Archives and Libraries for the Study of Afghanistan

By Munazza Ebtikar

More than four decades of continuous war and conflict has impacted the preservation and access to archival material in Afghanistan. As official and non-official holdings within the country were subject to heavy censorship in the 20^th century by various Afghan governments, the creation of colonial and imperial archives became important sites for knowledge production on Afghanistan and its people. From the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s onwards, research centers, archives, and institutes were established largely outside of Afghanistan to provide information on the conditions of the country due to the threat of insecurity and censorship in Afghanistan itself.

The past two decades have marked an exciting turn for students and scholars of Afghanistan as new holdings within and outside the country have been established, expanded, and increasingly made easier to access. This is in large part due to the amount of funding and the new-found international attention given to Afghanistan since the early 2000s. In recent years, previously classified government documents from various countries are becoming declassified, and archival material is being digitized for public use. Other archives and holdings, such as the archives of the Afghan Presidential Palace (ARG) and the Archives of the Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA) are in the process of becoming accessible to researchers in the near future.

This is a list of both physical and digital holdings currently accessible to students and researchers for the study of Afghanistan. Although the majority of the holdings, especially ones that are digitized, are easy to access for the public, the physical holdings in Afghanistan would require contacting the friendly staff –the majority of whom speak English and local languages such as Persian and Pashto– in the archives and libraries directly.      

This list is organized alphabetically. Please note that due to COVID-19 access policies to archives and libraries might change. 

 Afghan Media Resource Center (AMRC)

^{Content warning: Some images in this archive are graphic depictions of violence and may be disturbing to viewers.}

The Afghan Media Resource Center (AMRC) has the largest collection of audiovisual material on Afghanistan from the periods between 1986 and 2012. This collection includes photographs (94,652), video footage (1,175 hours), and audio material (356 hours) of all aspects of Afghan life. The majority of the collection is on the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989), the years of the communist regime (1989-1992), and the Civil War period (1992-1994).

AMRC was founded in 1986 by a team of Afghan media workers in Peshawer during the Soviet-Afghan war with funding from Boston University. AMRC was established to allow Afghans to document the war throughout the country for an international audience. Afghans from all political parties, ethnic groups, and regions were trained by the director of AMRC, Haji Sayed Daud, in print journalism, photojournalism, and video news production to capture and disseminate material for international agencies and television networks. In 2016, the AMRC archive, preserved at the Library of Congress, was digitized.

This digital archive is available via the ‘Internet Archive’, it is open access to the public and the content is in English. Users can easily search and navigate the collection through the search engine and relevant search filters on the left-hand side of the screen.

Archif-e Milli (National Archives) of Afghanistan

The Archif-e Milli (National Archives) of Afghanistan is located in Kabul and initially built as a palace in 1890 during the reign of King Amir Abdul Rahman Khan. Prior to it becoming an archive, it served as a military academy, an Italian embassy, and a police garrison. The archives are divided into two sections: manuscripts and historical documents. It houses over 190,000 rare manuscripts, personal and historic documents, newspapers, photographs, and books in local languages (mainly Persian) dating back to the 15^th century. The material is mostly locked in vaults in the basement of the building.

The items on display in the archives are photographed copies of the originals. The archivists in the National Archives are friendly and helpful, they require a personal ID (a university card is acceptable) and a short registration process for access where you are asked to provide your occupation and contact information. The best way to navigate around the archives is consulting the friendly staff: knowledge of Persian or Pashto is encouraged.

Bibliotheca Afghanica of the Swiss Afghanistan-Institut 

The Swiss Afghanistan-Institut in Budendorf, Switzerland, emerged from the private collection of Paul and Veronika Bucherer-Dietschi, initially established in 1975, and later became part of the Bibliotheca Afghanica. During the Soviet-Afghan war, the Bibliotheca Afghanica acted as an information center, collecting and disseminating information on the political situation in Afghanistan.

The archive houses more than 70,000 historic photographs of Afghanistan. The photographs date back to 1869, with the visit of Amir Shir Ali Khan to India (r. 1863-1879). Some of the photographs in this collection include the British Royal Engineers’ photographs of Britain’s military activities in the second Anglo-Afghan war (1878-1880) and the Souvenir d’Afghanistan collection of 1924, which was created by the Afghan ambassador in France to showcase the country as a modern one, in line with western ideals, as seen through the images of Afghan royalty dressed in western apparel or images of buildings and cars.

