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"The oppressed martyrs of our culture have shed blood that nourish the red tulips of our nation."--Mahmoud Tarzi
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Imagine you are living in a society where there is no television,
radio, newspapers, or any other form of media. You do not know anything
about the outside world except your own city. You have no knowlege of
anything about different forms of governments and ways of life.
Then, comes a man who with all his ability, tries to educate and
inform
his
people about the world and the importance of press. This man's name was
Mahmoud
Tarzi. He shed light into a society that was remaining in the Dark Ages.
Tarzi was born in the city of Ghazni, Afghanistan in 1866; his
father was Sardar Ghulam Muhmammed Khan, a leader of the
Muhmammedzai royal house and a well-known poet. In 1881, Amir Abdul
Rahman (King of Afghanistan) exiled Tarzi’s father and their thirty-six
family members. They stayed in Karachi for three years and then sailed
to Iraq and later moved to Turkey.
In Turkey, Tarzi witnessed electricity, railroads, newspapers,
magazines, and modern European urban life. Tarzi wished to export these
elements to his native land of Afghanistan. He stayed in Turkey until the
age of 35 and had learned fluent Dari, Pashto, Turkish, French, Arabic, and
Urdu. He began to translate French literature into Dari and Pashtoo.
When Abdul Rahman had passed away, his son Amir Habibiullah, the
new king,
invited the Tarzi family back to Afghanistan in 1902. After many years in
exile, Tarzi began his service to modernize
Afghanistan. Some of the contributions include:
-
Establishing the foundation of journalism by publishing Siraj al-Akbtar
Afghaniyah (The Lamp of the News of Afghanistan). Published bi-weekly
from October 1911 to January 1919, it played an important role in the
development of an Afghan modernist movement, serving as a forum for a
small, enlightened group of Young Afghans, who provided the ethical
justification and basic tenets of Afghan nationalism and modernism.
- Published Siraj al-Aftal (Children’s Lamp), the first Afghan publication
aimed at a juvenile audience.
- Tarzi worked on strengthening the style of Dari and Pashtoo prose
writing, editing, translations, and modernization of the Afghan press.
- He translated into Dari many of the major works of European authors
including:
Around the World in Eighty Days
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
The Mysterious Island.
International Law (from Turkish)
History of the Russo-Japanese War
- He effectively guided the second movement of the young
constitutionalists called Mashroota Khowha. It led to reviving
the first
suppressed movement of the consititionalists, and nourishing such
devoted liberal patriots as Padshah(King) Amanullah.
- After the national independence from the British in 1919, Tarzi, as
Minister of Foreign Affairs, established Afghan Embassies in London,
Paris, and other capitals of the world.
- He showed abundant interest in women’s rights and the feminist movement
by opening schools for women and printing the Arshad-el-Naswan, which
was a woman's magazine run by his daughter (Shahbanoo (Queen) Soroya) and
niece.
Tarzi shed the light of the sun to a place that had not seen it for
centuries. Tarzi initiated many more projects and many that were still in
plan. However, in 1929, the royal house of Padshah Amanuallah came to
an end by a coup. Tarzi, his family, and the house of Padshah Amanuallah
were put into exile. Tarzi spent his last years in Turkey where he kept
to his poetry and writing. He passed away on November 22, 1933 at the
age of 68. His tomb rests in Istanbul, Turkey.
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