country in Asia, bounded on the east by the N. W. Frontier Province, &c.,
on the south by Baluchistan, on the west by the Persian province of
Khorasan, and on the north by Bukhara and Russian Turkestan. The eastern
and southern boundaries were settled in 1893, whilst the boundary towards
Persia was demarcated between March, 1903, and May, 1905. The area may be
set down at about 250,000 sq. miles. The population is estimated at
6,000,000. Afghanistan consists chiefly of lofty, bare, uninhabited
tablelands, sandy barren plains, ranges of snow-covered mountains, offsets
of the Hindu Kush or the Himalaya, and deep ravines and valleys. Many of
the last are well watered and very fertile, but about four-fifths of the
whole surface is rocky, mountainous, and unproductive. The surface on the
north-east is covered with lofty ranges belonging to the Hindu Kush, whose
heights are often 18,000 and sometimes reach perhaps 25,000 feet. The whole
north-eastern portion of the country has a general elevation of over 6000
feet; but towards the south-west, in which direction the principal mountain
chains of the interior run, the general elevation declines to not more than
1600 feet. In the interior the mountains sometimes reach the height of
15,000 feet. Great part of the frontier towards India consists of the
Suleiman range, 12,000 feet high. There are numerous practicable avenues of
communication between Afghanistan and India, among the most extensively
used being the famous Khyber Pass, by which the River Kabul enters the
Punjab; the Gomul Pass, also leading to the Punjab; and the Bolan Pass on
the south, through which the route passes to Sind. Of the rivers the
largest is the Helmund, which flows in a south-westerly direction more than
400 miles, till it enters the Hamoon or Seistan swamp. It receives the
Arghandab, a considerable stream. Next in importance are the Kabul in the
north-east, which drains to the Indus, and the Hari Rud in the north-west,
which, like other Afghan streams, loses itself in the sand. The climate is
extremely cold in the higher, and intensely hot in the lower regions, yet
on the whole it is salubrious. The most common trees are the pine, oak,
birch, and walnut. In the valleys fruits, in the greatest variety and
abundance, grow wild. The principal crops are wheat (forming the staple
food of the people), barley, rice, and maize. Other crops are tobacco,
sugar-cane, and cotton. The chief domestic animals are the dromedary, the
horse, ass, and mule, the ox, sheep with large fine fleeces and enormous
fat tails, and goats; of wild animals there are the tiger, bears, leopards,
wolves, jackal, hyena, foxes, &c. The chief towns are Kabul (the capital),
Kandahar, Ghuzni, and Herat. The inhabitants belong to different races, but
the Afghans proper form the great mass of the people. They are allied in
blood to the Persians, and are divided into a number of tribes, among which
the Duranis and Ghiljis are the most important. The Afghans, claiming
descent from King Saul, are called by their own ancient chroniclers
Beni-Israel. They are bold, hardy, and warlike, fond of freedom and
resolute in maintaining it, but of a restless, turbulent temper, and much
given to plunder. Tribal dissensions are constantly in existence, and
seldom or never do all the Afghans pay allegiance to the nominal ruler of
their country. Their language (Pushtu) is distinct from the Persian, though
it contains a great number of Persian words, and is written, like the
Persian, with the Arabic characters. In religion they are Mahommedans of
the Sunnite sect.
After having been subjugated by Alexander the Great, the country of the
Afghans fell successively under the sway, actual or nominal, of Parthians,
Seleucidae, Persians, and Arabs. Djinghiz Khan conquered Afghanistan in the
twelfth century and Timur in the fourteenth. In 1504 Sultan Baber took
Cabul and founded the Mogul dynasty in India; Afghanistan thus formed part
of the great empire of Delhi. In 1738 the country was conquered by the
Persians under Nadir Shah. On his death in 1747 Ahmed Shah, one of his
generals, obtained the sovereignty of Afghanistan, and became the founder
of a dynasty which lasted about eighty years. At the end of that time Dost
Mohammed, the ruler of Cabul, had acquired a preponderating influence in
the country. On account of his dealings with the Russians the British
resolved to dethrone him and restore Shah Shuja, a former ruler. In April,
1839, a British army under Sir John Keane entered Afghanistan, occupied
Cabul, and placed Shah Shuja on the throne, a force of 8000 being left to
support the new sovereign. Sir W. Macnaghten remained as envoy at Cabul,
with Sir Alexander Burnes as assistant envoy. The Afghans soon organized a
widespread insurrection, which came to a head on 2nd Nov., 1841, when
Burnes and a number of British officers, besides women and children, were
murdered, Macnaghten being murdered not long after. The other British
leaders now made a treaty with the Afghans, at whose head was Akbar, son of
Dost Mohammed, agreeing to withdraw the forces from the country, while the
Afghans were to furnish them with provisions and escort them on their way.