In order to collect and preserve these photographs and make them accessible to the public, the project Phototheca Afghanica was launched in 1994. Since 2019, more than 5,000 of these images, with their detailed description, have become available in open access on their website. Accessing the physical archive, however, is by appointment only; a request in order to access the archive must be made in writing or over telephone. The digital archive is in English and easy to navigate.

Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Documentaires sur l’Afghanistan (CEREDAF) in Paris

CEREDAF is the only Afghan archive in France. It was created by the Amitié Franco-Afghane (AFRANE) in 1983, an NGO which was established to provide humanitarian aid to Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan war. AFRANE reported on their humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan through their quarterly magazine, Les Nouvelles d’Afghanistan, which runs to this day. The quarterly magazine became an important information publication on the condition of Afghanistan to the francophone audience during decades of war.

CEREDAF is located within AFRANE in Paris, and houses more than 1,200 books, 1,800 monographs, and 70 periodicals. The Centre includes a video, photo, and map library. They also publish books and a monthly bulletin on Afghanistan. Access to the archive is by appointment via email only, and knowledge of spoken French is encouraged.

Hiromi Lorraine Sakata Field Recordings at the University of Washington Ethnomusicology Archives

The Hiromi Lorraine Sakata collection in the Ethnomusicology Archives of the University of Washington contains over 50 hours of field recordings of traditional Afghan music. This collection is based on the recordings collected by the ethnomusicologist, Hiromi Lorraine Sakata, during her research in the country in the 1960s and 1970s.

The recordings deposited in the archives originate from two research trips, one in 1966-1967 and another in 1971-1973. The first set of recordings comprises 25 hours of singers and instrumentalists from Kabul, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Nangarhar, Herat, Balkh, and Nuristan. The second comprises 26 hours of recordings from Herat, Kabul, Badakhshan, Hazarajat and Kandahar. Access to the archives is by appointment only.

India Office Records in the British Library: Afghanistan Resources

The India Office Records in the British Library holds a collection on Afghanistan spanning from the 17^th to the 20^th century. The collection contains Mountstuart Elphinstone’s Mission to the Afghan Kingdom (1808-1809), records relating to the Anglo-Afghan Wars (1838-1842, 1878-1880 and 1919), and the Records of the British Legation at Kabul (1923-1948). The Afghanistan collections has helpful guides and catalogues published on their official page.

Ketab Khane-ye ‘Ama (Public Library) of Afghanistan

The Ketab Khane-ye ‘Ama (Public Library) of Afghanistan is the largest and oldest public library in the country. It contains more than 150,000 books, periodicals, newspapers, and manuscripts dating from the 16^th century on Afghanistan and beyond. The building was made in 1966 and has a number of study rooms. Although physically accessing the library is easy, it does not have a catalogue and one would have to rely on the librarians – who speak Persian and Pashto – for assistance. The library does not have a website, the best way to reach it is to visit their physical location next to the Afghan presidential palace.

The Perry-Castañeda Library (PCL) of the University of Texas at Austin

The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas at Austin has a collection of maps of Afghanistan. These maps are a part of their special interest category, and they include maps of the country produced by the CIA and the Soviets, some of which date back to the 1800s. The maps in this collection are digitized and accessible to the public.

The Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University (ACKU)

The Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University (ACKU) has a textual and digital collection of Afghanistan-related material.

ACKU was initially inspired by the work of the archeologist and historian Louis Dupree, whose work was continued by his wife, the historian and archivist Nancy Dupree, after his death in 1989. During decades of turmoil in Afghanistan, ACKU (previously known as ACBAR Resource and Information Center) became an important repository of documents in Afghanistan. The Centre, which was inaugurated in 2013, is the largest of its kind in the country. It is located on the Kabul University campus and has user-friendly facilities: a library, a research center, a lecture hall, and conference rooms for visitors. ACKU houses more than 100,000 titles in English and local languages, including Persian and Pashto. This collection includes books, newspapers, periodicals, magazines, and journals, among others. Their digital collection is also one of the most extensive digital collections of Afghanistan-related material. It is open access and one can search in three languages (English, Persian, and Pashto). 

The Afghanistan Digital Library in New York University (NYU)

The Afghanistan Digital Library in New York University (NYU) is a digital collection of Afghanistan-related material covering the period between 1871 and 1930.

The Afghanistan Digital Library was launched in 2005 to digitize material from the New York University Library, the British Library, and various private collections. It has a digital collection of over 500 rare books, serials, pamphlets, and manuals. The digital collection is open access, and one can search it in Persian and English.

