The floor cover was acquired in Afghanistan by Major John Goodday Strutt Gilland (1791-1848), who served with the Second Queen's Royal Regiment in the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838-1842) and who played a prominent role at the siege of Ghazni in the summer of 1839 (the town was taken by the British on 23 July 1839). The cloth was allegedly made for Dost Muhammad Khan (1793-1863), ruler of Afghanistan and the father of Ghulam Haidar Khan, the governor of Ghazni at the time of the British siege.
See the entry on a mid-nineteenth century lithograph of Ghulam Haidar Khan, with the fortress and the two minarets of Ghazni, and the TRC digital exhibition Dressing The Stans: Textiles, Dress and Jewellery from Central Asia (TRC, Leiden, 2017).
British Museum online catalogue (retrieved 12 January 2017).
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