Mahmud Tarzi

Allamah Mahmud Tarzi
Mahmud Tarzi in 1919
Foreign Minister of Afghanistan
In office 1924–1927
Monarch	Amanullah Khan
In office 1919–1922
Monarch	Habibullah Khan
Personal details
Born	August 23, 1865 Ghazni, Afghanistan
Died	November 22, 1933(1933-11-22) (aged 68) Istanbul, Turkey
Nationality	Afghan, Turkish
Religion	Islam

Mahmud Beg Tarzi (Pashto: محمود طرزۍ‎, Dari: محمود بیگ طرزی; August 23, 1865 – November 22, 1933) was a politician and one of Afghanistan's greatest intellectuals. He is known as the father of Afghan journalism. As a prominent modern thinker, he became a key figure in the history of Afghanistan, following the lead of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in Turkey by working for modernization and secularization, and strongly opposing religious extremism and obscurantism. Tarzi emulated the Young Turks coalition. Perhaps to the point of the emulation Pashtun nationalism.

Tarzi was born on 23 August 1865 in Ghazni, Afghanistan. An ethnic Pashtun, his father was Sardar Ghulam Muhammad Tarzi, leader of the Mohammadzai royal house of Kandahar and a well-known poet. His mother belonged to Popalzai tribe. In 1881, shortly after Emir Abdur Rahman Khan came to power. Mahmud's father and the rest of the Tarzi family were expelled from Afghanistan. They first travelled to Karachi, Sindh, where they lived from January 1882 to March 1885. They then moved to the Ottoman Empire.

Mahmud began to explore the Middle East, he made pilgrimage to Mecca, visited Paris, and toured the eastern Mediterranean. He also encountered Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani in Constantinople. On a second trip to Damascus, Syria, in 1891, Tarzi married the daughter of Sheikh Saleh Al-Mossadiah, a muezzin of the Umayyad mosque. She became his second wife, the first was an Afghan who had died in Damascus. Tarzi stayed in Turkey until the age of 35, where he became fluent in a number of languages, including his native tongue Pashto as well as Dari, Turkish, French, Arabic, and Urdu.