The African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED) of the Library of Congress

The African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED) of the Library of Congress houses the Persian Language Rare Materials Collection. This collection has more than 100 digitized lithographic books from and about Afghanistan dating back to the 1800s. These lithographic books include historiographies of Afghanistan, books pertaining to law and jurisprudence, manuals for training the Afghan armed forces and teaching Arabic, and collections of poetry. These works are mainly in Persian, and some are in Pashto. The digital archive is open access, it has a search engine with necessary search filters in the left-hand side of the screen. The website is in English, but titles are in English and Persian.

The Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection at the University of Nebraska Omaha

The Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection at the University of Nebraska Omaha, which is part of the Criss Library Archives and Special Collections, has the largest collection of Afghanistan-related material in the United States.

This collection was donated to the University of Nebraska Omaha by Arthur Paul, who served as an economic advisor to the Afghan government in the 1960s. It contains over 20,000 titles in more than 20 languages dating from the 18^th century to the present. The collection includes books, periodicals, microforms, maps, documents, newspapers, dissertations, organizational documents, and personal papers.

There are also hours of interviews conducted as part of the Afghan Oral History Project (46 hours of cassette recordings of Afghans personal experiences from the Soviet-Afghan war onwards), which have not been digitized.

They have a large digitized collection of books and newspapers in English and local languages (Persian and Pashto). The digitized collection is open access and, although it does not have a search engine, it is easy to navigate through the search filters.

The Harrison Forman Collection at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

The Harrison Forman Collection is housed in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries’ American Geographical Society (AGS) Library. This collection comprises photographs documenting the life and culture of Afghanistan from the mid-1920s to the mid-1970s. It covers 30,000 black and white negatives, 2,000 Ektachrome and 49,000 Kodachrome transparencies.

This collection was constituted by Harrison Forman (1904-1978), who was a journalist, photographer, and explorer. It was donated to the American Geographical Society Library by Harrison Forman’s widow, Sandra Forman, in 1987.

The digital collection has over 1,4000 images of Afghanistan between the 1950s and 1960s. It is open access and has a search engine in English with necessary search filters on the left-hand side of the screen.

The Hoover Archives at Stanford University

The Hoover Archives in Stanford University has over 100 physical collections on Afghanistan. A featured collection includes the Afghan Partisan Serials Collection, which is a collection of more than four thousand issues of newspapers, journals, and magazines published in Persian, Pashto, Arabic, and English. The holdings in this collection are related to the political conditions of Afghanistan and include voices and perspectives from diverse political parties and governments. Some other collections include the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) Issuance, which consists of material in the form of serial issues, pamphlets, leaflets, postcards, songs, and videos relating to the condition of women in Afghanistan, and the Laura Rauch Photograph Collection, which comprises photographs depicting the American invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Hoover Archives, created to document war, revolution, and peace in the last century and a half, was founded by Herbert Hoover in 1919. Although some of the Afghanistan holdings is digitized, it can only be accessed in the reading room or by Stanford-affiliated users. In order to currently access the Hoover archives, due to the COVID 19 pandemic, an advance notice is required by contacting the archives.

The Wilson Center Digital Archive

The Wilson Center Digital Archive has a project titled ‘The Cold War International History Project’ (CWIHP), which holds declassified historical documents by governments (diplomatic cables, correspondence, meeting minutes, etc.) on all sides of the Cold War. Their featured collections, ‘Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan’ and ‘End of the Cold War’, include Afghanistan-related documents dating back to the 1960s in the form of memos, cables, and Politburo decisions from US and Russian archives. The digital collection is open access and the collections are organized by dates and themes.

The World Digital Library (WDL) in the Library of Congress

The World Digital Library (WDL) has digitized the Afghanistan collections of the Library of Congress and other world libraries, such as the British Library, the National Library and Archives of Iran, and UNESCO, as part of the Afghanistan Project.

This collection includes 163,000 pages of rare books, manuscripts, maps, prints, photographs, newspapers, and periodicals from Afghanistan and the broader Persianate and Islamicate region (including Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Iran, etc.) in various languages dating back to the 1300s. Some highlights of this digital library are old maps, and collections of popular Afghan journals and magazines from the mid-20^th century, such as Zhvandūn, Kābul, Anīs for Children, Kandahār, and Adab. It has a search engine in English, and it is easy to navigate.

Acknowledgements:

A special thanks to Mejgan Massoumi and Ali Karimi for their helpful additions to this list, and the editors of HAZINE for their helpful suggestions.

Munazza Ebtikar is a PhD candidate in St Johns College, University of Oxford. Her doctoral thesis is a historical and ethnographic study of war and memory in Afghanistan. She holds a Master’s in Philosophy from Oxford and three bachelor’s degrees from UC Berkeley.