Faiz Mohammad Katib Hazara

Faiz Mohammad Katib Hazara was born in 1863-63 in Zard Sang village of Qarabagh city in the Ghazni region of Afghanistan. Faiz spent some part of his life in Nahoor and he died in Kabul on the 3^rd March 1931. He was from the Hazara ethnic group of the country and was of Mohammad Khuwaja clan. He was a chronicler in the afghan court; he is also a talented calligrapher and secretary to the Amir Habib Ullah Khan from the year 1901 to the year 1919. He was a popular writer, historian and an intellectual, among the renowned group of the people of the country that are seeking political and social changes in the country at the starting part of the 20^th century, and this shaped the early regional politics of the country to Morocco and so any of the people from the country opine that the government should name him to be the father of Afghanistan History. He was a member of The Constitution Movement.

 

source of picture: turklar.com

Early Life

Faiz spent his youth age in Qarabah, he became a teacher and taught in Arabic and the Koran by the local mullahs, he and his family moved to Nawur and because of the sectarian strife they relocated to the Qandahar in the year 1880. He left Qandahar in the year 1887 for a year’s travel that landed him to Lahore and Peshawar, and there he spent some time studying the English language and the Urdu language. He travelled to Jalalabad and was given an invitation to join the administration of the Amir of the country, Abdur Rahman Khan.

History

Soon Faiz was fixed to the entourage of the eldest son of the Amir, Habib Ullah Khan, at the recommendation of one of his teachers, Mullah Sarwar Ishaq’zai. A manuscript that dated 29 Rajab 1311/5 February 1894 is attributed to him, and that places him in Jalalabad at that time. In 1314/1896, when the younger brother to Habib Ullah, Nasr Ullah Khanvbisited England on a state visit, Habib assign Faiz to copy and post in the Charsuq, the main market place of Kabul, the detailed letter sent back to Nasr Ulla showing all the activities, so the ‘noble and the ordinary people would be appraised of the integrity and respect that the English were giving to him’.

At the time of Habib Ullah’s leadership, Faiz was included, if just incidentally, with the Young Afghan Movement that was led by Mahmud Baig Tarzi. He is reported to have been involved with the publication of Tarzi’s reformist journal, Siraj al-akbar and other three journals; Aina-ye Irfan, Anis, and Ḥayy alal-falah.after the killing of the patron in 1337/1919, Faiz served for a time at the Ministry of Education on the revision of textbook. Later, he was selected to be a teacher at the Habibiva Laycee in Kabul.

Under the leadership of Aman Ullah Khan, in 1919-29, the Iranian minister in Kabul, Mahdi Farrokh Sayyed gathered a ‘who is who’ of the modern leaders of the country. His make up about Faiz showed that he is a devout Shi’ite that is greatly recognized by the Qizilbash community of Kabul in the country and also the leader among his people, the Hazaras and also a crucial spring of information for the Persian mission about what was happening in the capital.

In the year 1929, the Tajik outlaw, Habib Ullah Kalakani, who is historically called Bacha ye Saqqao, ousted Aman Ullah Khan and took over the control of Kabul for nine goo months. During this uprising, Faiz who spent the whole time inside the city, retained a journal that was the basis for an uncompleted monograph that is named Kitab-e Tadakoor-e Enqilab that started immediately after the fall of Bacha ye Saqqao.

At the time of the occupation, Faiz was made to take part in a delegation that was sent by Kalakani against his will to negotiate with the groups of Hazara opposing the leadership of the Tajik. According to his account, he succeeded to subvert the plans of Kalakani and made the mission to flop. Meanwhile, he and the leaders of the mission, Noor al-Din Agha, a Qizilbash Shiʿite who are from Kabul paid a big price for the failure; the both of them were condemned to death by beating. Only Faiz survived this as he was saved by a colleague.

Publications

Faiz is popular for his book on the history of his country. At the time of the reign of Habib Ullah, he accepted two commissions to write an understandable history of the country that will cover the activities from the period of Ahmad Shah down to the leadership period of Habib Ullah Khan. The fist he wrote was the history of the country, which he called ‘Tohfat ul-Habib’ in respect of the Amir. But habib did not take the work as a good one and ordered Faiz start the work again. The revised version of the book is the three-volume history of the history of the country which was named, ‘Siraj al-Tawarikh’; a reference to the honorific ‘Lamp of the Nation and Religion’ of the Amir. They encountered some difficvulties in publishing the work, with the third work not completely printed. It is believed that the process of publishing the third volume of the book lasted for many years and stopped with the death of Habib Ullah Khan. Some people said that the publication of the third volume of the book halted at the page 1,240 for unknown reasons. The successor of Habib Ullah Khan, Aman Ullah Khan was formally interested in the work and typesetting continued in the 1920s, but when the Amir went through the material in it on the Anglo-Afghan relations, he reportedly altered his mind and made an order that the incomplete copies of the books should be taken out of the press and burned. Not minding the reaction of the Amir, Faiz continued with his chronicle. The manuscript on the volume three of the work is generally believed to have been finished and the autograph of the work has been reportedly deposited to the archives of the country by the son of Faiz Mohammad.

Apart from this work, there are other works that have been written by Faiz, and they include;

• Tuhfatul Habib' Afghan History (1747–1880), in two volumes. (The original script, hand-written by Faiz Mohammed, exists in the National Archive in Kabul)
• Tazkeratul Enqilaab accounts of the days of Habibullah, Bacha-e Saqaw
• History of Ancient Prophets/Rulers, from Adam to Jesus
• Hidāyat-i kisht-i gul-hā va qalamah-hā va ḥubūbāt va ghayrah (1921–1922)
• Jughrāfiyā-yi ṭabʻī va Afrīqā
• Tarikh-e Hokama-ye Motaqaddem, compiled while he was working at the Ministry of Education;
• Fayz al-Foyuzat, a fragment of which, called Afghan treaties and agreements (ʿahd wa misaq-e afghan) was published in Sayyed Mahdi Farrokh’s Tarikh-e Siasi-ye Afghanistan (Tehran, 1314 Š./1935) and which, in tune with the times, was a sharp critique of the Abdul Rahman’s relations with the British;
• Faqarat-e Sharʿiya, which is not known to have survived; and
• Nasab-nama-ye Tawaʾef-e afghena wa taʿaddod-e nofus-e ishan, also known as Nijhad-nama-ye Afghan, a description of Afghan tribes and non-Afghans residing in Afghanistan. The Nijhad-nama was published in Persia in 1933 from a manuscript thought to be the autograph and held in the Kitab Khana-ye Milli-ye Malik in Tehran.

Among the works he is believed to have copied is a 230 folio collection of farmans, which was issued by Mughal ruler Aurangzed (1068-1118/1658-1707) that he finished in Jalalabad in 1312/1894; the divan of Sehab-e Torshizi, which is a late 18^th century poet originating from Herat and Risala-ye fiuz, which is a dissertation on explosives.

In the later part of the 20^th century, Robert D. McChesney, an American student, made an extensive research on the written works and life of Faiz Mohammad. He also published a translated of Tazkeratul Enqilaab’s with the title ‘Kabul under siege: Faiz Muhammad's account of the 1929 Uprising’.