Mirwais Hotak: the Ghilzai chief who freed Kandahar in 1709

At a glance

• Mirwais Hotak (Mir Wais, میرویس) was chief of a Hotak Ghilzai tribe and kalantar, the civil head, of Kandahar under the Safavids. [1, 2, 7]

• In 1709 he and his followers killed the Safavid governor Gorgin Khan, a Georgian prince, and took Kandahar. The accounts disagree on where and how Gorgin Khan died. [2, 4, 7]

• He beat the Persian armies sent against him and ruled Kandahar and its country as an independent chief. He died in 1715 in most accounts; Father Du Cerceau, Krusinski's editor, argued for 1717. [1–4, 7]

• His brother ruled next, then his son Mahmud, who took Isfahan in 1722. That story is in the Hotak dynasty.

• He is buried at Kokaran, in Kandahar province. Kandaharis call him Mirwais Nika. [7, 10, 11]

A chief of the Hotak

The Hotak are a tribe of the western Ghilzai. The British gazetteer of Kandahar, in the 1980 reprint, names Mir Wais and his son Shah Husayn as two former rulers of Kandahar who were chiefs of the Hotak. It adds that the tribe later held the title Badshah Khel, "king's clan", with exemption from tax and an allowance from the Kabul court. [5] Elphinstone, who passed through in 1808 and 1809, found the Hotak "formerly a numerous clan", reduced to some five or six thousand families who farmed and kept flocks beside the Tokhi. [6]

Jonas Hanway, whose Revolutions of Persia (1753) follows the Jesuit Krusinski, says the Afghans of Kandahar were divided into tribes of ten or twelve thousand families, and that Mir Wais, head of one of them, was among the most powerful men of his nation. His office added weight. Hanway's footnote glosses kalantar as "the greatest" and says its holder collected taxes and sometimes acted as sub-governor. [2] Krusinski, who lived twenty years in Isfahan, calls him the Intendant who raised the tribute paid to the king, and "exceeding rich". [1]

His birth was disputed even then. Krusinski wrote that a report in the French Mercury of November 1716 had called Mir Wais a man "born of the Dregs of the People", and answered that the figure he cut at Kandahar and the title Mir showed he was no mean man. [1]

The fullest Afghan account of his family is by Mir Ghulam Muhammad Ghubar. He gives Mir Wais's father as Shah Alam, a Hotak khan, and his mother as Nazo, daughter of a Tokhi khan (see Nazo Tokhi). He names three brothers, Abd al-Aziz, Yahya and Abd al-Qadir, and two sons, Mahmud and Husayn, and says Mir Wais married a daughter of Jafar Khan of the Sadozai Abdali. [7] No European writer mentions that marriage, and none of these accounts gives his birth date.

Kandahar under Gorgin Khan

Kandahar had changed hands between the Safavids and the Mughals several times. Krusinski says that early in Shah Husayn's reign the Mughal emperor sent a grand embassy demanding the city back, and that Isfahan answered by sending to Kandahar a commander it already feared, the Georgian prince Georgi-Kan, called Gorgin Khan by others. [1] Hanway describes him as a prince of the Bagrationi family, governor of Georgia and Kerman, who had once made a stand at Tbilisi against Persian armies. [2] Ferrier, writing in 1858 from Persian sources, says Gorgin Khan reached Kandahar in 1702 and treated the Afghans "without pity", and that a deputation went to Isfahan in 1706. [4]

The writers agree on how he governed. Hanway has his troops taking tents and horses and seizing women from their husbands. [2] Malleson, in 1878, says the Ghilzai were not in revolt but simply would not submit to oppression, and hoped a petition would work as one had under Shah Abbas. [3] Hanway says the petition, signed by the tribal chiefs, was put to the shah at the spring equinox, when Persian kings received petitions, and that Gorgin Khan's friends at court talked the shah out of any mercy. [2]

Ghubar differs on one point. In his account it was Gorgin Khan who made Mir Wais kalantar, because the Hotak chief had helped him collect tax from unruly tribes. Mir Wais then drafted the petition, and was dismissed and sent to Isfahan with the other signatories. [7] Hanway and Krusinski have him already in office. [1, 2]

