Afghan History Through Afghan Eyes

The past in the present constrains and enables our visions of ourselves as inheritors and makers of history and identity. Afghan History Through Afghan Eyes, drawing on Afghan discourse and texts, provides a much needed corrective to the Great Game paradigm of history. It is a very welcome contribution to the understanding of our past and the foundation for a new paradigm of analysis. – Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, President of AfghanistanThe central purpose of Afghan History Through Afghan Eyes, a fascinating collection of historiographical essays edited by Nile Green, is to counter what he calls the ‘Great Game paradigm,’ which ‘places at the epicenter of historical causation external agents and imperial foes, foreign soldiers and domestic rebels.’ I have a great deal of sympathy for this critique. – Anatol Lieven, New York Review of BooksThis wonderful volume provides a much needed addition and corrective to the recent historiography of Afghanistan, which relies on colonial narratives of the Afghan past. It draws on indigenous voices in indigenous vernaculars to provide a scholarly depth equalled only by its topical breadth. – Benjamin D. Hopkins, Associate Professor of History and International Affairs, George Washington University, author of Fragments of the Afghan FrontierThis excellent volume on Afghan historiography will make Afghan historians and their indigenous sources better known to the outside world. It traces the changing uses of history in Afghanistan, from justifying and glorifying dynastic rulers to buttressing Afghanistan as a nation state. This ambitious book is the first to take on this topic. – Thomas Barfield, Professor of Anthropology at Boston University, and author of Afghanistan: A Political and Cultural History

Nile Green is Professor of South Asian history at UCLA and founding director of the UCLA Program on Central Asia. A specialist on the Muslim communities of South Asia and the Middle East, his research brings Islamic history into conversation with global history. He has authored six monographs, including Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, which won the Albert Hourani prize and the Ananda K. Coomaraswamy prize.