James Rattray

Temple of 'Ahmed Shauh', King of Afghanistan

The current situation in Afghanistan in desperate. Posting memes found on Twitter doesn't mean anything and won't change a thing. Nothing will. But I do think about it and then I just have to go into the escapist dream world of history.

This is how the tomb of the King Aḥmad Shāh Durrānī (I know, a tautology, as shah already means king) who conquered Delhi and more or less founded modern Afghanistan, looked in 1848. The building is still there in Kandahar. James Rattray was a British Lieutenant who made a rather fascinating work with a lot of ethnographic lithographies from his own sketches. I have been looking at other pictures to see those stately mountains and even though it might be exaggerated in this it does seem that it is a beautiful city in the mountains.

#art #print #lithography #graphicprint #graphicart #JamesRattray #AhmadShah #tomb #Kandahar #Afghanistan #1848