{"book":"adl0973","page":74,"text":"merciless marauders no one stands out so pro-\nminent in point of cruelty as Malik Mohsin, the\nGovernor of Kabul. This old rogue (he was\nseventy years of age) plumed himself on the\nfact that the Bacha himself had once been in\nhis service as a menial, for Malik Mohsin\nwas a big landlord in the village of Bacha's\nbirth. Those who were summoned by him\nusually took a last farewell of their family, as\nthey had no hopes of returning alive. He had\na separate prison of his own where daily a\nlarge number of people were tortured under\nhis cruel orders.\n\nWealthy traders were ordered to supply\nthe Government with huge sums of money,\nor in default undergo severe physical tortures.\nPrices were abnormally high, trade was almost\nat a standstill and nearly all the citizens\nwere thrown out of employment. Only those\nwho offered themselves for active service\ncould get employment, for the Bacha had\nthe provinces yet to subdue. But even the\nhigher posts were reserved for robbers and\nnotorious adventurers, and an honest man\nhardly ever rose above the ranks.\n\nWealthy people, important public servants\nand men of influence were the chief\n\n45","chars":1132,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0973/00074.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":315,"title":"Progressive Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0973/74","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0973/canvas/74","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."}}