PENNELL, T.L. Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier. A Record of Sixteen Years' close Intercourse with the Natives of the Indian Marches … with an Introduction by Field-Marshal Earl Roberts. London: George Bell. 1909.
8vo. Original cloth, spine lettered in gilt, lettering and ornamentation in blind; pp. 323, sketch map, folding map in three colours at rear, portrait frontispiece with tissue guard, plates after photographs, four-page catalogue by Thacker & Co. in Mumbay tipped in at rear, their blind-stamp on initial blank, price in Rupees pencilled in; cloth a little marked, occasional very light spotting internally, a very good copy.
First edition. Pennell was stationed as medical missionary in Bannu in modern Pakistan, home of one of the more belligerous Pashtun tribes of the Northwest Frontier, the Banuchi (Banusi). In the mid-19th century they had been subjected to taxation by force by a collaboration of the British and the Sikhs. He traveled as a Sadhu or Mendicant Pilgrim, and gathered information on the social structures, belief systems, economy, family life, customs and habits of the peoples along this stretch of the Northwest province.
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