{"book":"adl0973","page":72,"text":"including the Bacha himself, were illiterate\nand had no experience of administration what-\nsoever. But they were invariably assisted by\nSher Jan, the Chamberlain. But for the help\nof this man, the Bacha's regime would have\nbeen a very brief one indeed.\nDuring the period of nine months\nthat this reign lasted unspeakable atrocities\nand appalling cruelties were daily per-\npetrated, the poor citizens of the capital\nproviding the chief victims. The Arg was\nthe seat of this stern and relentless despotism,\nwhich trampled on every principle of law,\njustice and humanity, and which derived its\nright and power not from God or the people\nbut from the sword.\nSchools and colleges and all the useful\ninstitutions were closed. Libraries, labora-\ntories and the royal museum were sacked and\nrare books and articles of value were either\ndestroyed, burnt or sold at ridiculous prices.\nFor one Kiran (about 3 pence) down, one\ncould buy as many books as he could carry\non one's shoulders. No man of birth, accom-\nplishment or knowledge was suffered near\nthe person of this tyrant. Of the noblemen\nand the scholars those who could find a\n\n43","chars":1128,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0973/00072.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":315,"title":"Progressive Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0973/72","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0973/canvas/72","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0973/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0973_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."}}