On 6th Jan., 1842, the British left Cabul and began their most disastrous
retreat. The cold was intense, they had almost no food--for the treacherous
Afghans did not fulfil their promises--and day after day they were assailed
by bodies of the enemy. By the 13th 26,000 persons, including
camp-followers, women and children, were destroyed. Some were kept as
prisoners, but only one man, Dr. Brydon, reached Jelalabad, which, as well
as Kandahar, was still held by British troops. In a few months General
Pollock, with a fresh army from India, retook Cabul and soon finished the
war. Shah Shuja having been assassinated, Dost Mohammed again obtained the
throne of Cabul, and acquired extensive power in Afghanistan. He joined
with the Sikhs against the British, but afterwards made an offensive and
defensive alliance with the latter. He died in 1863, having nominated his
son Shere Ali his successor. Shere Ali entered into friendly relations with
the British, but in 1878, having repulsed a British envoy and refused to
receive a British mission (a Russian mission being meantime at his Court),
war was declared against him, and the British troops entered Afghanistan.
They met with comparatively little resistance; the Ameer fled to Turkestan,
where he soon after died; and his son Yakoob Khan having succeeded him
concluded a treaty with the British (at Gandamak, May, 1879), in which a
certain extension of the British frontier, the control by Britain of the
foreign policy of Afghanistan, and the residence of a British envoy in
Cabul, were the chief stipulations. Not long after this settlement, the
British resident at Cabul, Sir Louis P. Cavagnari, and the other members of
the mission were treacherously attacked and slain by the Afghans, and
troops had again to be sent into the country. Cabul was again occupied, and
Kandahar and Ghazni were also relieved; while Yakoob Khan was sent to
imprisonment in India. In 1880 Abdur-Rahman, a grandson of Dost Mohammed,
was recognized by Britain as ameer of the country. He was on friendly terms
with the British during his reign, which ended with his death in 1901, his
son Habibullah being his successor. He had adopted the title of
Sirajul-Millat wa ud-din, 'Lamp of the Nation and Religion'. In a treaty
signed on 21st March, 1905, the Ameer recognized the engagements which his
father had entered into with the British Government. Encroachments by the
Russians on territory claimed by Afghanistan almost brought about a rupture
between Britain and Russia in 1885, and led to the delimitation of the
frontier of Afghanistan on the side next Russia. On 31st Aug., 1907, an
Anglo-Russian Convention relating to Afghanistan was signed. The Russian
Government recognized Afghanistan as outside the Russian sphere of
influence, whilst Great Britain undertook neither to annex nor occupy any
portion of Afghanistan. In spite of German intrigues, the Ameer refused, in
1915, the inducements held out to him to abandon his British ally. He was
assassinated on 20th Feb., 1919, and was succeeded by his third son
Amanullah. The new Ameer sought to gain popularity with his subjects by
embarking on an unprovoked war of aggression upon India. Hostilities broke
out in May, 1919, and ended with a peace treaty signed at Rawalpindi on 8th
Aug., 1919. In 1922 the first Afghan minister was appointed to London
(instead of to Delhi).--BIBLIOGRAPHY: MacGregor, _Gazetteer of
Afghanistan_; Malleson, _History of Afghanistan_; Forbes, _The Afghan
Wars_; Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, _Forty-one Years in India_; J. G. Lyons,
_Afghanistan: the Buffer State_.
