Legalizing Afghanistan: Pan-Islamic Jurists, Schools of Law, and a Constitutionalist Network in Kabul, 1901–31

With only superficial similarities to its magnetic role a century later, Afghanistan in 1901 provided an ideal space for Pan-Islamic networks, but of a very different nature. Far from a land-locked wilderness or perennial warzone, Kabul was a virtual harbor for itinerant Muslim scholars and technocrats from Ottoman Turkey to British India. Examining the sociolegal roots of Afghanistan’s first two constitutions (1923/1931), this study follows a team of legal experts from Constantinople to Kandahar and Damascus to Delhi—relaying institutional rivalries as much as visions of pax Islamica—as they converged in Kabul to constitute Afghanistan as an “Islamic” nation-state.