When the subject of this Symposium was announced, I was very pleased but I did wonder whether there would be any point in saying anything about countries where little fish is eaten. A friend convinced me (almost) that negative reports are sometimes as relevant as positive ones. So here I am again, drawing attention to a country I have mentioned before at these meetings, but putting a spotlight on it this time because fish there has such a low profile, almost invisible you might say. 

The country is Afghanistan. I draw on my own experience in living there for nine years and on the reference books available to me. As for these sources, I should explain that they provide very little information, except perhaps for Louis Dupree's book on Afghanistan. In particular my hero-author Aitchison (1890) in his magisterial survey on the Products of Western Afghanistan and of North-Eastern Persia, does not mention any fish, nor does Elphinstone, a sub-heroic author whose in-depth study of the Afghans entitled The Kingdom of Caubul (1815, 3rd revised edn 1839) is nonetheless a valuable reference. 

The fact is that although some fish is, or was, eaten in Afghanistan, the importance of this item to the diet, in both quantitative and qualitative terms, has been slight. One of the problems no doubt has been the difficulty of transporting the fish. The summers are very hot and the journeys long and arduous. There were no refrigerated lorries in Afghanistan, indeed not many refrigerators, so fish-eating was generally restricted to the winter months. (An interesting point to be mentioned here is that, whereas Iranians consider fish a 'cold' food, Afghans count is as hot'. This is perhaps another reason why they prefer to eat it in the cold winter months.) 

Afghanistan is a land-locked country and the nearest ocean, the Indian Ocean, is about 650 miles away. Some marine fish are brought up, or used to come up, from Pakistan in the winter months; but no shellfish. Afghans don't eat shellfish because it is considered by some Muslims to be magrouh, ie not forbidden but discouraged. 

Freshwater fish, on the other hand, do play a small role in the Afghan diet. Many of the rivers teem with fish. 

Barbels (in the carp family), said to be of the species Barbus capito conocephalus, are found in streams both north and south of the Hindu Kush. These are locally called shir-mahi, which means milk fish. These fish have no connection with the better known marine fish of that name the one which is especially popular in the Philippines. The name most probably came about because of the milky white underbelly of the fish in southern Afghanistan (it is yellow in the north). This tasty but bony fish is perhaps the most commonly found and eaten all over the country. 

Carp: four types of carp were introduced to the Darunta Fish-Breeding Centre at the Darunta dam near Jalalabad with the assistance of China in 1967 in the hope that the importance of fish in the diet may increase. 

Mahi-e-saqan qul; this fish is the stuff of legends. It is a mystery fish, an apparently unidentified species, scientific name unknown and said to live in the Oxus and Kookcha rivers in the north of Afghanistan. It was reputed to be an aphrodisiac and is said to have been much sought after by the kings of Afghanistan (understandably, since one had 300 wives). 

Mahi laqa (Glyptosternum reticulatum) is a large fish found in the Amu Darya (Oxus river) and particularly in the streams and rivers near the town of Kunduz. It is by far the most favoured and popular in the bazaars, including Kabul, in the winter months. But it presents puzzling problems of identification. The scientific name given above is cited by Louis Dupree, but he said that the fish was a type of European catfish which grows up to seven feet in length'. In contrast, Alwyne Wheeler (late of the Fisheries Division of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington) gives the following description in his Fishes of the World (1975): 'Glyptosternum reticulatum (family Sisoridae), Turkestan catfish. Length to 25 cm (10"). Found only in the mountainous regions of south Turkestan and north east Afghanistan, living in rivers with very rapid currents, hiding under rocks and clinging to the bottom. Its body is flattened, and the anterior part of the pectoral fin is expanded to form a sucker by which it adheres to the rocks in the rapid current.' My husband, however, asserts that mahi laqi is definitely bigger than Wheeler suggests, at least twice as long in fact. (Day's great work Fishes of India has, by the way, been consulted, since its scope includes the N W frontier and sometimes Afghanistan, but nothing directly helpful emerges from its amazingly long section on catfish of the subcontinent.) So.. where does that leave us? Doing further research, I guess. [Postscript written in March 1998. Further information has come in and is reproduced as an annex. Since even more research may have to 



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be done, I thought it best to leave the material above in place, by way of explaining what started off the further enquiries, rather than just replace it with material from the annex.]

Trout: both brown trout and rainbow trout are found. A subspecies of brown trout (Salmo trutta oxenesus) swims in streams north of the Hindu Kush. This is called locally mahi-e-khaldar, which means spotted fish. According to Dupree (1973), some rainbow trout, Salmo gairdneri, have been introduced by the Bulgarians into the Salang river.

fried fish : marinated with garlic, salt and lemon, then fried, then sprinkled with the juice of bitter orange and finally with ghooray-angoor and mint. 

korma-e-mahi: a fish stew served with chalau (white rice) or bata (sticky white rice). One of the author's several korma recipes describes the fish being cooked with mooli (the long white oriental radish). The mooli is sliced and boiled with saffron. When soft, it is strained and half of it is put in a pan. The fish is added and then topped with the remaining mooli. Next, finely chopped onions and tomatoes are fried together, flavoured with turmeric, coriander and pepper, and added to the dish. Finally, some water is poured over and the dish then cooked 'dum' style (ie the pan is sealed with a paste of flour and water) for several hours. 

mahi-e-tandoori: the fish is deboned, marinated and then cooked in the embers of the tandoor after the bread has been baked. 

mahi kebab: the fish are first marinated in garlic, salt and lemon and then skewered whole on a twig or skewer to be grilled over charcoal (sounds delicious). 

mahi kebab daygi: fish cooked in a pan. The fish is first boned, then mixed with fried onions and garlic. It is also flavoured with ghooray-angoor, a flavouring made with small young sour green grapes which are dried in the sun, then ground; this gives a sour taste to the fish (rather as verjuice would). Coriander, both the seeds and the leaves, is added for extra taste. The mixture is formed into balls and then gently fried. 

