Return of a king, p.63
Return of a King, page 63
94 Hopkins, The Making of Modern Afghanistan, p. 69.
95 Forrest, Life of Field Marshal Sir Neville Chamberlain, p. 151.
96 Greenwood, Narrative of the Late Victorious Campaign in Afghanistan under General Pollock, p. 243.
97 NAI, Foreign, Secret Consultations, 3 May 1843, no. 20, A. Abbott to Ellenborough, 29 March 1843.
98 Low, The Life and Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir George Pollock, p. 415.
99 Stocqueler, The Memoirs and Correspondence of Sir William Nott, vol. II, p. 163.
100 Mohan Lal, Life of Dost Mohammad, vol. II, p. 490.
101 Mirza ‘Ata, Naway Ma’arek, pp. 254–69, The return of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan to Kabul.
102 Yapp, ‘The Revolutions of 1841–2 in Afghanistan’, p. 483.
103 Mackenzie, Storms and Sunshine, vol. I, p. 194.
104 Ibid., vol. II, p. 30.
105 Allen, Diary of a March through Sindhe and Afghanistan, pp. 321, 325.
106 Karim, Muharaba Kabul wa Kandahar, pp. 82–4; Forrest, Life of Field Marshal Sir Neville Chamberlain, p. 152.
107 Waqi’at-i-Shah Shuja, p. 149, The Thirty-Fifth Event, The murder of the Shah.
108 Allen, Diary of a March through Sindhe and Afghanistan, p. 326.
109 The text of the Simla Proclamation is given in full in Norris, First Afghan War, pp. 451–2.
110 Mirza ‘Ata, Naway Ma’arek, pp. 254–69, The return of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan to Kabul.
111 Forrest, Life of Field Marshal Sir Neville Chamberlain, p. 154.
112 Ibid., p. 155.
113 Allen, Diary of a March through Sindhe and Afghanistan, p. 344.
114 BL, OIOC, BSL (1) 27,873, Governor General to Secret Committee 48/, 19 October 1842.
115 Allen, Diary of a March through Sindhe and Afghanistan, p. 352.
116 Allen, Soldier Sahibs, pp. 53–5.
117 I have written at length about John Nicholson’s psychopathic behaviour in 1857 in my The Last Mughal: The End of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857, London, 2006.
118 Forrest, Life of Field Marshal Sir Neville Chamberlain, p. 158.
119 Allen, Diary of a March through Sindhe and Afghanistan, p. 359.
120 Forrest, Life of Field Marshal Sir Neville Chamberlain, p. 158.
121 Mackenzie, Storms and Sunshine, vol. I, p. 198.
122 Ibid.
123 Ibid., p. 194.
124 BL, OIOC, HM/434, Nicholls Papers, Nicholls’s Journal, vol. 40, 7 January 1843. See also Pottinger, The Afghan Connection, pp. xi-xii.
125 Mirza ‘Ata, Naway Ma’arek, pp. 244–69, The second coming of the English to Kabul.
126 Lawrence, Reminiscences of Forty Three Years in India, p. 12.
127 Royal Geographical Society, Rawlinson Papers, HC4, Masson Diary, entry for 1 December 1839.
128 BL, OIOC, Mss Eur E162, letter 4.
129 Mackenzie, Storms and Sunshine, vol. I, p. 199.
130 Pottinger and Macrory, The Ten-Rupee Jezail, p. 167.
131 Eden, Up the Country, p. xix.
132 The Times, 25 October 1844.
133 See Michael Fisher’s excellent essay ‘Mohan Lal Kashmiri (1812–77)’, in Margrit Pernau (ed.), The Delhi College, pp. 231–66. See also Gupta, Panjab, Central Asia and the First Afghan War. The book has an admiring introduction by the young Jawaharlal Nehru.
134 NAI, Foreign, Secret Consultations, 29 March 1843, no. 91, From the Envoy to the Court of Lahore, Ambala, 4 March 1843.
