This work is a lithographic print, published in Kabul, of the collected poems of 'Āyisha Durrānī, an Afghan poetess from the Durrani family, who was active in the second half of the 19th century. The poems include <em>qasidas</em> (a lyric form) and <em>ghazals </em>(a metrical form expressing the pain of loss and the beauty of love), and are arranged alphabetically according to <em>qāfiya</em> (the effect of rhyme). The collection was compiled during the reign of 'Abd al-Raḥmān Khān, emīr of Afghanistan from 1880 to 1901. The Durrani family led a Pashtun tribal empire in Afghanistan from 1747 to 1842. 'Āyisha Durrānī was the daughter of Yaʻqūb Ali Khān Barakzai and the wife of Tīmūr Shāh Durrānī (1742 or 1743–93), the second ruler of the dynasty. She was well educated in Arabic and Persian literature and in the Islamic canon. She is also credited with opening the first school for girls in Afghanistan. The manuscript that was the source of the lithograph print is in one hand, by an unidentified scribe writing in Nastaʻlīq script. The date of completion given in the manuscript is 1299 AH (1881–82). Lithographic printing was invented in Europe in the late 18th century and spread widely on the Indian subcontinent from the early 19th century onward, its popularity stemming from the relative ease with which it could be used to reproduce different scripts not based on the Latin alphabet. By the 1860s, lithographic printing had spread to Afghanistan, including Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat.
<br>Persian poetry; Poetry
Durrānī, 'Āyishah Afghān
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