Return of a King Read online

  To my beloved

  Adam

  And also to the four people who did most to encourage in me a love of history:

  Veronica Telfer

  Fr Edward Corbould OSB

  Lucy Warrack

  and

  Elsie Gibbs

  (North Berwick, 10 June 1922 – Bristol, 4 February 2012)

  Great kings have always recorded the events of their reigns, some writing themselves, with their natural gifts, but most entrusting the writing to historians and writers, so that these compositions would remain as a memorial on the pages of passing time.

  Thus it occurred to this humble petitioner at the court of the Merciful God, Sultan Shuja al-Mulk Shah Durrani, to record the battles and events of his reign, so that the historians of Khurasan should know the true account of these events, and thoughtful readers take heed from these examples.

  Shah Shuja, Waqi’at-i-Shah Shuja

  Contents

  Maps

  Dramatis Personae

  The Sadozais and the Barakzais

  Acknowledgements

  1 No Easy Place to Rule

  2 An Unsettled Mind

  3 The Great Game Begins

  4 The Mouth of Hell

  5 The Flag of Holy War

  6 We Fail From Our Ignorance

  7 All Order Is at an End

  8 The Wail of Bugles

  9 The Death of a King

  10 A War for No Wise Purpose

  Author’s Note

  Notes

  Footnotes

  Bibliography

  Glossary

  Picture Section 1

  Picture Section 2

  Picture Section 3

  Picture Section 4

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  Dramatis Personae

  THE AFGHANS

  The Sadozais

  Ahmad Shah Abdali (1722–72): Born in Multan, Ahmad Shah rose to power in the service of the Persian warlord Nadir Shah. On the latter’s death, Ahmad Shah seized control of the Shah’s chest of Mughal jewels, including the Koh-i-Nur diamond, and used it to fund the conquest of Kandahar, Kabul and Lahore, then later launched a series of lucrative raids into India. Taking the title Durrani (‘Pearl of Pearls’) he created an empire that was built out of the collapse of three other Asian empires – the Uzbeks to the north, the Mughals to the south and to the west the Safavids of Persia. At its height it extended from Nishapur in modern Iran through Afghanistan, the Punjab and Sindh to Kashmir and the threshold of Mughal Delhi. Ahmad Shah Abdali died after contracting a tumour which ate away his nose and finally attacked his brain.

  Timur Shah (r. 1772–93): Son of Ahmad Shah Abdali and father of Shah Mahmoud, Shah Zaman and Shah Shuja. Timur successfully maintained the Afghan heartlands of the Durrani Empire his father had bequeathed to him, but he lost the Persian and Indian extremities. It was he who moved the capital from Kandahar to Kabul, to keep it out of the turbulent Pashtun heartlands. At his death, his legacy was violently disputed by his twenty-four sons, throwing the Durrani Empire into civil war.

  Shah Zaman (r. 1793–1800, d. 1844): Shah Zaman succeeded his father Timur Shah in 1793, attempting with limited success to save his grandfather’s Durrani Empire from collapse. Having been thwarted in an attempt to invade Hindustan in 1796, he lost control of his dominions and was captured and blinded by his twin enemies, the Barakzai clan and his half-brother Shah Mahmoud, in the winter of 1800. Released by Shah Shuja at his accession in 1803, he lived in Kabul until he was forced to flee to India after the defeat at Nimla in 1809. He came back to Afghanistan in 1841 and briefly joined Shuja for the uprising in Kabul. The following year, after his brother’s assassination, he left Afghanistan for the last time, returning to exile in Ludhiana where he died in 1844. He was buried at the Sufi Shrine in Sirhind.

  Shah Shuja (1786–1842): Shuja first rose to prominence after his elder brother Shah Zaman was captured and blinded by his enemies in 1800. Escaping arrest, he wandered the mountains until returning to seize power in Kabul during sectarian riots in 1803. His rule lasted until his defeat by the Barakzais and his half-brother Shah Mahmoud at the Battle of Nimla in 1809. For several years he then wandered north India as a fugitive, stripped of his wealth and, in 1813, of his most precious possession, the Koh-i-Nur. In 1816 he accepted the offer of asylum in Ludhiana extended by the British East India Company. Three failed attempts to retrieve his throne were finally followed by a successful fourth attempt in 1839, but this time he was installed as a puppet ruler by the Company, who decided to place him back in Kabul to further their own strategic ends; when he tried to exercise independent sovereignty, the British quickly marginalised and humiliated him. In November 1841, at the outbreak of the Kabul uprising, Shuja refused offers to take over the leadership of the rebellion and unlike the British in the cantonment, successfully held his own in the Bala Hisar. By February 1842, after the British army in Kabul had abandoned him and marched off to its own destruction, it looked as if Shuja might manage to keep his throne through manipulation of the different rebel factions; but he was assassinated by his own godson on 5 April, and with his death the rule of the Sadozais ended and the Barakzais took power.

