Amir Habibullah Khan, 1901–1919

At a glance

• Habibullah Khan (حبیب الله خان, Ḥabībullāh Khān) was the eldest son of Abdur Rahman Khan and ruled Afghanistan from October 1901 until he was shot dead in his bed on 20 February 1919. [2, 3]

• On 21 March 1905 he signed a treaty with Sir Louis Dane that repeated his father's engagements and gave Britain nothing new. [3, 5]

• He founded Habibia College, the Siraj al-Akhbar newspaper and the first hydroelectric plant in the country. [4]

• He kept Afghanistan out of the First World War, against the wishes of much of his court. [3]

• His brother Nasrullah and his son Amanullah both claimed the throne within days of the killing. [3, 6]

A son born in exile

Abdur Rahman wrote that when he reached Samarkand he married the daughter of the Mir of Badakhshan, "and in the second year the Almighty gave me a son, whom I named Habibullah (Beloved of God)." Two years later came Nasrullah. [2] Habibullah was therefore born in the city where his father lived under Russian protection. Martin and Fletcher both give his age at accession as thirty-two, and neither says how that was worked out. [1, 5]

He governed in his father's absence. Abdur Rahman recorded that after two years' absence he found Habibullah had "governed the country so wisely, cleverly, and so entirely in accordance with my wishes" that he gave him two orders, the second for riding alone into the Kandahar-Hazara battalion when it mutinied. [2] The British had already marked him as the heir: Adamec records that a memorandum by Curzon in December 1898 judged Habibullah, "Abdur Rahman's choice for succession", acceptable. [3] Fletcher describes a short, stout man with a pleasant manner, an excellent linguist, whose chief weakness was the harem. He says Habibullah fathered over a hundred children. [5]

Accession in 1901

Abdur Rahman died on 3 October 1901. The khutba was read in Habibullah's name the next day, and Adamec records that he took the throne "without any difficulties". [3] Martin describes the ceremony in the Salaam Khana outside the Arg. The chief mullah of the Friday mosque wound a white muslin lungi round the new amir's head and gave him the Quran, relics of the Prophet (a coat and some hair) and a flag from the tomb of a saint. Nasrullah then set his father's black astrakhan hat on his head, and the old amir's belt and sword were given to him. [1] Gregorian adds that a new hand-kissing ceremony (dastbusi) was introduced to stress the sacredness of the office. [4]

In his speech Habibullah promised to hold the country intact, to resist foreign aggression, to put in hand reforms and to abolish the spy system. Martin writes that "a great cheer was raised on this". [1] He freed political prisoners and offered an amnesty to exiles, among them tribal chiefs, Hazara leaders and Mahmud Tarzi. Gregorian reads the amnesty as a sign that the tribal chiefs no longer threatened the throne. [4] He also relaxed compulsory recruitment, set up a council of state for tribal affairs and let tribal representatives take part in provincial hearings of tribal cases. His government stayed as absolute as his father's. [4]

The British wanted a new agreement at once. Curzon argued that Abdur Rahman's engagements were personal, so Habibullah could claim neither subsidy nor protection until a new arrangement was made. The amir answered on 31 October 1901 that he would keep his father's terms "so long as" Britain did, and put off a mission. In letters of November and December 1902 he said he could not leave Kabul and asked why, if the alliance did not need renewing when Queen Victoria died, it needed renewing now. [3]

The treaty of 1905

Dane reached Kabul on 12 December 1904. Five regiments presented arms, the British anthem was played and twenty-one guns fired, and Dane received a gift of hospitality worth 30,000 Kabuli rupees. [3] The talks that followed lasted more than three months. Dane's instructions were to confirm the engagements with Abdur Rahman and to raise other matters: arms imports, the border tribes, a railway, British newswriters in Afghan towns. Habibullah put forward a treaty of his own. It restated his father's agreements, styled him "Independent King of the State of Afghanistan and its dependencies" in Fletcher's account, and he would not discuss anything else until the government of India answered it. [3, 5]

