Amanullah Khan

Ghazi Amanullah Khan Barakzai (1 June 1892 – 26 April 1960) was Emir of Afghanistan from 1919 to 1926 and then King of Afghanistan from 1926 until his abdication in 1929. After the Third Anglo-Afghan War of 1919, Afghanistan relinquished its protected status and proclaimed independence, pursuing a foreign policy free of British influence. ¹

His rule was marked by dramatic political and social change, including an attempt to modernise Afghanistan along Western lines, which he did not fully achieve because of the uprising of Habibullah Kalakani and his followers. ¹

Amanullah was born on 1 June 1892 at Paghman, near Kabul, the favoured third son of Emir Habibullah Khan by his second wife, and was installed as governor of Kabul, in control of the army and the treasury. ^{1 2}

When his father was assassinated in February 1919, Amanullah seized control of the treasury at Kabul and staged a coup against his uncle Nasrullah, who had been proclaimed Emir at Jalalabad, and on 28 February 1919 proclaimed himself Emir. ¹

He then led a surprise attack on the British in India on 3 May 1919, opening the Third Anglo-Afghan War; an armistice towards the end of 1919 freed Afghanistan of British diplomatic influence. ¹

With the guidance of his father-in-law and foreign minister Mahmud Tarzi, Amanullah framed a modernist constitution incorporating equal rights and individual freedoms; the country's first constitution was ratified by 872 tribal elders and officials at a Loya Jirga in Jalalabad on 11 April 1922, and under it all citizens were entitled to equal rights and freedoms under Sharia law and government legislation. ¹

He created cosmopolitan schools for boys and girls across the provinces, made primary education obligatory, and overturned traditions such as strict dress codes for women; his wife, Queen Soraya Tarzi, played a significant part in his policy towards women. ¹

The rapid modernisation created a backlash: after his European tour, his new policies — among them the abolition of the veil and the replacement of traditional Afghan dress with Western clothes — provoked Islamic conservatives and opponents led by Habibullah Kalakani to rise against his rule. ¹

In late 1927 Amanullah and Queen Soraya travelled to Europe, visiting Egypt, Italy (where they met King Victor Emmanuel III, Mussolini and Pope Pius XI), France, Belgium, Germany, Britain, Poland and finally Turkey, where on 20 May 1928 he met President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the first state visit by a foreign head of state to Turkey. ¹

Kalakani's forces took Kabul on 7 January 1929, and on 14 January 1929 Amanullah abdicated and went into temporary exile in British India, passing the monarchy to his half-brother Inayatullah, who surrendered the Arg four days later. ¹

From British India Amanullah went to Europe, where, after thirty years in exile, he died in Zurich, Switzerland, on 26 April 1960; his body was brought to Afghanistan and buried at Jalalabad near his father's tomb. Wikidata and the Arabic article's lead give 25 April 1960; this museum follows the English article's dating and records the variant in the data note. ^{1 2 3}

Amanullah married Soraya Tarzi, daughter of Mahmud Tarzi, on 30 August 1913; she was his only wife, and they had ten children. This museum records the family only so far as understanding his reign requires. ^{4 1}

No article text names a school for him. The school appears only in structured data: Wikidata's religion values give Islam and Sunni Islam, and the Arabic article files him in a Sunni category — a filing, which never attests. His descent, his kingship and his constitution are family, office and state policy. Under the museum's two-source rule the record therefore stays unknown, with the structured attestations preserved in the data file. ^{1 2 3}

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.