The book Account of the Kingdom of Cabul by Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779–1859), a British diplomat and political agent of the East India Company, is regarded as the first systematic written account of the cultural condition of the Afghans in the early nineteenth century. By presenting a particular image of Afghan society and culture, this work exerted a significant influence on historians and on Western scholars and Orientalists in the field of Afghan studies.The present study adopts a hermeneutic approach, drawing on Quentin Skinner’s intentionalist model, to examine various dimensions of Elphinstone’s narrative of Afghan society and the manner in which he represented its civilizational components during an era of cultural separation from the Iranian civilizational sphere. Within this framework, the research seeks to analyze the historical and discursive layers of the text while also clarifying the extent of Elphinstone’s influence on subsequent approaches to historiography and cultural studies of Afghanistan.The findings indicate that underlying the text are Western political and colonial objectives, as well as the author’s Orientalist perceptions. Given Elphinstone’s political and cultural position, these elements were able to establish a meaningful and enduring influence among Western scholars and to shape the trajectory of Afghan historiography for decades.