Mahi pilau: fish with pilaf 

pakaura : whole fish or chunks dipped in a batter and fried. 
 

There is, however, one aspect of eating fish which is perfectly familiar to me, and which I think is quite unusual and interesting. This is the traditional way of selling and serving fried fish with jelabi. Jelabi is the fritter bathed in a sweet syrup scented  

with lemon, rosewater and saffron, which is commonly found in India (and in Iran, where it is known as zalubia). In winter it was a common sight to see the fish displayed in the bazaars alongside mounds of jelabi (see the drawing by Abdullah Breshna). I have not heard of any other country where there is such a distinct and specific link at the point of sale between fish and something sweet. I wonder whether any other symposiasts can think of a parallel. 

In the light of the above it may come as a surprise to hear that Afghans devote some pains - and dynamite - to catching fish. A procedure which shocked me, and will no doubt shock others, is as follows. As the water slows down after coming through rapids in a particular river a 'fisherman' throws dynamite into the area of calm water. About 100 feet away four or five other 'fishermen' stand in the river with baskets and 'catch' the dazed and stunned fish as they pass by. 

On a comforting note, this is not the most usual way of catching fish in Afghanistan. The traditional nets are also used, as is the traditional rod and line. Foreigners working in Afghanistan loved to go fishing especially in the Salang river and the Ajar Valley. Sophisticated equipment was taken, but so often they would have come back empty-handed - if it had not been for the young lads selling their freshly caught fish by the roadside, often caught by the most primitive methods! 

This has been a short paper. It is interesting to reflect that, nonetheless, it is apparently the most substantial document on the subject in the English language. One conclusion I draw is that, when peace finally returns to Afghanistan, one of the very numerous tasks to be undertaken should be the compilation of a readily accessible Inventory of the fish which swim in Afghan waters. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Afghanzada, Abdullah, Afghan Local Cuisines, published in Kabul in Farsi in 1971. 

Aitchison, J.E.T, Notes on the Products of western Afghanistan and of North-Eastern Persia, 1890. 

Dupree, Louis, Afghanistan, Princetown University Press, 1973. 

Dupree, Nancy Hatch, An Historical Guide to Afghanistan, Afghan Tourist Organisation, 2nd edn, 1977. 

Elphinstone, Mounstuart, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul (1815, 3rd revised edn 1839), reprint, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1974.  



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ANNEX: The Glyptosternum reticulatum problem

There is, as noted in your paper, some disagreement on the spelling of the generic name. In this case I would, however, tend to agree with Eschmeyer (1990) who states that Glyptosternon is the spelling used in the original description by McClelland (1842). 
 
Glyptosternon reticulatum which was described in the same publication has subsequently (by revisors) been selected as type species of the genus. 

The spelling 'Glyptosternum' appears to be an unjustified emendation made by Agassiz (1846). All recent authors have apparently placed the genus in the family Sisoridac. 

As for the species of Glyptosternon, there has been a lot of discussion on the validity of the many nominal species. It would appear that there arc six valid species: 

G akhtari -Kabul River, Afghanistan 

G fokiensis - Fukien, China 

G hainanensis - Hainan, China 

G maculatum - Lhasa, Tibet 

G pallozonum - Kwangtung, China 

G reticulatum - mountainous regions of southern Turkistan and north-eastern Afghanistan. 

All species are said to reach maximum lengths of between 15 and 25 cm (Burgess, 1989). As for G. reticulatum, all authors I have checked, who give any information at all on size, give 25 cm as its maximum length. This does, however, not necessarily have to be correct, as it maybe very likely that they arc all using an identical original source, without giving credit to it. 
 

REFERENCES TO THE ANNEX 

Agassiz, L. 1846, Nomenclatoris Zoologici, Soloduri. 

Burgess, W E. 1989, An Atlas of Freshwater and Marine Catfishes - A Preliminary Survey of the Siluriformes, T.F.H. Publications, Neptune City. 

Eschmeyer, W N. 1990, Catalog of the Genera of Recent Fishes, California, Academy of Sciences. 

He, 1996, 'The phylogeny of the glyptosternoid fishes (Teleostei: Siluriformes. Sisoridae)', Cybium vol.20 (no.2): 115-159. [*] 

McClelland, J. 1842, 'On the fresh-water fishes collected by William Griffith, Esq., FLS, Madras Medical Service, during his travels under the orders of the Supreme Government of India, from 1835 to 1842', j Nat. Hist. Calcutta, vol.2 (no.8): 560-589. 

Talwar & Jhingran 1988, Inland Fishes of India and Adjacent Countries. [*]