Lockhart, who read the Persian and Georgian chronicles beside the European memoirs, gives the Safavid and Georgian side. In his account the shah appointed Giorgi XI governor-general and commander-in-chief of Kandahar in 1704, after a Baluch force under Mir Samandar had ravaged the province and beaten the governor's troops, and with a Mughal attempt to recover the province feared. Giorgi at first refused, and went only when the shah agreed that his nephew Wakhtang should govern Georgia in his place. [9] Lockhart rests the charge of Georgian brutality toward the Ghalzai on Mirza Mahdi and Peyssonnel, and notes that the Georgian historians Wakhusht and Sekhnia Chkheidze "naturally make no mention" of it. Wakhusht says there was no Ghalzai revolt before Mir Wais went to Isfahan, and that Giorgi sent him there to report the Hazara campaign and, in fact, to warn the court of his character. Sekhnia Chkheidze has a rising that Giorgi crushed, and Lockhart thinks that version more likely. [9]

The two Georgian chronicles also differ on Giorgi's death. In Wakhusht, Mir Wais tricks the Abdali troops with the governor and the tent is pulled down on him. In Sekhnia Chkheidze, Giorgi defends himself bravely and kills several of his attackers before he falls. [9] Of the failure to retake the city, Lockhart blames the court rather than the Georgians. The faction that had opposed Giorgi worked against his nephew Kai Khusrau, treasury officials held back the Georgian troops' pay, and Persian officers disliked serving under a Christian, or quasi-Christian, commander. Kai Khusrau was killed in the retreat from Kandahar in October 1711, and Lockhart ascribes the defeat to untrained troops and too few capable officers. [9]

Sent to Isfahan

Gorgin Khan picked Mir Wais as the man to remove. Krusinski has him sent to court "not indeed as a Prisoner" but so closely watched that he could hardly escape, with a warning that the province would be safe only if Mir Wais never came home. [1] Malleson adds that Gorgin Khan then let most of his army go back to Persia. [3]

The date is unsettled. Du Cerceau reckoned from the arrival of a Russian embassy that Mir Wais went back to Kandahar in 1709, and from the time all this needed that he was first sent to court about 1705. [1] Hanway's margins put the court intrigues and the pilgrimage in 1707. [2] Ferrier puts the arrest after the deputation of 1706. [4]

What Mir Wais did at court rests on Krusinski, who was in Isfahan. He arrived under suspicion, but with money, courtesy and "the Splendor he lived in" he soon stood among the courtiers. He courted both factions, praising Gorgin Khan with a show of respect and a hint of worry about his power. [1] Hanway says his gifts to the royal steward and the master of the hunt came to thirty thousand tomans. [2] Krusinski's reading is that he came to Isfahan with a half-formed hope of rebelling and left with a plan, because the Persian state looked weaker close up than it had from Kandahar. [1] Malleson draws the same lesson. [3]

The pilgrimage and the ruling from Medina

Mir Wais asked leave to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and Hanway says the court granted it without difficulty. [2] Krusinski notes that few Persians made the hajj, but nobody was surprised to see a Sunni do so, and that since Isfahan lay between Kandahar and Mecca, the journey took him further from home. [1]

Krusinski tells what Mir Wais did there. He asked the learned men of Mecca and Medina for a private hearing, brought rich gifts, and put two cases of conscience. May Muslims oppressed in their religion by a heretic prince take up arms to free themselves? And are they bound by an oath of allegiance forced on them, when the king himself breaks the terms he swore to? [1] Hanway gives the same two questions. [2] Krusinski adds that the doctors had old grievances against the Persians, and prints a Mufti's anathema of an earlier reign that called killing a Persian a deed rewarded seventy times over. [1] Both say the doctors answered yes, and that Mir Wais carried a written fatwa back to Isfahan, sealed at Mecca. [1, 2]

Malleson, Ferrier and Ghubar repeat it, Ferrier saying the Afghans were declared "bound by every means in their power" to throw off Shia rule. [3, 4, 7] The European accounts all go back to Krusinski's memoirs, and none quotes the text of the fatwa.

