Soraya Tarzi (Pashto/Dari: ثريا طرزی) (24 November 1899 – 20 April 1968) was Queen of Afghanistan as the wife of King Amanullah Khan.

[citation needed] She studied in Syria, learning Western and modern values,[2] which would influence her future actions and beliefs.

Her mother was the Syrian feminist Asma Rasmya Khanum, her father's second wife, and daughter of Sheikh Muhammad Saleh al-Fattal Effendi, of Aleppo, Muezzin of the Umayyad Mosque.

[10] Amanullah and Soraya had ten children, four sons and six daughters: When the prince became Amir in 1919 and King in 1926, the Queen played an important role in the evolution of the country.

So we should all attempt to acquire as much knowledge as possible, in order that we may render our services to society in the manner of the women of early Islam."

[1][30] These fifteen were all graduates of the Masturat middle school she had founded, mainly daughters of the royal family and government officials.

[9] In 1928, the King and Queen were in England where they received honorary degrees from Oxford University, being seen as both promoters of enlightened Western values, and ruling an important buffer state, between the British Indian empire, and Soviet ambitions.

During an interview, Tarzi shared her view that purdah, the seclusion and veiling of women, was an un-Islamic Abbasid-era innovation.

[35] On August 29, 1928, Amanullah held a Loya Jirgah,[36] a Grand Assembly of Tribal Elders, to endorse his development programs, and to which the 1,100 delegates were required to wear European clothes provided for them by the state.

Amanullah argued for women's rights to education and equality and publicly removed her veil during a speech she gave at the meeting.

[36][37] In Kabul, this policy was also endorsed by reserving certain streets for men and women dressed in modern Western clothing.

Tarzi did not wear a hijab for the visit, which inspired the Shah to begin introducing similar reforms in Iran.

She is buried in Bagh-e Amir Shaheed,[41] the family mausoleum in a large marble plaza, covered by a dome roof held up by blue columns in the heart of Jalalabad, next to her husband the King, who had died eight years earlier.