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"The Man Who Would Be King" (1888) is a story by Rudyard Kipling about two British adventurers in British India who become kings of Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan. The story was first published in The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Tales (1888); it also appeared in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Child Stories (1895) and numerous later editions of that collection. It has been adapted for other media a number of times.
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The Kalasha, or Kalash, are an Indo-Aryan indigenous people residing in the Chitral District of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.
Aman ul-Mulk was the Mehtar of Chitral, Ghizer, Yasen and Ishkoman and Suzerain of Kafiristan. He ruled the State of Chitral from 1857 to 1892. His rule saw Chitral reach its territorial peak, extending from Ishkamun in Gilgit Agency to Asmar in Afghanistan. His death led to the Siege of Chitral, an instance of high drama which goes down in the annals of British India as an epic of enormous courage and determination.
William Watts McNair was a British surveyor, the first British explorer of Kafiristan.
References
- ↑ Scott Robertson, Sir George, The Kafirs of the Hindu-Kush, Lawrence and Bullen, 1896 (see 8 copies at Internet Archive)
- ↑ Vasunia, Phiroze (16 May 2013). The Classics and Colonial India. OUP Oxford. p. 85. ISBN 978-0199203239.
- ↑ Szabo, Albert; Barfield, Thomas Jefferson (1 January 1991). Afghanistan: An Atlas of Indigenous Domestic Architecture. Thomas Barfield. p. 229. ISBN 9780292704190.