  Shah Mahmoud (r. 1800–3, 1809–18; d. 1829): Shah Mahmoud succeeded in seizing control of Kabul in 1800 after the blinding and capture of his half-brother Shah Zaman. He ruled until he was overthrown by his other half-brother Shah Shuja in 1803. Shuja chose not to blind Mahmoud, only to imprison him. When Mahmoud escaped from the Bala Hisar in 1808, he joined forces with his brothers’ Barakzai rivals and led a successful rebellion, defeating Shuja at the Battle of Nimla in 1809. He ruled what was left of the Durrani dominions until 1818 when he blinded, tortured and killed his over-mighty Barakzai wazir, Fatteh Khan, and was in turn ousted from Kabul by Fatteh Khan’s outraged brothers. Shah Mahmoud clung on in Herat until his death in 1829, when he was succeeded by his son Prince Kamran Shah Sadozai of Herat (r. 1829–42), who ruled until deposed and strangled by his powerful wazir, Yar Mohammad Alikozai (r. 1842–51) in 1842.

  Prince Timur, Prince Fatteh Jang, Prince Shahpur and Prince Safdarjang: These were all sons of Shah Shuja, the first three by Wa’fa Begum. None of them inherited their father’s ambition or their mother’s ingenuity, and Prince Timur was renowned as an especially uncharismatic figure. Prince Fatteh Jang was remembered mainly for the homosexual rapes he inflicted on members of his own garrison in Kandahar. He ruled in Kabul for five months after the death of Shah Shuja, and abdicated in October 1842 after learning that the British would not stay to keep him in power. He handed over to his younger brother Prince Shahpur, who ruled for less than a month before being expelled by his own nobles at the request of Wazir Akbar Khan. The darkly beautiful Prince Safdarjang, Shuja’s son by a Ludhiana dancing girl, was little more effective. All four princes died in exile in Ludhiana, having failed to retain the throne after the departure of the British.

  The Barakzais

  Haji Jamal Khan (d. 1771): Topchibashi, or commander of artillery, to Ahmad Shah Abdali. A rival of Ahmad Shah Abdali after the death of Nadir Shah, he accepted Abdali’s elevation after the latter received the blessing of the ‘ulema, and he gave his support to Abdali in return for a commanding role in the army.

  Payindah Khan (r. 1774–99): Son of Haji Jamal Khan, Payindah Khan was the most powerful noble in Timur Khan’s durbar and it was his support that enabled Shah Zaman to rise to power. The two fell out over Shah Zaman’s attempts to limit the power of the hereditary nobility, and when Payindah Khan attempted to engineer a coup to replace Shah Zaman, the Shah had him executed in 1799. Far from bringing down the power of the Barakzais, however, the execution ultimately led instead to the fall of Shah Z
aman and the rise of Payindah Khan’s twenty-one sons, especially the eldest, Wazir Fatteh Khan and his younger brother and ally, Dost Mohammad Khan. The killing of Payindah Khan began the blood feud between the Barakzais and the Sadozais which would cast a shadow over the region for half a century.

  Wazir Fatteh Khan (1778–1818): Fatteh was the eldest of Payindah Khan’s children. After the execution of his father he managed to flee to Iran. In the following years he revenged himself on the Sadozais, first by engineering the blinding and overthrow of Shah Zaman by his half-brother Shah Mahmoud, then by defeating Shah Shuja at the Battle of Nimla in 1809. He ruled as the powerful Wazir to Shah Mahmoud until he assisted in the rape of the Sadozai harem in Herat in 1817, after which he was blinded, scalped, tortured and executed by Shah Mahmoud in 1818. The brutal killing reopened the feud between the Barakzais and the Sadozais which was to divide the region until the expulsion of the last Sadozai from Afghanistan in 1842.