Afghan tradition tells another story of the journey. Tanvir Ahmed collects versions of a night in 1709 when Mir Wais slept at a shrine. In one he slept at the Prophet's tomb in Medina and was visited by Abu Bakr and Umar. In another it was the shrine of the eighth imam at Mashhad and an angel brought him a message. In a third he slept in Mecca, dreamed nothing, and woke to find his sword drawn from its scabbard. Ahmed also records that he looked in the verses of Rahman Baba for a sign, a page that appears in the Pata Khazana, which the Hotak dynasty article describes as a purported early record. [8]

Home to Kandahar

The court's fear of Russia gave him his opening. Hanway and Krusinski say an Armenian adventurer, Israel Ori, arrived as the tsar's envoy, and that Mir Wais used the scare to persuade ministers that Gorgin Khan, a Georgian, was the danger. The court restored him to office with a robe of honour and sent him home as a check on the governor. [1, 2] Ghubar tells the same story. [7]

On the road, Ghubar says, he stopped among chiefs and mullahs and showed them the fatwa. There followed a long season of quiet preparation, which ended in a gathering of chiefs at a place he writes as Anja, about thirty miles north-east of Kandahar, where Abdali, Ghilzai, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek and Baloch leaders are said to have accepted him as head. His list of those present includes Mir Wais's brother Yahya and a nephew, Muhammad Khan. [7]

The daughter and the banquet

In the European account the break came when Gorgin Khan demanded Mir Wais's daughter. Hanway gives an elder's speech, "there is no repairing the loss of honour", and Mir Wais's reply: "The serpent that lies awake will overcome the lion when he falls asleep: let us conceal our swords in beds of roses." The conspirators swore secrecy on bread, salt, their sabres and the Quran, and Mir Wais sent the governor another girl, finely dressed, in his daughter's place. [2] Ferrier has the same saying and calls her a slave. [4] The speeches are the writers' reconstruction, and Ghubar does not mention the daughter. [7]

Hanway's Georgian guard numbers fewer than a thousand. Mir Wais had the Tarin refuse their taxes, so that most of the Georgians marched out to punish them, and he invited the governor to a feast at his camp. Gorgin Khan fell asleep after the meal and Mir Wais burst into the tent with fifty spearmen while the rest killed the governor's retinue. In the governor's clothes, with his men in Georgian dress, he rode to Kandahar at dusk. The gate guards let them in and were cut down. [2]

Ferrier shows how little agreed. Mirza Mehdi, the historian of Nader Shah, says the governor had gone out to punish Kakar rebels, and that Mir Wais caught him at a place called Dehchir and had him killed by a low-born Afghan, Murad Khan; Ferrier thinks this inaccurate. A manuscript by Abdullah Khan of Herat has the Persians drunk in camp and cut down in the dark, "a massacre rather than a combat". [4] Ghubar places the killing at night in an orchard at Deh Shaikh in Arghasan, where the governor had gone to punish the Kakar for refusing tax, and says Mir Wais then took three thousand horsemen in the dead men's gear to the city, where the guards opened the gate expecting the governor. His footnote cites Qazi Ata Ullah's history of the Pashtuns, volume 1, page 55. [7]

Hanway says Mir Wais then summoned the leading townsmen, told them he meant only to free them, and made them swear to stand with him. Three days later the Georgian detachment returned from the Tarin, was fired on from the walls, and fought its way out by the Zabul defile, losing more than two thousand men on Hanway's count. [2] Ferrier says eighteen reached Persia. [4]

The Persian armies, 1710 to 1714

Isfahan first tried talking. Hanway names two envoys, Muhammad Jani Khan and a lieutenant of the governor of Herat who had made the pilgrimage with Mir Wais, and Mir Wais put both under guard. [2] Ghubar names an envoy Jani Khan. [7] Armies followed, and the writers order them differently. Hanway has the khan of Herat march with 15,000 horse and meet Mir Wais with 5,000, who won; two or three more such defeats came within eighteen months, and Muhammad Khan, governor of Tabriz, was taken with three sons. [2] Ghubar dates the Herat expedition to 1710. [7]

