The cloth was acquired in the mid-nineteenth century by Major John Goodday Strutt Gilland (1791-1848), who served in Afghanistan during the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838-1842) and distinguished himself at the siege of Ghazni (Afghanistan) in the summer of 1839. The cloth reputedly was taken after the British had taken the Ghazni fortress and, again reputedly, had been worked for the Afghan leader, Dost Mohammed Khan, who was deposed by the British in 1839, but returned to Kabul after the British defeat and who would rule the country until 1863.
See also the TRC online exhibitions Afghan Dress (TRC, Leiden, 2017) and Dressing the Stans: Textiles, Dress and Jewellery from Central Asia (TRC, Leiden, 2017).
British Museum online catalogue (retrieved 17 May 2016).
WV