  Dost Mohammad Khan (1792–1863): Dost Mohammad was the eighteenth son of Payindah Khan by a low-status Qizilbash wife. His rise to power was initially brought about by his eldest brother Wazir Fatteh Khan and then, after the latter’s death, by his own ruthlessness, efficiency and cunning. Between 1818 and his accession in 1826, Dost Mohammad slowly increased his hold on power, and in 1835 he declared a jihad against the Sikhs and had himself formally declared as Amir. He was greatly admired by Alexander Burnes, who wrote despatches praising his justice and popularity, but despite Burnes’s efforts, Calcutta continued to see him as an enemy of British interests. After he received the Russian envoy, Ivan Vitkevitch, in 1838, Lord Auckland decided to replace him with his Sadozai arch-rival, Shah Shuja. After the British took Kabul, he spent eighteen months on the run, before surrendering to Sir William Macnaghten on 4 November 1840. He was sent off to exile in India. He was released following the assassination of Shah Shuja and the subsequent British withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1842, and was allowed to return to Kabul. Over the next twenty-one years of his reign he succeeded in enlarging his dominions to the current borders of the country. He died in 1863 shortly after conquering Herat.

  Nawab Jabar Khan (1782–1854): The notably Anglophile seventh son of Payindah Khan and close ally of his younger brother, Dost Mohammad Khan. Despite his interest in western ways and personal fondness for many of the British officials, he remained loyal to Dost Mohammad and was prominent in the resistance against the British following their invasion in 1839.

  Wa’fa Begum (d. 1838): Daughter of Payindah Khan and half-sister of Fatteh Khan and Dost Mohammad. Wa’fa married Shah Shuja early in his first reign, soon after 1803, when Shuja was attempting to soothe the blood feud between the Barakzais and the Sadozais. Praised by the British for her ‘coolness and intrepidity’ she managed to get her husband released from imprisonment in Kashmir in 1813 by offering Ranjit Singh the Koh-i-Nur, and according to some sources helped Shuja escape a second time, from Lahore in 1815. On her arrival in Ludhiana she managed to persuade the British to give her asylum, thus providing the Sadozais with the base from which they would eventually return to their throne. She died in 1838 and some attributed the failure of Shuja’s policies after that to the absence of her wise advice.

  Wazir Mohammad Akbar Khan (1816–47): Dost Mohammad’s fourth and most capable son, born of a Popalzai wife. Akbar was a sophisticated and complex character, who was regarded in Kabul as the most dashing of the resistance leaders. The Akbarnama even includes a detailed description of the pleasures of his wedding bed. He first came to notice when he helped defeat the Sikh general Hari Singh at the Battle of Jamrud in 1837 and according to some sources personally killed and decapitated the Sikh leader. After his father surrendered to the British in 1840, and on his own release from the pit of Bukhara, he stayed at large in the Hindu Kush aiming to lead the resistance against the British. His arrival in Kabul on 25 November 1841 transformed the uprising and it was he who led the negotiations for a British withdrawal. On 23 December 1841, during a parley by the banks of the Kabul river, he personally killed the British envoy, Sir William Macnaghten. He subsequently led the siege of Jalalabad, and commanded the Afghan forces which tried to stop Pollock retaking Kabul on 13 September 1842. After the British withdrew he retook the capital and remained the most powerful figure until the return of his father, Dost Mohammad, in April 1843. He died four years later, some said poisoned by Dost Mohammad who had come to regard him as a potential threat to his rule.

  Nawab Mohammad Zaman Khan Barakzai: Zaman Khan was a nephew and close adviser of Dost Mohammad Khan, for whom he had served as Governor of Jalalabad between 1809 and 1834. He fled Kabul with Dost Mohammad in 1839, but Mohan Lal Kashmiri facilitated his return from exile and had him received into the court of Shah Shuja in 1840. At the outbreak of hostilities he initially showed signs of siding with the British, but was soon persuaded to take on the leadership of the uprising. Despite being known as the ‘rich nomad’ and regarded as a country bumpkin, he was crowned Amir in early November. He was sidelined by his cousin Akbar Khan after the latter’s arrival at the end of November 1841, and by February 1842 had entered an alliance with Shah Shuja, for whom he agreed to act as wazir. The alliance broke down owing to his rivalry with Naib Aminullah Khan Logari, and it was owing to Shuja’s perceived favouritism of Logari’s son Nasrullah over Zaman Khan’s son, Shuja ud-Daula Barakzai, that the latter assassinated the Shah, his own godfather.

