Constituting Afghanistan: Rediscovering Afghan Legal History between the Ottoman and British Empires

Talk by Faiz Ahmed

Just as a devastating humanitarian crisis, international isolation, and fraught governing regime mark the country’s present-day realities, recent years have witnessed a series of more optimistic anniversaries in Afghanistan’s modern history. As leading examples, 2019 marked the 100th anniversary of Afghanistan’s independence from the British Empire, and 2023 will mark the centennial of Afghanistan’s first written constitution. Commemorating the roots and legacies of Afghanistan’s independence and first national charter a century ago, Faiz Ahmed unearths a lost history behind the country’s emergence as a fiercely anti-colonial, constitutionally governed, and widely respected “Islamic nation-state” lodged between the late Ottoman Empire, Iran, and British India, the subject of his first book Afghanistan Rising. As the US and other global actors continue to debate the future of relations with and foreign involvement in this pivotal country, this lecture will explore what lessons we can learn from rediscovering Afghanistan’s own legal and constitutional history from Afghan and other perspectives of the region(s) it inhabits.