135 NAI, Foreign, Secret Consultations, 23 March 1843, no. 539, From Colonel Richmond, Camp Rooper, 18 December 1843.
136 Mackenzie, Storms and Sunshine, vol. II, pp. 27, 29.
137 NAI, Foreign, Secret Consultations, 23 March 1843, no. 539, From Colonel Richmond, Camp Rooper, 18 December 1843.
138 Aziz ud-Din Popalzai, Durrat uz-Zaman, Kabul, 1959, ch. The Private Life of Zaman Shah from His Dethronement till His Death.
139 Robert Warburton, Eighteen Years in the Khyber 1879–1898, London, 1900, p. 8.
140 Noelle, State and Tribe in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan, p. 57.
141 Fayz Mohammad, Siraj ul-Tawarikh, vol. I, p. 198. See also NAI, Foreign, Secret Consultations, 23 March 1843, no. 531, From Colonel Richmond, Agent of the Governor General in the North West Frontier, Ludhiana, 27 November 1843.
142 Mackenzie, Storms and Sunshine, vol. II, p. 33.
143 BL, OIOC, ESL no. 20 of 3 March 1847 (IOR L/PS/5/190), Lawrence to Curvie, 29 February 1847.
144 Mackenzie, Storms and Sunshine, vol. II, p. 23.
145 Ibid., p. 32.
146 Fayz Mohammad, Siraj ul-Tawarikh, vol. I, p. 297.
147 NAI, Foreign, Secret Consultations, 23 March 1844, no. 531, From Colonel Richmond, Agent of the Governor General in the North West Frontier, Ludhiana, 27 November 1843.
148 Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History, p. 127.
149 The Letters of Queen Victoria: A Selection from Her Majesty’s Correspondence between the Years 1837 and 1861, ed. Arthur C. Benson and Viscount Esher, vol. II: 1844–1853, London, 1908.
150 James Howard Harris Malmesbury, Memoirs of an Ex-Minister: An Autobiography, London, 2006, vol. I, entry for 6 June 1844, pp. 289–90.
151 Quoted by Figes, Crimea, p. 68.
152 Ibid., pp. 61–70.
153 I’d like to thank Michael Semple for pointing this out ot me.
Author’s Note
1 Gleig, Sale’s Brigade in Afghanistan, p. 182.
2 J. A. Norris, The First Afghan War 1838–1842, Cambridge, 1967, p. 161.
3 Sherard Cowper-Coles, Cables from Kabul: The Inside Story of the West’s Afghanistan Campaign, London, 2011, p. 289–90.
4 BL, Broughton Papers, Add Mss 36474, Wade to the Governor General,31 January 1839.
5 The one striking exception to this is Christine Noelle’s remarkable State and Tribe in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan (1826–1863), London, 1997, but its treatment of the First Afghan War is very brief and she has accessed only a small number of the available Dari sources for the period.
6 Munshi Abdul Karim, Muharaba Kabul wa Kandahar, Kanpur, 1851, Introduction.
7 In his Chants Populaires des Afghans, Paris, 1888–90, p. 201, James Darmesteter mentions a whole body of song and poetry about the war, and adds that Muhammad Hayat sent him a collection from the war, but that it hadn’t arrived by the time of publication.
8 Maulana Hamid Kashmiri, Akbarnama. Asar-i manzum-i Hamid-i Kashmiri, written c.1844, published Kabul, 1330 AH/1951, preface by Ahmad-Ali Kohzad, ch. 34.
9 Muhammad Asef Fekrat Riyazi Herawi, ‘Ayn al-Waqayi: Tarikh-i Afghanistan, written c.1845, pub. Tehran 1369/1990; Sultan Mohammad Khan ibn Musa Khan Durrani, Tarikh-i-Sultani, began writing on 1 Ramzan 1281 AH (Sunday 29 January 1865) and published first on 14 Shawwal 1298 AH (Friday 8 September 1881), Bombay; Fayz Mohammad, Siraj ul-Tawarikh, pub. Kabul, 1913, trans. R. D. McChesney (forthcoming).
10 Muhammad Hasan Amini, Paadash-e-Khidmatguzaari-ye-Saadiqaane Ghazi Nayab Aminullah Khan Logari (The Letters of Ghazi Aminullah Khan Logari), Kabul, 2010.