  Other Leaders of the Resistance

  Naib Aminullah Khan Logari: Aminullah Khan was a Yusufzai Pathan of relatively humble origins – his father had been assistant to the Governor of Kashmir at the time of Timur Shah – and he had risen through his intelligence and loyalty to the Sadozais. By 1839 he was a very old man, but still powerful, commanding substantial funds and large tracts of strategically important land in addition to his own private militia. Despite being a committed pro-Sadozai loyalist, he strongly objected to the presence of the infidel British in his lands and when he was insulted by a junior British officer, Captain Trevor, and lost his lands for refusing to pay increased taxes to the Crown, he became the leading centre of the resistance along with Abdullah Khan Achakzai. After the slaughter of the British in the Khord Kabul he rejoined the service of Shah Shuja, and only went across to the Barakzais after Shuja’s death. On the return of Dost Mohammad in 1843 he was imprisoned ‘for inciting peaceful people to engage in mischief’ and died in the dungeons of the Bala Hisar.

  Abdullah Khan Achakzai (d. 1841): Abdullah Khan was a young warrior-aristocrat from one of the most powerful and distinguished families in the region. His grandfather had been a rival of Dost Mohammad’s grandfather in the early days of the Durrani Empire, and the Achakzais had never shown much enthusiasm for the Barakzais. But like his friend Naib Aminullah Khan Logari, Abdullah Khan strongly objected to the presence of British troops in Afghanistan and after he had his mistress seduced by Alexander Burnes, and was mocked when he tried to retrieve her, he became one of the two principal leaders of the resistance. He was appointed the Commander-in-Chief of rebel forces at the outbreak of hostilities in November 1841, and was the main military mind behind the British defeat until his death in battle on the Bibi Mahru heights on 23 November. An assassin subsequently claimed he had shot him in the back to win the bounty offered by Mohan Lal Kashmiri for the death of the rebel leaders.

  Mohammad Shah Khan Ghilzai: Mohammad Shah was the powerful chief of the Babrak Khel Ghilzai of Laghmanat, and the father-in-law of Wazir Akbar Khan. On the return of Shah Shuja in 1839 he was persuaded to join the court and appointed to the honorary position of the King’s Chief Executioner. He joined the resistance after Sir William Macnaghten cut the Ghilzais’ subsidies in October 1841: every king had paid the Ghilzais rahdari (road-keeping) to maintain the road and protect the armies and traders en route to India, but Macnaghten informed the Ghilzai chiefs that he was abrogating this agreement. After the return of Akbar Khan in 1841 it was Mohammad Shah Ghilzai who supervised the slaughter of the British du
ring the retreat. Like the other leaders of the rebellion he found himself sidelined after the return of Dost Mohammad Khan in 1843, and he died in exile among the Kafirs of Nuristan.

  Mir Masjidi (d. 1841) and Mir Haji: These brothers were two powerful and respected hereditary Naqsbandi sheikhs from Kohistan. Mir Haji was also the hereditary Imam of the Pul-i-Khishti Friday Mosque, the leader of the Kabul ‘ulema and the chief pirzada of the great Kabul Sufi shrine of Ashiqan wa Arifan. Having been promised large bribes by Wade in 1839, both brothers led their Tajik tribesmen against Dost Mohammad and so played a crucial role in the accession of Shah Shuja; but a year later, when none of the promised money had been paid, they rose in turn against Shuja and his British backers. Having made his protest, Mir Masjidi was about to give himself up when, contrary to all understandings, the British attacked his fort and massacred his family; his lands were then shared among his enemies. Following this both brothers became implacable enemies of the British and led the Tajik Kohistanis against the Anglo-Sadozai regime, first from the Nijrow Valley and then in Charikar and Kabul. Mir Masjidi was killed on the heights of Bibi Mahru on 23 November, but Mir Haji lived on to incite the people of Kabul against Shah Shuja, and it was his call for jihad against the British in Jalalabad that finally lured Shah Shuja out of the Bala Hisar to his death on 5 April 1842.

  THE BRITISH

  Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779–1859): Elphinstone was a scholarly Lowland Scot who was chosen by Lord Minto to lead the first British Embassy to Afghanistan in 1809. Despite never venturing further than Shah Shuja’s fortress in Peshawar, he subsequently published an extraordinary and highly influential book about Afghanistan, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, which became the main source of English-language knowledge about the region for several generations.