{"book":"adl0957","page":209,"text":"162\n\nand steps were taken to introduce machinery and other modern\nconveniences, such as hydro-electricity and water pipes into\nAfghanistan. A weekly paper, Sirajul Akhbar, was started, and\nit was entrusted to the well-known Afghan writer, Mahmud-i-\nTarzi. This paper infused a new life throughout the country\nand had a great part in the national awakening. European\ngames, including football, hockey, cricket, tennis and badminton\nwere also encouraged and the Amir personally took part in some\nof them, distributing prizes among the winners.\n\nIn 1907, the Amir visited India at the invitation of the\nBritish Indian Government. He observed strict neutrality in\nWorld War I. A German-Turkish Mission reached Kabul in\nOctober, 1915, to try to induce the Amir to declare a holy war\nagainst the British, but the Amir was able to stick to his neutral-\nity throughout the War. In February 1919, feeling that the\ntime had come when he might claim the reward of his steadfast-\nness during the war, and to vindicate his policy before his people,\nhe wrote to the Viceroy, demanding written recognition by the\nPeace Conference of Afghanistan's \"absolute liberty, freedom\nof action and perpetual independence\". But on the night of the\n20th of February, he was assassinated in his shooting camp at\nKala-gosh in the Laghman Valley. His younger brother, Sardar\nNasrulla, Khan, who was then at Jalalabad, proclaimed himself\nKing. Meanwhile in Kabul, Sardar Amanullah Khan, the\nthird son of the Amir, took possession of the citadel. On the\n29th of February he proclaimed himself King of Afghanistan in\nthe presence of all civil and military officials in Kabul. The\narmy in Jalalabad rallied around the cause of Amanullah and\nforced Nasrullah Khan, to abdicate.\n\nKing Amanullah : Amanullah's first act after accession\nwas to proclaim the independence of Afghanistan both in","chars":1854,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00209.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/209","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/209","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0957/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0957_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}