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Jezail
The jezail or ''jezzail'' (, ultimately from the plural form , "long arrels) is a simple, cost-efficient and often handmade long arm commonly used in Afghanistan in the past. It was popular amongst the Pashtun tribesmen, who deposed Shah Shuja. Jezails were primarily used in the First and Second Anglo-Afghan Wars by Pashtuns. Features Jezails were generally handmade weapons, and consequently they varied widely in their construction. Jezails were seen as very personal weapons, and unlike the typical military weapons of the time which were very plain and utilitarian, jezails tended to be well crafted and were usually intricately decorated. Jezails tended to have very long barrels. Such lengths were never common in European rifles (with the exception of the Spanish circa 15th century), but were more common in American rifles, such as the Kentucky rifle. The American rifles were used for hunting, and tended to be of a smaller caliber with being typical. Jezails were usually de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
1842 Retreat From Kabul
The 1842 retreat from Kabul was the retreat of the British and East India Company forces from Kabul during the First Anglo-Afghan War. An uprising in Kabul forced the then-commander, Major-General William Elphinstone, to fall back to the British garrison at Jalalabad. In early January 1842, as the army and its numerous dependants and camp followers began their march, they came under attack from Afghan tribesmen. Many in the column died of exposure, frostbite or starvation, or were killed during the fighting. At the beginning of the conflict, British and East India Company forces had defeated the forces of Afghan Emir Dost Mohammad Barakzai and in 1839 occupied Kabul, restoring the former ruler, Shah Shujah Durrani, as emir. However a deteriorating situation made their position more and more precarious, until an uprising in Kabul forced Maj. Gen. Elphinstone to withdraw. To this end he negotiated an agreement with Wazir Akbar Khan, one of the sons of Dost Mohammad Barakzai, by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
First Anglo-Afghan War
The First Anglo-Afghan War () was fought between the British Empire and the Emirate of Kabul from 1838 to 1842. The British initially successfully invaded the country taking sides in a succession dispute between emir Dost Mohammad Khan ( Barakzai) and former King Shah Shujah (Durrani), whom they reinstalled upon occupying Kabul in August 1839. The main British Indian force occupied Kabul and endured harsh winters. The force and its camp followers were almost completely massacred during the 1842 retreat from Kabul. The British then sent what was widely termed an " Army of Retribution" to Kabul to avenge the destruction of the previous forces. After recovering prisoners, they left Afghanistan by the end of the year. Dost Mohammed returned from exile in India to resume his rule. It was one of the first major conflicts during the Great Game, the 19th century competition for power and influence in Central Asia between Britain and Russia. Background Causes The 19th century wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Musket
A musket is a muzzle-loaded long gun that appeared as a smoothbore weapon in the early 16th century, at first as a heavier variant of the arquebus, capable of penetrating plate armour. By the mid-16th century, this type of musket gradually disappeared as the use of heavy armour declined, but ''musket'' continued as the generic term for smoothbore long guns until the mid-19th century. In turn, this style of musket was retired in the 19th century when rifled muskets (simply called rifles in modern terminology) using the Minié ball (invented by Claude-Étienne Minié in 1849) became common. The development of breech-loading firearms using self-contained Cartridge (firearms), cartridges, introduced by Casimir Lefaucheux in 1835, began to make muskets obsolete. The first reliable repeating rifles, the 1860 Henry rifle and its 1866 descendent the Winchester rifle, superseded muskets entirely. Repeating rifles quickly established themselves as the standard for rifle design, ending the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Flashman (novel)
''Flashman'' is a 1969 novel by George MacDonald Fraser. It is the first of the Flashman novels. Plot introduction Presented within the frame of the discovery of the supposedly historical Flashman Papers, this book chronicles the subsequent career of the bully Flashman from ''Tom Brown's School Days''. The book begins with a fictional note explaining that the Flashman Papers were discovered in 1965 during a sale of household furniture in Ashby, Leicestershire. The papers are attributed to Harry Paget Flashman, the bully featured in Thomas Hughes's novel, who becomes a well-known Victorian military hero (in Fraser's fictional England). The papers were supposedly written between 1900 and 1905. The subsequent publishing of these papers, of which ''Flashman'' is the first installment, contrasts the public image of a (fictional) hero with his own more scandalous account of his life as an amoral and cowardly bully. ''Flashman'' begins with the eponymous hero's own account of his expu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
George MacDonald Fraser
