Earlier this week while Googling for images of 19th Century Afghan bridges (well, everyone has their own idea of fun!) I stumbled across a somewhat amazing discovery: an October 2001 article from Boston University's "Bridge" newspaper, about a Waziri tribal banner that was used in at least one battle with British forces in 1894 and donated to the school's Library years later by the son of an Anglo-Indian civil servant who was part of a mission to delineate the border with Afghanistan when the battle took place.
Here's a photo from the article, showing an archivist standing with the banner rather inartfully gathered in his hands:
…and here's a link to the article:
link
For most of my life I've been interested in the Anglo-Afghan wars and the history of the North-West Frontier. One of the things I've learned is that detailed descriptions, photos, and illustrations of the flags used by the native forces in these campaigns are few and far between.
If I still lived in NYC I would get in touch with the BU Library myself and -- so long as the flag is still there, which there's no reason for it not to be -- do my best to arrange a visit and spend a day trying to get some decent color photos of the flag FULLY UNFURLED, but… I live in Los Angeles, so that's not happening.
The small crosses visible in the photo don't look like any Pashtun symbols I know, but I'm no expert and I know I'd love to see the whole flag, which happens to be described as being triangular -- the shape Pashtun tribal flags are almost always described as being.
So my question for my fellow TMP members is…
If the flag is still there, is one of us willing and able to visit Boston University, take some pics and post them here for the rest of us to see?
