Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.13437

    Portrait of an unnamed Yūsufzai man

    Date
    1815
    Creator
    Unknown, Engraver
    After
    Robert Melville Grindlay (1786, British) , 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 Yūsufzai community of Pashtuns from eastern Afghanistan, referred to here as 'Eusofzye', shown full length in ordinary dress and carrying weapons. He wears a white turban, twinned with pink. His main costume consists of a grey undershirt with a red waistcoat, grey tunic, white trousers, sandals and a blue sash. He carries a straight short sword, a curved long blade, holds a spear and has a slung jezail musket.

    Plate 6 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. VI. An Eusofzye. Published by Messrs. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, Paternoster Row, 1815.’

    According to the accompanying text the plate shows ‘the ordinary dress of the men’ in the Yūsufzai country. It also names the sash worn around shoulder and waists as a ‘Loongee’, Lungi.

    The author comments that the original artwork for this print was produced by Lieutenant R.M. Grindlay of the Bombay (Mumbai) Establishment’ and that the artist ‘drew them from Afghauns just arrived from their own country.’ These originals, now in the British Library, were made by Grindlay in Poona (Pune), in 1813.

    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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