AFIUM-KARA-HISSAR ('opium-black-castle'), a city of Asia Minor, 170 miles
E.S.E. of Constantinople, with manufactures of woollen goods, and a trade
in opium (_afium_), &c. Pop. about 20,000.
AFRAG'OLA, a town of Italy, about 6 miles N.N.E. of Naples. Pop. 23,155.
AFRA'NIUS, Lucius, a Roman comic dramatist who flourished about the
beginning of the first century B.C., and of whose writings only fragments
remain.
[Illustration]
AF'RICA, one of the three great divisions of the Old World, and the second
in extent of the five principal continents of the globe, forming a vast
peninsula joined to Asia by the Isthmus of Suez. It is of a compact form,
with few important projections or indentations, and having therefore a very
small extent of coast-line (about 16,000 miles, or much less than that of
Europe) in proportion to its area. This continent extends from 37deg 21' N.
lat. to 34deg 51' S. lat., and the extreme points, Cape Blanco and Cape
Agulhas, are nearly 5000 miles apart. From west to east, between Cape
Verde, lon. 17deg 34' W., and Cape Guardafui, lon. 51deg 16' E., the
distance is about 4600 miles. The area is estimated at 11,500,000 sq.
miles, or more than three times that of Europe. The islands belonging to
Africa are not numerous, and, except Madagascar, none of them are large.
They include Madeira, the Canaries, Cape Verde Islands, Fernando Po,
Principe, Sao Thome, Ascension, St. Helena, Mauritius, Reunion, the
Comoros, Socotra, &c.
The interior of Africa is as yet imperfectly known, but we know enough of
the continent as a whole to be able to point to some general features that
characterize it. One of these is that almost all round it at no great
distance from the sea, and, roughly speaking, parallel with the coast-line,
we find ranges of mountains or elevated lands forming the outer edges of
interior plateaux. The most striking feature of Northern Africa is the
immense tract known as the Sahara or Great Desert, which is enclosed on the
north by the Atlas Mountains (greatest height, 12,000 to 15,000 feet), the
plateau of Barbary and that of Barqa, on the east by the mountains along
the west coast of the Red Sea, on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, and on
the south by the Sudan. The Sahara is by no means the sea of sand it has
sometimes been represented: it contains elevated plateaux and even
mountains radiating in all directions, with habitable valleys between. A
considerable nomadic population is scattered over the habitable parts, and
in the more favoured regions there are settled communities. The Sudan,
which lies to the south of the Sahara, and separates it from the more
elevated plateau of Southern Africa, forms a belt of pastoral country
across Africa, and includes the countries on the Niger, around Lake Tchad
(or Chad), and eastwards to the elevated region of Abyssinia. Southern
Africa as a whole is much more fertile and well watered than Northern
Africa, though it also has a desert tract of considerable extent (the
Kalahari Desert). This division of the continent consists of a tableland,
or series of tablelands, of considerable elevation and great diversity of
surface, exhibiting hollows filled with great lakes, and terraces over
which the rivers break in falls and rapids, as they find their way to the
low-lying coast tracts. The mountains which enclose Southern Africa are
mostly much higher on the east than on the west, the most northerly of the
former being those of Abyssinia, with heights of 10,000 to 14,000 or 16,000
feet, while the eastern edge of the Abyssinian plateau presents a steep
unbroken line of 7000 feet in height for many hundred miles. Farther south,
and between the great lakes and the Indian Ocean, we find Mounts Kenya and
Kilimanjaro (19,500 feet), the loftiest in Africa, covered with perpetual
snow. Of the continuation of this mountain boundary we shall only mention
the Drakenberg Mountains, which stretch to the southern extremity of the
continent, reaching, in Cathkin Peak, Natal, the height of over 10,000
feet. Of the mountains that form the western border the highest are the
Cameroon Mountains, which rise to a height of 13,000 feet at the inner
angle of the Gulf of Guinea. The average elevation of the southern plateau
is from 3000 to 4000 feet.
