Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.13435

    Portrait of an unnamed Tajik man

    Date
    1815
    Creator
    Unknown, Engraver
    After
    Unknown Deli artist (Indian) , Artist
    Object type
    Library reference
    RCN38165
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (print): 280mm
    width (print): 210mm
    Subject
    Content object
    nature
       > landscape
    Description
    Portrait of a man of the Tajik people of Afghanistan, referred to here as 'Taujik', shown full-length in summer costume. He wears a wide blue turban hat with a striped tunic, tied at the waist and brown slippers. Beneath this is a white shirt decorated with red and blue flowers and white trousers.

    Plate 4 from Mountstuart Elphinstone's An account of the Kingdom of Caubul and its dependencies in Persia, Tartary, and India… (London, 1815), an account of his embassy to the ruler of Afghanistan, Shuja Shah Durrani Khan (1785-1842) in 1808.

    Inscribed ‘PL. IV. A Taujik in the summer dress of Caubul. Published by Messrs. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, Paternoster Row, 1815.’

    The accompanying text states that: ‘The Taujiks are every where remarkable for the use of fixed habitations, and their disposition to agriculture, and other settled employments. They still retain some share of the land in the west of Afghaunistaun, of which they appear once to have been sole proprietors; but the mkost of them have lost their property, and live as tenants or servants in husbandry under Afghaun masters’.

    Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779–1859), East India Company administrator from 1776, known for his periods as Resident at Poona and Governor of Bombay in the 1810s and 1820s, and involvement in the Anglo-Maratha wars.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Asia
          > Afghanistan
    <The World>
       > Asia
          > India
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