Adab, Volume 4, Number 2, September 1956

Adab was the literary magazine of the Pohanżay-i Adabīyāt va ʻUlūm-i Basharī (Faculty of Letters and Humanities) at Kabul University. It began publishing in May of 1953 as a quarterly publication. The word “adab” denotes both culture and literature in Arabic, Persian (Dari), and Pushto; and the magazine consists primarily of articles on literature and history, with a focus on the literature and cultural history of Afghanistan. The majority of the articles were written in Persian, though many were written in Pushto as well, and some were in English. A typical issue included articles on aesthetics and literary criticism, biographies, essays on major literary works, and submissions of original poetry and prose in traditional style. The inception of Adab followed the founding of the Faculty of Letters and Humanities, inaugurated in the autumn of 1944, by roughly a decade. Kabul University itself was founded in 1932. The Faculty of Letters and Humanities was the fourth faculty established in the university, following the Faculty of Medicine (1932), Faculty of Law and Political Sciences (1938), and Faculty of Science (1942).
Place: Central and South Asia; Afghanistan
Institution: Library of Congress
Physical description: 23 centimeters