Humaira Begum

On 17 July 1973, while her husband was in Italy undergoing eye surgery as well as therapy for lumbago, his cousin and former Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud Khan, who had been removed from office by Zahir Shah a decade earlier, staged a coup d'état and established a republican government. In the August following this coup, Zahir Shah abdicated rather than risk an all-out civil war. Queen Humaira had remained in Afghanistan when her husband departed to Italy for his surgery, and was thus present in Afghanistan during the coup. She was not harmed, but kept in house arrest in her residence, as several other members of the Royal Family, until they were allowed to depart to join Zahir Shah in Italy.

In 1959, she supported the call by the Prime minister Mohammed Daoud Khan for women to voluntary remove their veil by removing her own. This was a big event in the history of women in Afghanistan, and it was also an intentional part of the women's emancipation policy of the Daoud Government at that time. The step was carefully prepared by introducing women workers at the Radio Kabul in 1957, sending women delegates to the Asian Women's Conference in Kairo, and employing forty girls to the government pottery factory in 1958. When this was met with no riots, the government decided it was time for the very controversial step of unveiling. In August 1959 therefore, on the second day of the festival of Jeshyn, Queen Humaira and Princess Bilqis appeared in the royal box at the military parade unveiled, alongside the Prime Minister's wife, Zamina Begum.

This changed after the Second World War, when modernization reforms were seen as necessary by the government, including reforms in women's position. In 1946, Queen Humaira became the protector of the newly founded Women's Welfare Association, which was the first-ever Women's Institute in Afghanistan, and signified resuming the women's movement. When Mohammed Daoud Khan became Prime Minister in 1953, the development toward women's emancipation started to move faster, and the women of the Royal Family, with the Queen as the central figure, were given an important task as role models in this process. They started to attend public functions, initially veiled.

On 8 November 1933 after the assassination of her father in law Mohammed Nadir Shah her husband was proclaimed King and Humaira became Queen of Afghanistan.

Humaira Begum was the daughter of Sardar Ahmad Shah Khan, brother of the royal consort Mah Parwar Begum and Minister of the Royal Court, and his first wife Zarin Begum, who was cousin of King Amanullah Khan and eldest daughter of General H.E. Loinab Khush Dil Khan, Governor of Kabul and Kandahar. She married her first cousin, the Crown Prince of Afghanistan Mohammed Zahir on 7 November 1931 in Kabul.

During the first part of her husband's reign, Queen Humaira did not play a big public role. King Amanullah Khan had been deposed in 1929 because of discontent partially caused by the example of Queen Soraya Tarzi, who appeared in public with her husband unveiled, and his successor reinstated the veil and gender seclusion and caused a backlash in women's rights. During the 1930s, the royal women continued to dress in Western fashion inside the enclosed royal palace compound of Kabul, but reverted to covering themselves in the traditional veil when they left the royal compound, and no longer showed themselves in public.

Humaira Begum (Persian: حميرا بیگم; 24 July 1918 – 26 June 2002) was the wife and first cousin of King Mohammed Zahir Shah and the last queen consort of Afghanistan.