Tribal Towers
This image probably dates from the 1890s and was made by William Darcia Holmes, the father of Randolph Holmes who published these postcards from their Peshawar studio.
This image probably dates from the 1890s and was made by William Darcia Holmes, the father of Randolph Holmes who published these postcards from their Peshawar studio.
Most postcards of the Khyber Pass show the decline of the roadway towards the Afghan border at Torkham, where the Frontier of India [now Pakistan] sign stood.
Occasionally, nomads — those most fleeting of human subjects and least sedentary inhabitants of our planet—were caught on a postcard.
Nestle, founded in 1867, claims on its website that its relationship with India started in 1912. Cards like this from approximately 1900 are evidence that the roots of this relationship extend back earlier.
[Original caption] A Persian Gypsy Woman and Children. These itinerant vendors of small articles travel far and wide through India, often pretending also to occult knowledge.
[Original caption] Baland Khels. This tribe inhabits the North-West frontier of India, close to the native state of Afghanistan, the boundary between their provinces and the Indian states being the River Kurram.
The western edge of the Raj was the border with Afghanistan on the Khyber Pass. The man standing next to the sign is probably an Afghan border guard.
[Original caption] The native tribes of India have, since the first occupation of the country by the British, been trained to act as soldiers to guard their own districts.
[Original caption] The Afridis are an Afghan or Pathan people, numbering about 300,000 inhabiting the mountaneous region south of the Hindu-Kush. They consist of a number of separate clans, often at feud with each other.
One of Holmes most popular images, with "trans-border type" referring to tribesmen who floated between Afghanistan and the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) border areas.
This not postmarked card had this written on the back: "These are what wear