"Afghan Flags and Standards" Topic

Does anyone knows which flags and standards were used by the Afghan Regular Army during the 2nd Anglo-Afghan War?

Unfortunately, Well-sourced information on Afghan regular army unit flags post-dates the 1878-1880 war, and refers to the new version of the army inherited/founded by Abdur Rahman Khan.

Still, there are some specific references from different battles, the problem is there are not any I know of where there is a specific link to "regular" units carrying the flags, as opposed to tribal or ghazi forces.

The general rule is that Afghan standards were almost always triangular. There is a great illustration of Afghan regular cavalry in action against the British, showing an Afghan regular cav trooper in uniform with a triangular standard flying from a pole mounted on his back, similar to a Japanese Samurai standard. I've been wanting to convert that figure for some time now!

There is a web page with lots of solid info on the history of Afghan flags, if I was home I'd find the link for you, but I'm away in Italy and the Internet – at least where I'm staying -- is extremely slow and spotty, but if you just search on Google you may find it.

I have a page of "Afghan type" flags you may have for the asking. Just E-mail TVAG@att.net and I'll send them to you.

As cited, there appears never to have been anything like a formal system of flags among the Afghans, and while general styles were observed, there appear to be far too few surviving individual examples even to offer copies of them.

Consequently, while those I offer are quite authentic enough, being based on such examples as I currently can find, I do not feel they are good enough to charge for them.

The rest of the TVAG Flag Collections are meticulously researched and are worth their price. When the day comes when I can have the same confidence in an Afghan flags collection, they'll go into the catalog with everything else.

TVAG

I'm hoping this works, and the pic I referenced above now appears right below this line…

Thanks!

Oh, that's *cool*! Definitely going to have to convert one or two mounted Pathans/Baluchis to that style, oh Guru of questionable sanity.

What has been getting me is the proportion of standards to troops. I've been reading The Malakand Field Force, and it sounds like there's a standard for every 10 men or so!

Glad you guys like it. Yeah, it really does cry out to be modelled in miniature.

Lion, in reference to the abundance of standards, especially as used by Ghazis, I made a ton of very simple ones, solid but ragged strips of green, black, white, and red, and mounted them in little grouplings on small bases, to use as game markers, but also for pure visual appeal. Here's a not very good pic:

And here's a LINK to that site I referenced above, about the history of Afghan national flags/insignia, dating back to ancient times:

link

And an image of the black flag with white insignia, supposed to have benn used by Abdur Rahman Khan during his reign from 1880-1901: