Timur Shah, Zaman Shah and the Sadozai kings, 1772–1826

Ahmad Shah Durrani died in 1772, and his kingdom outlived him by little more than fifty years. His son Timur Shah (تیمور شاه, Tīmūr Shāh) reigned until 1793, his grandson Zaman Shah (زمان شاه, Zamān Shāh) until about 1800, and Zaman's brothers Mahmud and Shuja then took the throne by turns. Between Zaman's fall and 1818 the crown changed hands four times, and each change was made by Durrani or Barakzai chiefs who were stronger than the king. [7] The founder's story is in Ahmad Shah and the founding of the Durrani state. This is the story of the Sadozai kings, the royal branch of the Popalzai, down to the year Dost Mohammad Khan took Kabul.

Timur Shah takes Kandahar, 1772

Timur was born at Mashhad in December 1746 and brought up at his father's court. He was governor in the Punjab and then at Herat, where most people speak Persian, and Elphinstone says he never became perfectly familiar with Pashto. [2] Caroe adds that he preferred Persian scribes to the rough Durrani nobles. [7]

When Ahmad Shah fell ill, his vizier Shah Wali Khan had Timur ordered back to Herat, because Wali and Sardar Jahan Khan had agreed to give the crown to Prince Sulaiman, who was married to the vizier's daughter. [2] After Ahmad's death the Durrani chiefs met at Kandahar and could not agree. Abdullah Khan Popalzai, who held the office of Dewan Begi, led Timur's party; the vizier put Sulaiman on the throne on his own authority. Timur marched on Kandahar with the Durranis and Aimaqs who backed him. The vizier could raise no army, came to Timur's camp, was refused an audience, and was tried and condemned for a murder, a charge brought, Elphinstone writes, "to remove from the government the odium of his execution." [2] Ganda Singh adds that Ahmad Shah had nominated Timur, and that Shah Wali and his accomplices were put to the sword. [6]

Kabul, Peshawar and the king's guards

Timur did not stay in Kandahar. Elphinstone says the execution had angered the Durranis, and Timur "first showed this" distrust "in removing the seat of government from Candahar, in the midst of the Dooraunee country, to Caubul, which is inhabited by Taujiks, the most quiet and submissive of all the subjects of the Afghaun monarchy." [2] Ganda Singh gives another cause, that Kandahar's people had supported Sulaiman. [6] Neither dates the move. Peshawar became the winter capital. Caroe calls its establishment under Timur "the beginning of a long story only now coming to an end," and records that Timur's palace and gardens at Peshawar, where Elphinstone was later received, were destroyed by the Sikhs in 1823. [7] See Peshawar: a short history, and the old capital in Kandahar.

A Persian-speaking king in Kabul needed troops who owed nothing to the Durrani clans. Elphinstone says Timur kept embodied only "his own guards, the Gholami Shauhs," who were "mostly Persians and Taujiks," unconnected with the Afghan chiefs and "entirely devoted to the King," and that he kept no Durrani troops at the capital. [2] Caroe calls them Qizilbash and translates the name as the King's Slaves; Ganda Singh says Timur raised twelve thousand Qizilbash horse. [6, 7] They kept Kabul quiet, but the provinces drifted away, and Elphinstone traces the decay of Durrani power to this policy. [2]

There were revolts. Abdul Khaliq Khan, a relative of the king, gathered Durranis and Ghilzais in what Elphinstone thinks was 1774–5, but two chiefs who were supposed to be with him took their clans over to the king, and Abdul Khaliq was taken and blinded. [2] In 1779, Elphinstone says, a dervish called the Sahibzada of Chamkani used the Khalil chief Feizullah Khan to murder Timur and put Prince Sikandar on the throne. Feizullah marched his men into the citadel of Peshawar on the pretext of showing them to the king. Timur retreated to an upper room, the Gholami Shahs cut Feizullah's men down, and Feizullah and his son were executed. [2] Ganda Singh tells a plot of the same shape, at Peshawar and for the same prince, but names Arsala Khan Mohmand as its leader and dates it 1791. [6] In Elphinstone, Arsala Khan appears only later, as a Mohmand chief who rebelled during the Bokhara war of 1789, surrendered, and was handed to enemies of his own tribe who killed him at once. [2] Caroe calls that breach of safe-conduct "a stain on Timur's memory," as Elphinstone does. [7] The two dates for the Peshawar plot cannot both stand, and neither author mentions the other's version.

