biography
| name: |
Zahir Shah, King Mohammed
|
pronunciation:
[zaheer shah]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1914– )
|
| biography:
| King of Afghanistan (1933–73), born in Kabul, Afghanistan. He studied in Kabul and Paris, and was assistant minister for national defence and education minister before succeeding to the throne, after the assassination of his father, Nadir Shah (c.1880–1933). His reign was characterized by a concern to preserve neutrality and promote gradual modernization. He became a constitutional monarch in 1964. While in Italy receiving medical treatment, he was overthrown in a republican coup led by his cousin, General Daud Khan, in the wake of a three-year famine. He then lived in exile in Rome, and became a popular symbol of national unity for moderate Afghan opposition groups. In the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan and the defeat of the Taliban (2001), the former king called for a broad-based government of national unity in Kabul. |
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