, and the exchange offered for these rupees in the Kabul treasury was one Persian for one Kabuli rupee; but to make still further profit, the Amir ordered that one pice less than a Kabuli rupee should be given in exchange for each Persian one, and the Shah, on hearing this, ordered a like reduction in exchange on all Afghan money brought into his country. The result of adding an unusual amount of copper to the rupee, together with other causes, however, depreciated its value in India, where five Kabuli rupees used to be taken in exchange for four Indian, and the exchange nowadays is two Kabuli for one Indian.

CHAPTER XV
GEOLOGICAL CONDITIONS OF THE COUNTRY

Kabul valley once crater of volcano—Earthquakes—Kabul once a large lake—Mines outcropping, gold, lead, copper, coal, etc.—Rivers, and gold in them—Existence of kept secret for fear of trouble—Turkestan mines—The question of fuel for Kabul workshops—Local supply exhausted—Coal under the valley of Kabul.

It is probable that the Valley of Kabul is the crater of an ancient volcano, for, in addition to other indications, there are in many places in the surrounding hills traces of volcanic action to be seen in the way of lava cones. At many places, also, are large beds of mingled lava and small stones, which have the appearance of extensive concrete blocks, and they might readily be mistaken for them. Several of these beds are many hundred yards in length and breadth, and they mostly lie at the foot of a hill, where they look like the foundations of a large fort or palace, from which the superstructure has crumbled and disappeared, and the rain of centuries has washed away the surrounding earth and left only the concrete beds to mark the spot where they stood. It seems likely that the molten lava flowing down the adjoining hillside picked up small stones in its progress, and on reaching the level ground below spread itself out over the land and cooled down into a solid block.

The strata of the ground surrounding Kabul is in a very disturbed condition, some of the hills and mountains about showing the strata standing perpendicularly, as though the earth of a flat country had been lifted bodily and thrown up on end, as, no doubt, it had been.

Earthquakes are of very common occurrence, and usually the greater number and those of most violence occur in October or November. The one which was worse than all others that I experienced there happened at the end of December, and as the walls of the Kabul houses are built of mud bricks, with very heavy roofs superimposed, many houses were brought down by the shock, and several people killed through the walls and roofs falling on them. Preceding this earthquake a violent storm of wind arose, which broke off large branches from the trees and threatened to beat the windows in, and when the wind had been raging for an hour or so, the earthquake commenced. It came on about ten o’clock at night, and at the time it commenced I was standing before one of the windows of the guest house, which is fortunately solidly built, and when the shaking and rattling of the windows began, I thought it was due to the wind, and remarked to the others in the room that if it continued in violence the windows would soon be blown in; but while I was speaking the floor started swinging from side to side, and then I made a dash for the doorway, and stood there until the disturbance ceased. The doorways are safer than other places in a house during an earthquake, as, should the roof fall in, one stands a chance of escaping unhurt. It is difficult to judge the length of time an earthquake lasts, for one is more interested in the probabilities attending it, but it seemed four or five minutes before the tremors finally ceased, and then I saw that large cracks had been formed down the walls of the room, although they are five or six feet thick, and the next day I heard of different houses completely thrown down and the people in them killed.