In 1788 and 1789 Timur marched against Shah Murad of Bokhara, who had seized Merv and driven out its Shia inhabitants. Elphinstone reports a letter, copies of which were in circulation at Kabul, in which Timur, a Sunni, "urges, that no state can have a right to interfere with the subjects of another on account of their religion." The campaign ended at Aqcha in a peace that left Murad his conquests. [2]

Timur fell ill on a journey from Peshawar and died at Kabul. Elphinstone gives the day as 20 May 1793; Ganda Singh gives 18 May 1793; Caroe gives 1793 in one chapter and 1795 in another. [2, 6, 7] He had named no heir. [2]

Zaman Shah and the Punjab, 1793–1799

The eldest prince, Humayun, was governor of Kandahar, and Mahmud governed Herat. Timur's favourite queen, a Yusufzai, persuaded Painda Khan (پاینده خان, Pāyanda Khān), the Barakzai chief whom Timur had titled Sarfaraz, to back her son Zaman. Zaman's partisans seized the gates of the Bala Hisar in Kabul, shut the other princes in the upper fort, and had him proclaimed. [2, 7] Mohan Lal says Painda Khan gave the sceptre to Zaman and was repaid with command of the Barakzai, a Ghilzai division and part of the Qizilbash. [1] Ganda Singh says only that Zaman, Timur's fifth son, happened to be at the capital and proclaimed himself king. [6]

Zaman wanted India. He crossed the Indus on a bridge of boats at Attock at the end of 1795, reached Hasan Abdal, and was back at Peshawar on 3 January 1796 because the Qajar Agha Muhammad Khan had invaded Khorasan. [2] In 1797 he entered Lahore on 3 January with about 30,000 men, half of them Durranis, and Mahmud's rising at Herat called him back. [2] He set out a third time from Peshawar on 25 October 1798. Sikh chiefs came to his court, "and among the former was Runjeet Sing," in Elphinstone's words, and Zaman was back at Peshawar on 30 January 1799 after news of another Persian invasion. His guns were lost in the flooded Jhelum, and Ranjit Singh and Sahib Singh dug them out and returned them. [2]

Cunningham tells what Ranjit gained by it. Zaman could not get his heavy artillery across the Jhelum, so Ranjit "made it known to the aspiring chief that their transmission would be an acceptable service," and received "a royal investiture of the capital of the Punjab." [5] Caroe reads this as the Shah setting up the young Sikh as his viceroy at Lahore. [7]

Painda Khan's death and Zaman's fall, 1799–1800

Zaman's vizier was Wafadar Khan, a Sadozai. Elphinstone says he sold provincial governments and set the king against the Durrani nobles. [2] At Kandahar, in 1799 by Elphinstone's order of events, six of the great lords agreed to kill Wafadar, depose Zaman and crown Shuja. Elphinstone names three: Sirafraz (Painda) Khan, head of the Barakzais, Muhammad Azim Khan, head of the Alakozais, and Amir Arslan Khan of the Persian Jawanshir tribe. When an officer came for Painda Khan, his eldest son Fateh Khan (فتح خان, Fatḥ Khān) met him at the door, offered to fetch his father, and then proposed killing the officer and riding out of Kandahar. Painda Khan refused and walked to the king. "Next morning they were summoned before the King, and all beheaded." [2]

The accounts of the plot differ. Ferrier has five delegates meeting in a dervish's house and drafting articles that made the crown elective by the sardars; Zaman, he says, had them killed in front of him and their bodies left three days in the square outside the citadel. [4] Mohan Lal mentions no conspiracy: Wafadar accused Painda Khan of intriguing with Shuja, and Zaman put him to death "without making any investigation." [1] Caroe thinks Painda had only voiced his disgust and had not joined any plot. [7] Fateh Khan fled to Girishk and then to Persia. [2, 4]

Fateh Khan found Mahmud in Khorasan, living on the Qajars' promises, and told him to look to the Durranis instead. Mahmud crossed into Sistan with about fifty horsemen and came to Kandahar, where the Durranis joined him. On the forty-second day of the siege Fateh Khan got into the town almost alone and threw himself on the honour of Abdullah Khan Nurzai, a commander of the garrison, by the custom of asking protection that Pashtuns call nanawatai; Abdullah declared for Mahmud and the gates opened. The custom is described in Pashtunwali, the code of honour. [2, 7] Zaman, who was at Peshawar planning another India campaign, marched out of Kabul with thirty thousand men. His vanguard under Ahmad Khan Nurzai went over to Mahmud after Fateh Khan seized Ahmad's brother Abdullah and threatened to kill him, and the army broke up. [2] Zaman fled and stopped at the castle of Mulla Ashiq, a dependant of his vizier in the Shinwari country, who held him and sent word to Mahmud. Fateh Khan's brother Asad Khan came to secure him, and an officer with a surgeon pierced the king's eyes with a lancet on the road to Kabul. [2] Mohan Lal says Asad Khan blinded him at Jagdalak. [1]

The year is not settled. Ganda Singh and Ferrier give 1800. [4, 6] Elphinstone gives none, but the next date he supplies is 10 September 1801, by which time Mahmud was on the throne. [2] Elphinstone says Zaman was confined in the Bala Hisar through Mahmud's reign and freed when Shuja came in; Ferrier says he escaped, fled to Bokhara and Herat, and ended at Ludhiana on a pension from the East India Company. [2, 4] Elphinstone adds that Zaman hid the Koh-i-Noor in the wall of his room, where Shuja found it. [2]

