3-052-346 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The War in Afghanistan: execution of the Kotwal of Cabul, Oct. 26, outside the Residency, 1880. The British army in Afghanistan. 'One of the first results of the appointment of Major-General Hills as Military Governor of Cabul, was the arrest of the Kotwal (headman) of the city...This man had taken a very active part in the disturbances of Sept. 3, and had...furnished provisions to the troops fighting against us...the Kotwal, and three others were hanged on the morning of Oct. 20, in the Bala Hissar, close outside the late Residency walls. On the very spot where the mutineers had brought into position the gun they fired on the Residency, a high gallows had been erected, within sight of the whole city...None of the prisoners showed the slightest fear of their impending fate; indeed, all these Afghans meet their death, whether by hanging or shooting, with the most striking indifference, although death by hanging is said, according to their religious tenets, to preclude all chance of their ever entering Paradise. Every man in Cabul who was proved to have taken any part in the disturbances of Sept. 3, or in the events since then, was sentenced to death by the Military Commission, and was hanged soon after'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.