George MacDonald Fraser (2 April 1925 – 2 January 2008) was a Scottish author and screenwriter. He is best known for a series of works that featured the character Harry Paget Flashman, Flashman. Over the course of his career he wrote eleven novels and one short-story collection in the The Flashman Papers, Flashman series of novels, as well as non-fiction, short stories, novels and screenplays—including those for the James Bond film ''Octopussy'', ''The Three Musketeers (1973 live-action film), The Three Musketeers'' (along with The Four Musketeers (1974 film), both its The Return of the Musketeers, sequels) and Royal Flash (film), an adaptation of his own novel ''Royal Flash''. Biography Fraser was born in Carlisle, Cumbria, Carlisle, England, on 2 April 1925, son of medical doctor William Fraser and nurse Annie Struth, née Donaldson. Both his parents were Scottish. It was his father who passed on to Fraser his love of reading, and a passion for his Scottish heritage. Fras ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
The Adventure Of The Noble Bachelor
''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic pronoun ''thee' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
The Sign Of The Four
''The Sign of the Four'', also called ''The Sign of Four'', is an 1890 detective novel, and it is the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes by British writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories featuring the fictional detective. Plot In 1888 Miss Mary Morstan arrives with a case. She explains that ten years earlier, her father, Captain Arthur Morstan, disappeared immediately after arriving in London. Mary contacted his friend, Major Sholto, who denied having seen him. Four years later, she received a valuable pearl in the post, a gift repeated once a year for six years. With the sixth pearl, she received a letter asking for a meeting, claiming that she is a "wronged woman". Holmes takes the case, and soon discovers that Major Sholto had died a week before Mary received the first pearl. The only further clue Mary can give Holmes is a map of a fortress found in her father's desk, appended with the words "The Sign of the Four: Jonathan Sm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Kabul
Kabul is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province. The city is divided for administration into #Districts, 22 municipal districts. A 2025 estimate puts the city's population at 7.175 million. In contemporary times, Kabul has served as Afghanistan's political, cultural and economical center. Rapid urbanisation has made it the country's primate city and one of the largest cities in the world. The modern-day city of Kabul is located high in a narrow valley in the Hindu Kush mountain range, and is bounded by the Kabul River. At an elevation of , it is one of the List of capital cities by elevation, highest capital cities in the world. The center of the city contains its old neighborhoods, including the areas of Khashti Bridge, Khabgah, Kahforoshi, Saraji, Chandavel, Shorbazar, Deh-Afghanan and Ghaderdiwane. Kabul is said to be over 3,500 years old, and was mentioned at the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
A Study In Scarlet
''A Study in Scarlet'' is an 1887 Detective fiction, detective novel by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle. The story marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who would go on to become one of the most well-known detective duos in literature. The book's title derives from a speech given by Holmes, a consulting detective, to his friend and chronicler Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as his "study in scarlet": "There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it." The story, and its main characters, attracted little public interest when it first appeared. Eleven complete copies of the magazine in which the story first appeared, ''Beeton's Christmas Annual'' for 1887, are known to exist now, which have considerable value. Although Conan Doyle wrote 56 short stories featuring Holmes, ''A Study in Scar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Battle Of Maiwand
The Battle of Maiwand (Dari: نبرد میوند, Pashto: د ميوند جگړه), fought on 27 July 1880, was one of the principal battles of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Under the leadership of Ayub Khan, the Afghan forces defeated a much smaller British force consisting of two brigades of British and Indian troops under Brigadier-General George Burrows, albeit at a high price: between 2,050 and 2,750 Afghan tribal militamen were killed, and probably about 1,500 wounded. British and Indian forces suffered 1,200 dead. Prelude Before the battle, the campaign had gone well for the British. They had defeated Afghan tribesmen at Ali Masjid, Peiwar Kotal, Kabul, and the Battle of Ahmed Khel, and they had occupied numerous cities and towns, including Kandahar, Dakka, and Jalalabad. Ayub Khan, Sher Ali Khan's younger son, who had been holding Herat during the British operations at Kabul and Kandahar, set out towards Kandahar with a small army in June, and a brigade under Brigad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes () is a Detective fiction, fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a "Private investigator, consulting detective" in his stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science and logical reasoning that borders on the fantastic, which he employs when investigating cases for a wide variety of clients, including Scotland Yard. The character Sherlock Holmes first appeared in print in 1887's ''A Study in Scarlet''. His popularity became widespread with the first series of short stories in ''The Strand Magazine'', beginning with "A Scandal in Bohemia" in 1891; additional tales appeared from then until 1927, eventually totalling Canon of Sherlock Holmes, four novels and 56 short stories. All but one are set in the Victorian era, Victorian or Edwardian era, Edwardian eras between 1880 and 1914. Most are narrated by the character of Holmes's friend and biographer, Dr. Watson, Dr. John ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
