St Petersburg International Conference of Afghan Studies

St Petersburg International Conference of Afghan Studies 35 Panel One. Historiography and Sources on Afghanistan... Курāса-йи-л-ми ʻ йи , хранится в библиотеке Меджлиса. Нами использовалось комментированное издание сочинения, подготовленное к печати на основе трех списков Саййидом Саʻӣд Мӣр-Мухаммадом Сāдиком (Тегеран, издательство « М ӣ рāс-и макт ӯ б », 2010). Sergey Grigorev (Faculty of Asian and African Studies, St Petersburg State University, St Petersburg, Russia) The Afghans and their Australian Mark In the 19 th century there was no united Australia, it rather consisted of a few separate British colonies. In 1907, their association became a dominion. The colonization of its heartland — hard-to-reach and arid — was slow. It was affected by the lack of roads and means of transportation. Gold deposits, found in the early 1850’s stimulated the exploration and development of these areas. It took a long time to build a railway between the south and the north ofAustralia. In 1929, a railway was built fromAugusta Port in the south toAlice Springs in the centre, while another line was constructed from the port of Darwin in the north to the centre of the country. It was only in 2004 that a thoroughfare railway traffic was opened. Passenger trains also went along this line. The passenger train that runs between Adelaide and Darwin is an Australian version of a tourist train. The length of the route is 3,000 km. The name is “The Ghan”, viz., an abbreviation from “TheAfghan Express”. This is the old name of the trains, which used to go along the southern part of the line. And it may sound quite surprising. In 1818, the Afghan Durrani Empire split into a number of principalities: Herat, Kandahar, Kabul and Peshawar. In 1834, the latter, where many residents were Afghan (Pashtun) tribesmen, was conquered by the ruler of Punjab Ranjit Singh. In the 19 th century Britain completed the conquest of India. After two Anglo-Punjabi wars in the 1840’s. north-western India was also incorporated into the Empire; that included the lands of the Pashtun tribes from the right bank of the Indus to the Suleiman mountains on the border with Afghanistan. Their inhabitants became (though only formally) the subjects of the British Crown. Some of them got involved in the political and economic life of the Empire. The first Pashtun Afghans who arrived in Australia were camel drivers. They were employees of the expeditions of J. E. Horrocks 1 and R. H. Burke andW. D. Willis 2 , who in 1846 and in 1860–1861 explored the centre of the country. The success of the latter secured for the camels the niche as the main means of transportation in the depths of Australia. Their endurance and ability to carry heavy loads for long distances prompted their importation to Australia. From 1870 to 1900 approximately 15,000 camels were 1 https://en.wikiped.org/wiki/John_Ainsworth Horrocks. 2 Colwell M . The Journey of Burke and Wills. Sydney: Paul Hamlyn, 1971.