Table Of ContentTo 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.