By 31 January 1905 the amir told Dane that his government had "no intentions whatever to deal with Afghanistan with equity and justice". [3] In an informal note he warned that if Britain took Kabul and Kandahar the Russians would take Herat and Turkestan. [3] The government of India wanted an ultimatum. London, which feared a war that might bring in Russia, told Dane to sign the amir's draft, on the ground that "if control of the Amir's relations is secured, we do not think any question of form should stand in the way." [3]

The treaty was signed on 21 March 1905. Adamec quotes Sir Percy Sykes's story that the amir flicked ink across the English copy and called it spoilt. Dane, a Persian scholar, answered with Hafiz: "This is only a mole on the fair face of the treaty". [3] Two days later he wrote promising to guard the British cemetery at Sherpur and to have the Indo-Afghan frontier demarcated after the next harvest. [3] For the line itself see the Durand Line. Adamec calls the outcome "a complete victory for the Amir": arrears of subsidy were paid, no limit was put on arms imports and no British newswriters were admitted. The Mohmand boundary commission was staffed on the Afghan side by the Sarhang of Dakka, whom the British thought unfriendly. [3] The government of India complained that London had retreated all along the line. [3] Fletcher agrees that Britain gained nothing beyond Abdur Rahman's commitments. [5]

The visit to India, 1907

Habibullah had refused the Viceroy's invitation under Curzon. A new invitation, for a visit of "sight-seeing and shooting", reached him in 1906 and he arrived in January 1907, when Lord Minto was Viceroy. King Edward VII's message of welcome addressed him as "Your Majesty", which overcame the reluctance of some Indian officials to call him Padshah, and he received a thirty-one gun salute. [3]

The visit went less smoothly than the receptions. Kitchener and McMahon had the amir initiated as a Freemason without telling the Foreign Department. He lingered at Calcutta and Bombay beyond his itinerary and scandalised some by refusing to take off his shoes in the mosque at Delhi. [3] At Aligarh he told students: "I stand here as the advocate of Western learning", and added that religious education was the foundation for everything else. [4] After his return, mullahs in Laghman accused him of having secretly become a Christian. Adamec says the agitation ended when the amir hanged four mullahs and toured the country to say that his policy was his father's. [3]

He came back wanting technicians, roads from the Indian border to Kabul and a railway inside Afghanistan, and the Foreign Secretary in India wondered whether he was "going too fast". Adamec says his enthusiasm for the more offensive innovations faded as fast as it came. [3] Britain then agreed the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 with Russia without consulting him, though it could take effect only with his approval. He did not give it. [4, 5] In August 1908 he sent the Viceroy his council's fifty-four-page answer: it said the convention destroyed Afghanistan's independence and that "the leaving open of this gate is the ruin of the house". [3] Gregorian suggests that perhaps no single event did more to give Afghan nationalism its impetus. [4]

Schools, a newspaper and a power station

Sources disagree on when Habibia College opened. Four of Gregorian's sources give 1904. E. and A. Thornton, writing at the time, say the autumn of 1906. Wilber places it after the India visit and Stolz in 1901, and Gregorian could confirm neither. [4] The college taught English and Urdu, geography and mathematics beside traditional subjects, then added physics, chemistry, history and drawing, and it had the first public library in the country. [4] In 1918 it had 296 students, and about 55 teachers, most of them Indian Muslims trained at Lahore or Aligarh. [4] Fletcher calls it the country's first public school and the most important of Habibullah's contributions, and repeats a cynical remark that it was built to house his own children. [5] A military college, with a Turkish officer in charge from 1907, had 80 cadets in 1910. [4]

Siraj al-Akhbar Afghaniyah ("The Lamp of the News of Afghanistan") appeared every two weeks from October 1911 to January 1919, in Persian, under the amir's patronage. Mahmud Tarzi edited it and wrote most of it. [4] Tarzi's circle, the Young Afghans, argued for schools, newspapers, a railway, science and an Afghan nationalism built on Islam. Habibullah welcomed their support for the monarchy and reined in the more militant articles. During the war he rejected their call to join the Central Powers. By late 1918, Gregorian says, the two sides were in sharp conflict and Tarzi was forced to stop publishing. [4] Adamec adds that the paper was banned in Russia in 1913 and in India a year later. [3]