The Nile is the only great river of Africa which flows into the
Mediterranean. It receives its waters primarily from the great lake
Victoria Nyanza, which lies under the equator, and in its upper course is
fed by tributary streams of great size, but for the last 1200 miles of its
course it has not a single affluent. It drains an area of more than
1,000,000 sq. miles. The Indian Ocean receives numerous rivers; but the
only great river of South Africa which enters that ocean is the Zambezi,
the fourth in size of the continent, and having in its course the Victoria
Falls, one of the greatest waterfalls in the world. In Southern Africa
also, but flowing westward and entering the Atlantic, is the Congo, which
takes its origin from a series of lakes and marshes in the interior, is fed
by great tributaries, and is the first in volume of all the African rivers,
carrying to the ocean more water than the Mississippi. Unlike most of the
African rivers, the mouth of the Congo forms an estuary. Of the other
Atlantic rivers, the Senegal, the Gambia, and the Niger are the largest,
the last being third among African streams.
With the exception of Lake Tchad there are no great lakes in the northern
division of Africa, whereas in the number and magnificence of its lakes the
southern division almost rivals North America. Here are the Victoria and
Albert Nyanza, Lakes Tanganyika, Nyasa, Shirwa, Bangweulu, Moero, and other
lakes. Of these the Victoria and Albert belong to the basin of the Nile;
Tanganyika, Bangweulu, and Moero to that of the Congo; Nyasa, by its
affluent the Shire, to the Zambezi. Lake Tchad on the borders of the
northern desert region is now known to be much smaller than was formerly
believed, but varies in area according to the season. Lake Ngami in the far
south is now a mere swamp.
The climate of Africa is mainly influenced by the fact that it lies almost
entirely within the tropics. In the equatorial belt, both north and south,
rain is abundant and vegetation very luxuriant, dense tropical forests
prevailing for about 10deg on either side of the line. To the north and
south of the equatorial belt the rainfall diminishes, and the forest region
is succeeded by an open pastoral and agricultural country. This is followed
by the rainless regions of the Sahara on the north and the Kalahari Desert
on the south, extending beyond the tropics, and bordering on the
agricultural and pastoral countries of the north and south coasts, which
lie entirely in the temperate zone. The low coast regions of Africa are
almost everywhere unhealthy, the Atlantic coast within the tropics being
the most fatal region to Europeans.
Among mineral productions may be mentioned gold, which is found in the
rivers of West Africa (hence the name Gold Coast), and in Southern Africa,
most abundantly in the Transvaal; diamonds have been found in large numbers
in recent years in the south; iron, copper, lead, tin, and coal are also
found.--Among plants are the baobab, the date-palm (important as a food
plant in the north), the doum-palm, the oil-palm, the wax-palm, the
shea-butter tree, trees yielding caoutchouc, the papyrus, the castor-oil
plant, indigo, the coffee-plant, heaths with beautiful flowers, aloes, &c.
Among cultivated plants are wheat, maize, millet, and other grains, cotton,
coffee, cassava, ground-nut, yam, banana, tobacco, various fruits, &c. As
regards both plants and animals, Northern Africa, adjoining the
Mediterranean, is distinguished from the rest of Africa in its great
agreement with Southern Europe.--Among the most characteristic African
animals are the lion, hyena, jackal, gorilla, chimpanzee, baboon, African
elephant (never domesticated, yielding much ivory to trade), hippopotamus,
rhinoceros, giraffe, zebra, quagga, antelopes in great variety and immense
numbers.--Among birds are the ostrich, the secretary-bird or serpent-eater,
the honey-guide cuckoo, sacred ibis, guinea fowl.--The reptiles include the
crocodile, chameleon, and serpents of various kinds, some of them very
venomous. Among insects are locusts, scorpions, the tsetse-fly whose bite
is so fatal to cattle, and white-ants.
