Afghan Regular Army - Herati Cavalryman 1879.jpg

9. Herati Cavalryman 1879

Cavalry regiments raised in Herat and Afghan Turkestan were generally attired in Turcoman rather than Afghan fashion. Their quite different appearance can be seen in this plate, from a picture in the Illustrated London News of 27 September 1879 depicting two such troopers. The original caption describes them as wearing ‘large black sheepskin caps, the long hair of which came down over their eyes and face, giving a wild look to the wearers. They said that this was the Turcoman style of headdress, and that it was common with the troops of Herat and along the northern border of Afghanistan.’ In May that year a deserter from such a regiment (stationed in Kabul) is similarly described as wearing ‘an immense brown fur cap, about the size of a Grenadier’s bear-skin. His uniform was a red cloth tunic, but over this he wore a choga, which concealed it.’

An illustration in The Graphic of 30 May 1885 depicts a group of what it describes as Uzbek lancers, who are very similarly attired to this figure, albeit in jackets that are more obviously military, having shoulder-straps, upright collars and buttons. However, Uzbeks (nicknamed ‘House-Bugs’ by the British) more usually wore a turban wrapped round a peaked cap – indeed, the uniforms of two Uzbek regiments in the 1890s are specifically referred to as being distinguishable by their ‘violet caps with black peaks’ – and in 1885 there were theoretically not yet any Uzbek units in the Afghan regular army, so these are perhaps actually Turcoman lancers, or else Uzbek irregulars. Rudyard Kipling also calls one of the cavalry regiments in Abdur Rahman’s escort at Rawalpindi as ‘Usbeg Lancers’; these wore ‘mustard-hued coats’ and ‘shaggy caps’. Yate describes a regiment of Turcoman lancers raised in Afghan Turkestan, that he saw in Kabul in 1886, as wearing ‘huge sheepskin hats’, blue coats and blue trousers, and carrying green-painted lances ‘so long that they had no lance-buckets to their stirrups, but had to order [them] on the ground.’ Their lances had blue-and-white pennons.(26)

• Источник: Ian Heath. A most villainous-looking cavalcade: The Afghan Regular Army in the 19th Century / Wargames Illustrated №№93 - 95