Dost Mohammad Khan: the amir who rebuilt Afghanistan

Early life

Dost Mohammad Khan was born in Kandahar in December 1792. He was the eleventh son of Sardar Payenda Khan, chief of the Barakzai clan, who was put to death in 1799 by the Sadozai shah Zaman. He was brought up by his mother, who came from the Persian-speaking Siah Mansur tribe of the Qizilbash and was reportedly Payenda Khan's favourite wife, although she was not of noble family. [1] The Barakzai are a branch of the Durrani Pashtuns, and the dynasty Dost Mohammad founded, called Barakzai or Mohammadzai, reigned, apart from a short break in 1839–43, until 1973. [1] [2]

His first distinction came as an aide to his eldest brother, Sardar Fath Khan, the vizier of Shah Mahmud Sadozai. [1]

The struggle for Kabul

In 1817, at Herat, Dost Mohammad took part in a raid on a respected local notable that left a bloody trail, and fearing the reaction of his brother and the shah, he fled to Kashmir. Soon afterwards Shah Mahmud's son Kamran blinded Fath Khan, whose younger brothers vowed revenge, and Dost Mohammad and two brothers entered Kabul without opposition in 1819. Kamran later murdered Fath Khan. [1] Kabul came first under another brother, Mohammad Azim Khan, and when he died in 1822–23, Dost Mohammad overcame the challenges of Azim's son and of another brother, with the help of the Qizilbash of Kabul, and took effective control of the city in 1826. [1]

This was a divided and weakened country. Daniel Balland's political history explains that the Afghan empire of Ahmad Shah Durrani had fallen apart in the early nineteenth century: Persian forces had taken western Khorasan, the Uzbek principalities north of the Hindu Kush had come under Bokhara, and the Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh had taken Multan, Kashmir, Dera Jat and, in 1834, Peshawar. Kandahar was virtually autonomous under a younger branch of the Mohammadzai, and Herat was a Sadozai principality. Recovering Peshawar, the former winter capital, became what Balland calls Dost Mohammad's obsession for his whole reign. [2] Caroe adds that the Sikhs annexed Peshawar in May 1834 and that the general Hari Singh became its first Sikh governor, while the Peshawar sardars, half-brothers of Dost Mohammad, took refuge with him at Kabul. [3]

Between the Sikhs, the British and the Russians

Dost Mohammad took the title amir al-mumenin, commander of the faithful, a title the earlier rulers had not used, in 1836 according to Balland and in 1838 according to Amin Tarzi's biography; the two Iranica entries disagree on the date. [1] [2] He raised a regular army on the European model and proclaimed a jihad against the Sikhs. [2] After an Afghan–Sikh battle at Jamrud in 1837, he asserted his claim to supremacy in the area. [4] The fort of Ali Masjid, in the Khyber Pass, was built in his time. [4]

But the region had changed. The British, who had sent Elphinstone to Peshawar as early as 1808–09, now saw both Dost Mohammad's ambitions and Russian influence at Kabul as threats. Alexander Burnes arrived in Kabul on an official mission in 1837, and three months later a Russian mission under Ivan Vitkevich arrived too. Balland sees the start of the Anglo-Russian "great game" in that moment. [2] Burnes wanted a British alliance with Dost Mohammad, but the British could not befriend both him and Ranjit Singh. [5] In 1838 the British allied with Shah Shuja, a former Sadozai ruler, and the Sikhs and invaded. [5] The full story is told in the article on the Anglo-Afghan wars.

Defeat, exile and return

In 1839, with the help of British forces, Dost Mohammad was ousted from Kabul and Shah Shuja installed. Balland says he abandoned the throne and sought refuge in Bokhara; after some attempts to regain it he surrendered in 1840 and was deported to Calcutta. His son Mohammad Akbar Khan then led resistance to the British, and the Kabul uprising of 1841 followed. [1] [2] After the British left in 1842, Dost Mohammad returned to Kabul, in 1843 according to Balland. [2]

The second reign, 1842–1863

In his second reign Dost Mohammad first set about rebuilding a ruined country, and in time brought all of present-day Afghanistan under direct control except Peshawar and Kashmir. [1] [2] He gave up his claims to Peshawar and the Indus provinces after the British took over the Sikh state in 1849 and sought a British alliance, which brought him an annual subsidy under the Peshawar treaty of 1855. [2] The definitive Treaty of Peshawar of 26 January 1857 restored relations so well, Norris writes, that Dost Mohammad stayed out of the Indian Mutiny and the British accepted his conquest of Herat. [5]

He turned instead to the north and west. He conquered Bamiyan and the Hazarajat in 1849, and between about 1850 and 1859 annexed the lands between the Hindu Kush and the Amu Darya, including Balkh, Maimana and Shibarghan. He took Kandahar after the death of his half-brother Kohandil Khan in 1855, annexed Kunar, and finally recaptured Herat, a difficult campaign that occupied the end of his reign because Persia also coveted the city. He died of natural causes at Herat on 9 June 1863. [1] [2]

How he ruled

Tarzi's assessment is that Dost Mohammad managed to rule by playing one part of society against another. Unruly tribes were forcibly crushed, and the Ghilzai chiefs, the main rivals of the Barakzai, were treated especially harshly, although Tarzi still considers him merciful toward his opponents overall. He allied himself with Shia groups, particularly the Qizilbash and the Hazara, and used them in military and civil administration. He also used marriage as a political tool: he had sixteen wives when he died, and his twenty-seven sons and twenty-five daughters were the cause of much discord within the Mohammadzai. [1]

Three of his sons later ruled as amirs: Sher Ali, Mohammad Afzal Khan and Mohammad Azam Khan. [1] Balland observes that when Dost Mohammad died, Afghanistan existed again but its unity remained precarious. The Ghilzai still could not easily accept Durrani rule, and central government control over the mountains and the east was at best intermittent. His successors had to consolidate what he had begun. [2] Tarzi concludes that it can be argued that he laid the foundations of the modern Afghan state. [1]

A note on dates

The Iranica entries give dates in both the Islamic and the Christian calendars, and where they differ by a year or so this article names both. Examples are the title amir al-mumenin (1836 or 1838), his return to Kabul (1842 or 1843), and the Peshawar treaty, which Balland dates to 1855 and Norris, for its definitive form, to 1857. [1] [2] [5]