Habibullah Khan

Habibullah Khan Barakzai (2 July 1872 – 20 February 1919) was Emir of Afghanistan from 1901 until his assassination in 1919. The eldest son of Emir Abdur Rahman Khan, he succeeded his father by right of primogeniture in October 1901, and his grandfather was Mohammad Afzal Khan. ¹

He was a relatively reform-minded ruler who worked to modernise his country, and he kept Afghanistan neutral in the First World War despite strong Ottoman and German efforts to enlist it on their side. ¹

Habibullah was born in Samarkand in 1872, the eldest son of Emir Abdur Rahman, into a Pashtun family. The English article gives the date as 2 July 1872 and cites Vogelsang's history of the Afghans for it; the Arabic article and Wikidata give 3 June 1872 instead, and Wikidata also carries Tashkent alongside Samarkand as a birthplace. This museum follows the cited article dating and records the variants in the data note. ^{1 2 3}

During his reign he worked to bring modern medicine and other technology to Afghanistan, and many people who had been forced into exile by his father were able to return under a general amnesty he decreed. ¹

In 1903 he founded the Habibia High School, as well as a military academy, instituted various legal reforms and repealed many of the harshest criminal penalties. His chief adviser Abdul Latif was sentenced to death in 1903 for apostasy, and the internal intelligence organisation his father had put in place was dismantled. ¹

In 1901 he passed a law forcing Hindu men to wear yellow turbans and women to wear a yellow veil in public, in order to distinguish them from Muslims. ¹

In March 1909 the Afghan constitutionalist movement, a coalition of Islamic scholars, educators and intellectuals, petitioned him to move from absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy; viewing it as a threat to his authority, he accused the signatories of conspiring to assassinate him, executed seven of the leaders and imprisoned the rest. ¹

In May 1912 he faced the only crisis of his career, the Khost rebellion led by Jehandad Khan, a rival claimant to the throne; it ended in August of the same year when the rebels were given concessions. ¹

Habibullah maintained Afghanistan's neutrality in the First World War despite strenuous efforts by the Ottoman Sultan and a German military mission to enlist Afghanistan on their side, and he greatly reduced tensions with British India, signing a treaty of friendship in 1905 and paying an official state visit in 1907. While in India, he was initiated into Freemasonry at Lodge Concordia. ^{1 2}

In January 1919 he went on a hunt to Kalagosh, in Laghman Province, leaving his third son Amanullah as regent in Kabul. During the night of 19 February 1919 a military officer, Shuja al-Dawla Ghorbandi, slipped past his bodyguards and shot him at very close range, killing him. ¹

His brother Nasrullah Khan briefly succeeded him and held power for a week, between 21 and 28 February 1919, before being ousted and imprisoned by Amanullah Khan. ¹

The article lists eleven wives and numerous consorts, and twenty-nine sons and thirty-eight daughters; among his sons was Amanullah, who became Emir and then King of Afghanistan. This museum records the family only so far as understanding his reign requires. ¹

No article text names a school for him. The English article's infobox gives his religion as Sunni Islam; the Arabic article's infobox gives Islam, generically; Wikidata carries no religion value. Under the museum's two-source rule the record therefore stays unknown, with the single structured attestation preserved in the data file. ^{1 2 3}

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.