The amir's own tastes ran to machines. Poullada says he drove imported cars at breakneck speed and spent heavily on photographic equipment. [6] Gregorian dates the first hydroelectric plant in the country to 1910–1913, at Jabal-us-Siraj near Jalalabad, with a capacity of 1,500 kilowatts. Four American and English engineers built it. [4] The Scottish engineer James Miller laid a pipe bringing water from Paghman to Kabul and was in his service from 1911 to 1914. [4] Martin, the engineer who stayed on into the new reign, recalled that Habibullah was fond of cricket and the magic lantern. When Martin gave a cinematograph show in the Arg, the amir charged ten rupees for a seat and five for standing room and kept the money. [1]

Mullahs outside Kabul resented the new schools, and from 1913 a pupil's promotion depended on his marks in religion and Arabic. [4] Industry stayed small, with about 5,000 workers by the end of the reign. [4] The tribes were quiet but not always still. Fletcher says the Mangal of Khost rose over taxes in 1913 and that Nadir Khan ended the revolt after the government called on Suleiman Khel, Shinwari and Khugiani volunteers. [5]

Neutrality in the First World War

Habibullah declared neutrality when the war began and repeated it on 3 October 1914. Turkey's entry worried him more than the war in Europe. [3] The Viceroy asked him to intern any German, Austrian or Turkish parties that crossed the border, and he promised to. The Niedermayer–Hentig expedition crossed anyway. [3] It was at Herat by late August 1915, left on 7 September and entered Kabul on 26 September. In Kabul the Germans were kept in the Bagh-i-Babur garden and had to threaten a hunger strike to get an audience. [3] The amir received them in mid-October at Paghman and told them he saw them as merchants who should lay out their wares. [3]

They carried letters from the German chancellor and Enver Pasha. Enver asked whether the amir would answer the Ottoman call to jihad, let Turkish troops through to India and break with Britain. Habibullah replied that Afghans were devout but lacked the means for a long war. [3] At court Nasrullah, Inayatullah, Amanullah, Nadir Khan and Tarzi favoured joining the Central Powers, and so did most of the clergy and tribesmen. Abdul Quddus Khan, the chief minister, led those who wanted peace with India. Adamec says the amir played the two groups off against each other. [3]

He told the British Agent, Hafiz Sayfullah Khan, that he was "a true friend of the British Government, keeping up neutrality to the last so long as the internal interests of Afghanistan are not exposed to danger or self-defence". [3] When the British King wrote to thank him and the Viceroy raised his subsidy by two lakhs, he called the sum "trifling" and in January 1916 an insult to Afghan honour. [3] On 24 January 1916 he initialled a draft treaty with the Germans. Adamec says it offered 100,000 rifles, 300 guns and ten million pounds sterling in return for preparations for war. Niedermayer's telegram added that the amir would begin the war when 20,000 to 100,000 German or Turkish soldiers arrived in Afghanistan. Fletcher gives 50,000 cannon and twenty million pounds. [3, 5] The next day he told the British Agent that he would stay neutral. On 29 January a durbar of chiefs from across the country heard him say that Afghanistan could not leave its traditional policy. The crowds who expected a call to jihad were disappointed. [3]

Adamec's judgment is that the amir signed to buy time: as long as the Central Powers could not beat Russia and Britain, attacking either alone was "folly". [3] The Germans left Kabul in May 1916. The British, Adamec notes, were ready to reward neutrality. The Viceroy wrote that the amir's services "have been immense", but London declined to give Afghanistan a place at the peace conference, saying it was open only to belligerents. [3] Habibullah wrote to the Viceroy on 2 February 1919 asking for a signed certificate of Afghan independence or the right to send his own representative. [3] Many Afghans, Adamec writes, wondered whether they had failed Islam when it most needed them. [3]