The great races of which the population of Africa mainly consists are the
Eastern Hamites (who are not a distinct race but a blend), the Semites, the
Negroes, and the Bantus. To the Semitic stock belong the Arabs, who form a
considerable portion of the population in Egypt and along the north coast,
while a portion of the inhabitants of Abyssinia is of the same race. The
Hamites are represented, according to Sergi, by the Copts of Egypt, the
Berbers, Kabyles, &c., of Northern Africa, and the Somali, Danakil, &c., of
East Africa. The Negro races occupy a vast territory in the Sudan and
Central Africa, while the Bantus occupy the greater part of Southern Africa
from a short distance north of the equator, and include the Kaffirs,
Bechuanas, Swahili, and allied races. In the extreme south-west are the
Hottentots and Bushmen (the latter a dwarfish race), distinct from the
other races as well as, probably, from each other. In Madagascar there is a
large Malay element. To these may be added the Fulahs on the Niger and the
Nubians on the Nile and elsewhere, who are of a brownish colour, and are
often regarded as distinct from the other races, though sometimes classed
with the Negroes. In religion a great proportion of the inhabitants are
heathens of the lowest type; Mohammedanism numbers a large number of
adherents in North Africa, and is rapidly spreading in the Sudan;
Christianity prevails only among the Copts, the Abyssinians, and the
natives of Madagascar, the last-named having been converted in recent
times. Elsewhere the missionaries seem to have made but little progress.
Over a great part of the continent civilization is at a low ebb, yet in
some parts the natives have shown considerable skill in agriculture and
various mechanical arts, as in weaving and metal working. Of African trade
two features are the caravans that traverse great distances, and the trade
in slaves that still widely prevails, though it has been greatly restricted
in recent years. Among articles exported from Africa are palm-oil,
diamonds, ivory, ostrich feathers, wool, cotton, gold, esparto, caoutchouc,
&c. The population is estimated at 180,000,000. Of these a small number are
of European origin--French in Algeria and Morocco, British and Dutch at the
southern extremity.
Great areas in Africa have been apportioned among European Powers as
protectorates or spheres of influence. Among native States still more or
less independent are Egypt, Abyssinia, Waday, Bagirmi, Liberia. To Britain
belong the Cape Province, Natal, the Orange Free State and Transvaal, with
Rhodesia, &c., farther north, a region in Eastern Africa extending from the
sea to Lake Victoria and the headwaters of the Nile, Nigeria, Gold Coast,
and other tracts on the west, with Mauritius, &c.; to France belong Algeria
and Tunis, Senegambia, Zone of Morocco, territory north of the Lower Congo,
Madagascar, &c.; the Portuguese possess Angola on the west coast and
Mozambique on the east; Italy has a territory on the Red Sea, and part of
Somaliland; Spain has a part of the coast of the Sahara; the Congo State is
a colony of Belgium; Zanzibar is merged in Kenya Colony. Germany was
deprived of her possessions in Africa during the European War, and the
Peace Conference of 1919 appointed Great Britain, France, and Belgium to
act as mandatories of the League of Nations.
The name Africa was given by the Romans at first only to a small district
in the immediate neighbourhood of Carthage. The Greeks called Africa Libya,
and the Romans often used the same name. The first African exploring
expedition on record was sent by Pharaoh Necho about the end of the seventh
century B.C. to circumnavigate the continent. The navigators, who were
Phoenicians, were absent three years, and according to report they
accomplished their object. Fifty or a hundred years later, Hanno, a
Carthaginian, made a voyage down the west coast and seems to have got as
far as the Bight of Benin. The east coast was probably known to the
ancients as far as Mozambique and the island of Madagascar. Of modern
nations the Portuguese were the first to take in hand the exploration of
Africa. In 1433 they doubled Cape Bojador, in 1441 reached Cape Blanco, in
1442 Cape Verde, in 1462 they discovered Sierra Leone. In 1484 the
Portuguese Diego Cam discovered the mouth of the Congo. In 1486 Bartholomew
Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached Algoa Bay. A few years later
a Portuguese traveller visited Abyssinia. In 1497 Vasco da Gama, who was
commissioned to find a route by sea to India, sailed round the southern
extremity as far as Zanzibar, discovering Natal on his way. The first
European settlements were those of the Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique,
soon after 1500. In 1650 the Dutch made a settlement at the Cape. In 1770
James Bruce reached the source of the Blue Nile in Abyssinia. For the
exploration of the interior of Africa, however, little was done before the
close of the eighteenth century.