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Aḥmad Shāh was able to restore
political unity in Afghanistan, but he
focused more on organizing military
affairs and neglected cultural and
economic development (Farhang, 1988,
p. 78; Ġobār, 1989, p. 360). Cities were
destroyed, aqueducts dried up, and the
economy suffered from foreign wars. As
a result, national wealth, peace, and
cultural progress declined, and many
scientific centers were destroyed (Azraq,
1991, p. 46; Jāvīd, 2003, pp. 65-66).
During Aḥmad Shāh's reign, women
were mostly confined to the home, and he
enforced laws in his realm that combined
Islamic law and Pashtūn tribal traditions
known as Pashtūnwali i.e., a set of laws
that regulate the life of Pashtūn-populated
areas and consists of specific beliefs and
customs (Ford-Lewis, 1988, as cited in
Shafāi, 2014, p. 394), and these orders
were the guidelines for his statesmen
regarding women. Some of these come in
the following:
• Pashtūn girls were prohibited from
marrying outside their tribe, while
boys were not prohibited.
• Girls were deprived of their father's
inheritance.
• A widow was often forced to marry
her husband's brother or close relative.
• If the husband had no heir, the woman
had to stay in his house and rely on his
property for support.
• When a woman died in her husband's
house, her family could not claim her
dowry.
• Divorce after marriage was prohibited
(Iti'zad al-Saltanah, 1986, pp. 36-37).
These regulations placed restrictions
on women that conflicted with their
religious rights. For example, Islam
allows widows to remarry freely after
the death of their husbands, and
daughters have the right to inherit.
However, since in tribal societies,
giving inheritance to daughters could
result in the transfer of property to
outsiders, this prompted Aḥmad Shāh
to prohibit daughters from inheriting.
These strictures and the imposition
of Pashtūn tribal culture on the country
and the increasing expansion of class
society had divided the society into two
classes, the rich and the poor, which
benefited the Durrānī tribes and other
Pashtūns, but this caused the country to
lose its balance. Meanwhile, the rich
who were at the head of the royal family
and the princes were open to their
desires, and the poor and needy were
increasingly poor. The class gap made
another aspect of Abdali's behavior
with women manifest, which is the
formation of harems of Abdali rulers.
One of these princes was Timūr Shāh,
who had many wives (Farrukh, 1992, p.
108). Timūr Shāh spent all the huge
wealth that the Abdali government had
acquired through taxes and occasional
raids on India on his harem, which
included 300 women and concubines
(Farhang, 1988, Vol. 1, p. 111).