Shuja and Elphinstone's embassy, 1801–1809

Shuja, then about twenty, had been left at Peshawar with a few guards, the royal family and the crown jewels. He proclaimed himself king and on 10 September 1801 marched towards Kabul. At Eshpaun he was winning until his tribesmen stopped to loot the treasure he had carried into the field, and Fateh Khan charged with the Barakzai horse and broke them. [2] In the winter of 1802, near Quetta, with his followers starving, he plundered a caravan worth over three lakhs of rupees and gave the merchants notes promising payment. [2]

Mahmud's rule at Kabul collapsed over his Qizilbash guards, who openly kept the Shia faith. On 4 and 5 June 1803 the town rose against them under the preacher called the Meer Waez and Mukhtar al-Daula, a Durrani lord and son of Shah Wali. [2] Shuja entered Kabul in July 1803. [2, 6, 7] He spared Mahmud's eyes, a mercy that, Elphinstone remarks, Shuja "has unfortunately had sufficient reason to regret." His first act was to free Zaman. [2]

The best description of Shuja at his height is Elphinstone's. The British embassy of 1809 found him at Peshawar, where he had arrived on 10 January 1809 after his vizier, who had proclaimed another prince king at Kabul, was shot in battle in March 1808. [2] On 5 March the mission rode through streets crowded with spectators to the palace. The king sat in an upper hall behind a fountain court, among eunuchs, on a gold throne. Elphinstone wrote:

The King of Caubul was a handsome man, about thirty years of age, of an olive complexion, with a thick black beard. The expression of his countenance was dignified and pleasing; his voice clear, and his address princely. [3]

The crown and dress were "one blaze of jewels," and in a bracelet above the elbow was the Koh-i-Noor. [3] At a private audience that night Elphinstone found it hard to believe, of an Eastern monarch, "how much he had the manners of a gentleman." [3] He was not misled by the show:

...although some things (the appearance of the King in particular) exceeded my expectations, others fell far short of them, and all bore less the appearance of a state in prosperity, than of a splendid monarchy in decay. [3]

The army was unpaid, and soldiers stopped the mission's gentlemen in the street to abuse the vizier Akram Khan, "not even sparing the King." At the farewell on 12 June the king looked "ill and haggard." [3] The mission left on 14 June, thinking Shuja's cause was gaining. [3] Fateh Khan's cavalry then routed him at Nimla near Gandamak, and Ferrier says Fateh's brother Purdil Khan beat him again four months later, also in 1809. [4] Caroe also dates Mahmud's return to 1809. [7]

Shuja's later adventures are known from his own memoir, which Burnes summarised. Ata Muhammad Khan seized him and held a lancet over his eyes, and once took him into the middle of the Indus with his arms bound, to force out the Koh-i-Noor. [4] Burnes judged that Shuja's "manners and address are highly polished, but his judgment does not rise above mediocrity." [4] Shuja settled at Ludhiana near his brother, and the British brought him back to Kabul in 1839, as told in the Anglo-Afghan wars.

Fateh Khan's death and the Barakzai principalities, 1818–1826

For eight years after 1809 Fateh Khan ruled in Mahmud's name. Elphinstone says he took Herat by treachery, repulsed a Persian attack on it, and recovered Kashmir with Ranjit Singh's help before falling out with him. [2] The end came at Herat. Mohan Lal says that Dost Mohammad, Fateh's young brother, plundered the palace and offended a royal lady, Kamran's sister, and that Kamran, set on revenge, seized the vizier with his father's consent. [1] Ferrier says Fateh's eyes were put out at Herat on Mahmud's order, carried out by Kamran, and that he was killed later, in front of Mahmud, as the court retreated from Ghazni. [4] Mohan Lal says Ata Muhammad Khan Bamizai did the blinding and that Fateh, brought out blind and bound, was cut to pieces before Mahmud. [1] Elphinstone, Mohan Lal and Caroe agree on 1818. [1, 2, 7] Mohan Lal concludes that "the end of the Vazir Fatah Khan was the end of the Sadozai realm." [1]

Fateh Khan's brothers rose. Elphinstone says Mahmud's authority "was at once confined to Heraut and its dependencies," while Kabul, Kandahar and Peshawar passed to different brothers, who soon quarrelled; the Durrani tribes obeyed Kandahar or Herat according to where their land lay, and the other tribes obeyed nobody. [2] In 1819 Muhammad Azim Khan agreed to set up Ayub Mirza, another son of Timur Shah, as king. [4] Mahmud and Kamran kept Herat until 1842. [7] Dost Mohammad and his half-brother Sultan Muhammad fought for two years, and in 1826 Dost held Kabul. Ferrier says he owed it to Muhammad Khan Bayat, a Qizilbash chief whose sister was Dost's mother. [4] Dost Mohammad's career is in his own article, and the clans that supplied these kings and chiefs are in the Durrani confederation.