✍️ By: Hamia Naderi
When King Amanullah Khan, Afghanistan’s progressive monarch, returned from his travels through Europe, the Soviet Union, and Turkey, a fresh wind of reform began to blow through the country. In 1928, he convened a Loya Jirga with 1,100 participants in Paghman, Kabul, to discuss his plans for governance and legal reforms.
But what immortalized this historic assembly was not just its political decisions — it was Queen Soraya Tarzi appearing unveiled in public for the first time. At the close of the gathering, the King ordered the women of Afghanistan to follow the Queen’s example.
Soraya, daughter of the enlightened Afghan intellectual Mahmud Tarzi, was born in exile in Damascus in 1899. Educated by her father and influenced by modern ideas in Syria and Turkey, she returned to Kabul when her family’s exile ended and married Amanullah Khan — a man who assumed power in 1919 after his father’s death and crowned Soraya as queen.
Soraya quickly became an iconic figure in Afghanistan’s social reforms. She appeared beside the King at public events and on foreign trips, encouraged women to pursue education and independence, and championed the establishment of the first girls’ school, the first women’s hospital, and the first women’s magazine in the country.
However, fierce opposition from traditionalists eventually forced the King and Queen to abdicate. In 1929, they went into exile in Italy. Soraya died on February 20, 1968, in Rome. Her remains were later brought back to Afghanistan and buried in Jalalabad beside King Amanullah’s tomb.
In 2020, Time magazine named her among the 100 most influential women of the century and published her portrait — a reminder of a woman ahead of her time, who broke through walls of silence.