The killing at Kalagosh

Habibullah left Kabul for Jalalabad on 1 January 1919 and put his son Amanullah in charge of the capital. In the night of 19–20 February he was shot at Kalagosh in Laghman. [3] Amanullah's letter to the Viceroy gives the hour as 3 a.m. on Thursday, 18 Jamadi al-Awwal 1337, which he equates with 20 February, and says his father "was killed by a pistol shot ... in his royal bed". [3] Fletcher writes that the court was hunting in Laghman, that the camp was woken by one shot and that the king was found shot through the ear. [5]

Who arranged it was never settled. Poullada says the "true instigators or perpetrators" were never discovered. [6] Adamec records two British readings of the time: one blamed Amanullah's mother, Ulya Hazrat, and the other the "war party", which wanted Nasrullah on the throne. [3] Fletcher says the Russians named one Mustafa Saghir, an agent in British pay, and the Afghan government officially seconded that, while the British blamed Amanullah, Nasrullah, Tarzi and Nadir Khan. Fletcher thinks relatives or other courtiers most likely. [5] Gregorian's footnote reports two more readings. Marin suggested the killing was a late result of the German mission. Raskolnikov, the Soviet envoy, put it down to the amir's failure to take account of how the war and the October Revolution had changed Afghanistan's position. [4]

Nasrullah, Amanullah and the trial

The next day, according to Adamec, Nasrullah was proclaimed amir at Jalalabad. After two days of durbar he named Inayatullah deputy. In Kabul Amanullah told the garrison he would not rest until his father was avenged. He held the treasury and the arsenal, and the Kabul troops declared for him. [3] Poullada adds that Habibullah had not named an heir and that Afghan custom does not recognise primogeniture. Amanullah's seizure of power was neither illegal nor unusual at a Persianized court, he says, yet some traditional chiefs saw him as an usurper. [6] Gregorian says Nasrullah's side never investigated the crime and proclaimed him without consulting the tribal chiefs. [4] On 27 February the troops at Jalalabad swore allegiance to Amanullah and arrested Nasrullah, Inayatullah and the Musahiban family. Nasrullah abdicated the next day. [3] Amanullah's proclamation, which Adamec prints, set three conditions: independence from outside control, vengeance for his father and no oppression within the country. [3] The dates for each step differ between accounts, as the article on Amanullah Khan records.

At a durbar in the Qanuni Bagh on 13 April 1919 Amanullah presided over the trial. Colonel Shah Ali Reza Khan was indicted for the murder, sentenced to death and executed at once. Nasrullah was sentenced to life, Inayatullah to retirement, and Nadir Khan with twenty-one others was declared innocent. [3] Poullada notes that the execution of what he calls "an apparent scapegoat" left many Afghans suspecting Amanullah. [6] In 1929 the rebel Habibullah Kalakani (Bacha-i Saqao) accused Nadir Khan of the killing in his proclamations. [6] Some British writers argued that suspicion of Amanullah drove him to the war against Britain that began in May 1919; Adamec thinks the fear of renewed British control mattered more. [3] The war is told in the Anglo-Afghan wars.

How he is remembered

Amanullah called his father "the martyr" in his letter of 3 March 1919 and again in his proclamation to the army and nation. [3] That is the new amir's own usage, in documents Adamec prints. Fletcher, who wrote in the 1960s, says Habibullah's memory "is not revered in Afghanistan" and judges him a ruler who gave the country a generation of peace, tolerated exiles and began the school that trained its later leaders. [5] Poullada thinks the pro-British reputation his neutrality earned may have contributed to the killing. [6]

Habibullah is buried at Jalalabad, where the court wintered and where he built the palace of Siraj al-Imarat; see Jalalabad. His son Amanullah and daughter-in-law Soraya lie beside him, and the story of the son who took his throne is in Amanullah Khan.