Habibullah Khan Tarzi

Habibullah Khan Tarzi (Pashto: حبيب الله خان طرزي, born 1896) was an Afghan diplomat and politician.

Habibullah Khan Tarzi was considered to be a scion of the country's leading political family.^[1]

Habibullah Khan Tarzi
Afghan Representative to France
In office 1928–1929
Afghan Representative to Japan
In office 1933–1939
2nd Ambassador of Afghanistan to the United States
In office 1946–1953
Monarch	Zahir Shah
Preceded by	Abdul Hussain Aziz
Succeeded by	Mohammed Kabir Ludin
Personal details
Born	1896 Emirate of Afghanistan

He was the head of the Afghan Delegation to Paris from 1923 to 1924. He served in that post to increase diplomatic and economic relations between France and Afghanistan. Tarzi would go on to play critical roles in the Afghan foreign affairs as the Temporary Representative to France from 1928 to 1929, and Japan from 1933 to 1939. During that time, Sayyid Mushir Khan Tarzi, a relative of Habibullah Khan Tarzi, wrote an article about the Islam in Japan.^[2] Habibullah Khan Tarzi became the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for Afghanistan from 1932 to 1933. He took a few years off after his post in Japan, however, and stayed with his family.

It was not until 1946, when he was named as a Temporary Representative to China, that Habibullah Khan Tarzi would return to international politics. After less than a year in China, he would present his credentials to President Harry S. Truman as Afghanistan's Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United States of America. After developing a very friendly relationship with President Truman, Habibullah Khan Tarzi would stay at that post in Washington, D.C. from 1946 to 1953.^[1] Shortly after President Dwight D. Eisenhower came to office, Habibullah Khan Tarzi left the United States and returned to Kabul.

Habibullah Khan Tarzi and his wife Shahira Begum Tarzi had four sons along with three daughters.

Literature

• Sayyid Mushir Khan Tarzi: Islam dar Japan, in: Kabul magazine, vol. 10 (1936?), pp. 71–83.

References and footnotes

1. Nile Green: Terrains of Exchange – Religious Economies of Global Islam, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015, p. 248.
2. Nile Green: How Asia Found Herself – A Story of Intercultural Understanding, New Haven (CT): Yale University Press 2023, p. 382fn100.

See also

• Politics of Afghanistan