‘Kafiristan’ was never a clearly demarcated country or nation – rather, an approximate region or terrain sprawled out across the Hindu Kush.

Kipling would certainly have been familiar with Harlan’s history, just as he would have known of the even earlier exploits of George Thomas, the eighteenth-century Irish mercenary. 37) Kipling’s story was inspired by the author’s meeting with an unidentified Freemason when he was working as a young journalist in India, which suggests that Harlan’s adventures or a version of them, had been absorbed into Masonic folklore on the North-West Frontier. Harlan claimed to have obtained the right to rule a ‘kingdom’ in the Hindu Kush. Rosner telling how Harlan, who served as an Assistant Surgeon in the East India Company’s Army, was active from 1828 to 1841 as a soldier, spy and governor in the Punjab, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Josiah Harlan (1799-1871), ‘Prince of Ghor’, was an American adventurer who went to Afghanistan and the Punjab where he became involved in politics and military action, later winning the title of Prince of Ghor in perpetuity for himself and his descendants. Carnehan is carrying Dravot’s head, and his golden crown, in his bag. But Dravot had tried to take a wife terrified, she had bitten him until he bled, and he was seen to be “Not a God nor a Devil, but only a man!” The people, led by the priests, had turned against them, dropped Dravot from a high bridge to his death, and crucified Carnehan with wood splinters. They had indeed made themselves Kings, persuading the local people that they were gods, mustering their army, asserting their power over the local villages, and planning to build a Nation. Some two years later, on a hot summer’s night, Carnehan creeps into his office, a broken man, crippled and in rags, and tells an amazing story. The narrator, a journalist, encounters two ruffianly-looking adventurers, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan, who announce that they are off to Kafiristan in the mountains of Afghanistan to make themselves Kings.

This story first appeared in The Phantom Rickshaw and other Eerie Tales (Volume Five of the Indian Railway Library, published by Wheelers of Allahabad in 1888) and collected in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories in 1895, and in numerous later editions of that collection.

Kipling the man who would be king