Amir into King

Pompous street criers strode last week through the narrow, vile and crowded thoroughfares of Kabul, capital of Afghanistan. What the criers intoned in majestic Persian, their attendants translated freely into vulgar Pushtoo. Soon the 100,000 citizens of Kabul rejoiced that there Amir* ("Sovereign Lord") Amanullah Khan had conferred upon himself by proclamation the title "King."

By treaty (1921) Great Britain recognized the complete independence of Afghanistan. At Kabul, the self-proclaimed King and his well-armed and warlike people command all the northern passes through the Hindu Kush--the highways trod by Alexander the Great, by Genghis Khan. Though the city of Kabul is an unredeemed stench hole, the adjacent palaces of potent nobles lie amid perfumed gardens, nestle below the snow-clad stupendous Hindu Kush.

*Assumed by the early princes of Afghanistan, Sind and Bokhara with a significance roughly equivalent to "Sultan" ; elsewhere in the East equivalent to "Commander," "Lord" (in the British sense) or simply "chieftain." The Occidental "Admiral" was derived or corrupted from the Oriental "Amir," "Emir," "Ameer," etc.