The great campaign was led by Khusraw Khan, a Georgian prince and nephew of Gorgin Khan, with about 30,000 Persians and 1,200 Georgians. Hanway has him beat the Afghans at a river crossing in 1711 and besiege Kandahar, then demand unconditional surrender. The garrison refused. Mir Wais raised the Baloch and the Tarin, laid waste the country around the city and cut the Persians' supplies. When Khusraw Khan began to withdraw with 10,000 men, Mir Wais fell on him with 16,000 horse; Khusraw Khan died fighting, and only about 700 men got away. [2] Malleson dates the siege to 1711 and 1712 and the end to 1713. [3] Ferrier gives 26 Ramadan 1126, which he writes as 1714, and says a hundred of 30,000 survived, and records Abdullah Khan's version, in which the Persians were surprised by night. [4] Ghubar has the siege end in 1712 and says Khusraw Khan was killed by a cannon shot from the city. [7]

A third general, Muhammad Rustam Khan, was beaten and fled, and the rest of the province submitted, in Hanway's account. The Georgians offered to subdue the rebels with an army of their own, and Shah Husayn, it is said, refused. [2] Ghubar adds a force from Kerman, which he says was destroyed on the road in 1713. [7]

A ruler without the title of king

Hanway says Mir Wais took the style of king, had the khutba, the Friday prayer, read in his name, and struck coins in the name of "the celebrated Mir Vais, emperor of the world". [2] Ghubar says he refused the title, presented himself as head of his tribe and equal of the other chiefs, and that the people called him Haji Mir Khan (حاجی میرخان). [7] Malleson says his kingdom reached nearly to Farrah in the west and took in the Helmand and Lora valleys. [3]

The Abdali were a separate question. Ferrier, citing Abdullah Khan of Herat, says the Abdali and Kakar fell out with the Ghilzai over plunder after Kandahar fell, lost, and moved west towards Herat. [4] Ghubar has Abdullah Khan Abdali return to Kandahar after independence and live on good terms with Mir Wais. [7] See the Durrani confederation.

Death and succession

Hanway, Malleson, Ferrier and Ghubar all put the death in 1715; Malleson says November and Ferrier says near the end of the year, in the eighth of his rule. [2–4, 7] Du Cerceau says the manuscript he worked from first gave 1717, that a later hand wrote 1713 over it, and that he kept 1717 because Mahmud was said to be eighteen when he seized power. [1] Every other account gives 1715.

Mir Wais left two sons, Mahmud and Husayn, both thought too young to rule. [3, 4] Hanway says Mir Wais had named his brother Mir Abdallah, whom Ghubar calls Abd al-Aziz and says a gathering of about forty khans chose. [2, 7] Hanway and Ferrier say the new ruler opened talks with Persia to hand back Kandahar on terms. Mahmud killed him, on Hanway's count six months after Mir Wais died. [2, 4] Ghubar says the Abdali chiefs left Kandahar for Herat in the confusion. [7]

The conquest of Isfahan was Mahmud's. Krusinski thought Mir Wais had "but just drawn a Sketch" that his son finished. [1]

His tomb at Kokaran

Ghubar says Mir Wais was buried at Kokaran, which the 1980 Historical and Political Gazetteer of Afghanistan lists among the villages of Dand district in Kandahar province. [5, 7] The mausoleum is known as Mirwais Neeka. Pajhwok reported in May 2014 that the provincial information and culture department had begun rebuilding the park around it, at an estimated 3.5 million afghanis, with a car park and a longer boundary wall. The department's director, Dawa Khan Minapal, said visitors came from across the country, and the poet Abdul Wasi Hasyal called Mirwais Neeka one of Afghanistan's national heroes and said many people visited the tomb daily. Pajhwok places the mausoleum in the provincial capital. [11]

How he is remembered

In Kandahar he is Mirwais Nika. Raverty's 1867 dictionary gives nika (نيکه) as a paternal grandfather, and also as the name of the chief of the Wazir tribe. [10] Kandahar's main hospital, Mirwais Hospital, was built with Chinese help in the 1970s, and the Red Cross says it is named after a historical leader of Afghanistan; Xinhua calls him the former king Mirwais Khan. In 2014 it admitted an estimated 260,000 patients. [12, 13]

Afghan writers read him in different ways. Ghubar calls him a patriot, says the government he set up after Gorgin Khan's death was in fact the seed of the later national state, and describes the rising as a union of Ghilzai, Abdali, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek and Baloch. [7] Tanvir Ahmed argues that the dreams and omens around the rising belong to how Afghans told it and should not be cut away as embroidery. [8] Hanway's verdict is that Mir Wais gave the first blow to the Persian monarchy and formed the people who later overthrew it. [2]