Afghan leaders. His sketch of Kateb characterizes him as a devout Shia Muslim, highly regarded by the Qizilbash community of Kabul, as well as a leader among his people, the Hazaras, and an important source of information for the Persian mission about what was going on in the capital. In 1929, the Tajik outlaw Habib Ullah Kalakani, ousted Aman Ullah Khan and took control of Kabul for nine months (January to October 1929). During this uprising Kateb, who spent almost the entire period inside the city, kept a journal which was the basis for an unfinished monograph entitled Kitab-e Tadakoor-e Enqilab which he began shortly after the fall of Habib Ullah Kalakani. During the occupation, Kateb was forced to take part in a delegation sent by Kalakani to negotiate with Hazara groups opposing the Tajik leader. According to his account, he managed to subvert Kalakani's plans and caused the mission to fail. However, he and the mission's leader, Noor al-Din Agha, a Qizilbash Shiʿite from Kabul, paid a heavy price for this: both were sentenced to death by beating. Kateb alone survived the ordeal and was saved by a colleague. The Persian mission in Kabul, under a directive from Reza Shah to do what it could to aid the Shiʿites of Kabul, sent medicines to his house. He eventually recovered enough to travel the following year to Tehran for more medical care. After less than a year there, he returned to Kabul, where he died on 6 Shawal 1349/3 March 1931, at the age of sixty-eight or sixty-nine. Publications Kateb is best known for his books on Afghan history. During Habib Ullah's reign, he accepted two commissions to write a comprehensive history of Afghanistan covering events from the time of Ahmad Shah down through the reign of Habib Ullah Khan. The first was a history of Afghanistan entitled Tohfat ul-Habib (Ḥabib's Gift) in honor of the amir, but Habib Ullah Khan deemed the finished work unacceptable and ordered Kateb to start over. The revised version is the three-volume history of Afghanistan entitled Siraj al-Tawarikh (Lamp of Histories), an allusion to the amir's honorific “Lamp of the Nation and Religion” (Siraj al-mella waʾl-din). There were also problems in publishing it, the third volume never being completely printed. It is thought that the process of publishing the third volume lasted several years and only ended after Habib Ullah Khan's death. Some say