11 Mirza ‘Ata Mohammad, Naway Ma’arek (The Song of Battles), pub. as Nawa-yi ma’arik. Nuskha-i khatt-i Muza-i Kabul mushtamal bar waqi‘at-i ‘asr-i Sadoza’i u Barakza’i, ta’lif-i Mirza Mirza ‘Ata’-Muhammad, Kabul, 1331 AH/1952.
12 Shah Shuja ul-Mulk, Waqi’at-i-Shah Shuja (Memoirs of Shah Shuja) written in 1836, supplement by Mohammad Husain Herati 1861, published as Waqi’at-i Shah-Shuja. Daftar-i avval, duvvum: az Shah-Shuja. Daftar-i sivvum: az Muhammad-Husain Harati, Kabul, 1333 AH/1954 (Nashrat-i Anjuman-i tarikh-i Afghanistan, No. 29) [pub. after the text of the Kabul manuscript, without notes or index, with a preface by Ahmad-‘Ali Kohzad].
13 Robert Burns, ‘To a Louse’, The Collected Poems, London, 1994.
14 Kashmiri, Akbarnama, ch. 10.
15 Ibid., ch. 32.
Footnotes
a In Napoleon’s luggage, captured on the retreat from Moscow, was found a portfolio full of ‘the reports, maps, and routes, drawn up by General Gardane at the request of the Emperor’, for the invasion of India which he was still planning to pull off after the subjection of Russia. NAI, Foreign, Secret Consultations, 19 August 1825, nos 3–4.
b What is left of Nadir Shah’s Mughal loot is still kept locked up in the vaults of Bank Meli in Teheran. This includes the ‘sister’ of the Koh-i-Nur, the Dariya Nur, or Ocean of Light.
c The same was often true in India: Clive’s ‘victories’ at Plassey and Buxar were actually more like successful negotiations between British bankers and Indian power brokers than the triumphs of arms and valour that imperial propaganda later made them out to be.
d The British later learned to follow the Mughal model. According to a piece of imperial doggerel it became British policy to ‘Thrash the Sindhis, make friends with the Baluch, but pay the Pathans.’
e Mubarak Haveli still survives in Lahore’s old city, a five-minute walk from the Punjab Archives in Anarkali where much of the research for this book was done. The haveli [courtyard house] is still as it was in Shah Shuja’s day, with a succession of courtyards giving on to living quarters reached through wooden fretwork lattices and carved balconies. After the First Afghan War it was given by the British to exiled Qizilbash leaders from Kabul and it remains a centre of Shia activity today, with its own ashurkhana in the furthest courtyard. When I was last there a bomb went off outside the haveli as a Shia Muharram procession left the building, and the area now has a strong police presence.
f Mubarak Haveli has a large underground cool room, or tykhana, which apparently dates from this period. Its existence must have made the breakout much more feasible than it at first appears.
g The Afghan war artist James Rattray claims in the notes to his celebrated Afghan lithographs that it was Wa’fa Begum, not Shuja, who organised his escape (as well as her own), and he calls her conduct ‘an example of coolness and intrepidity’. It seems unlikely that even Wa’fa Begum could have organised the tunnelling and boatmen from across the Company border in Ludhiana, but it is a measure of the extent to which the legend of Wa’fa’s abilities had flourished that Rattray was told this thirty years later, long after her death. See James Rattray, The costumes of the Various Tribes, Portraits of Ladies of Rank, Celebrated Princes and Chiefs, Views of the Principal Fortresses and Cities, and Interior of the Cities and Temples of Afghaunistaun, London, 1848, p. 29.
h The Shikarpuri Sindhi money-lending community had long specialised in financing wars and dealing in arms, and the tradition continues to this day: the most notable Shikarpuris in this business today are the Hinduja brothers, who, among many other such deals, were allegedly involved in the controversial sale of the Bofors guns to Rajiv Gandhi’s government in the 1980s.
i In the 1820s the East India Company spent a massive Rs 5,000 in buying the journal of one of these officers, General Claude August Court, in which he described his overland journey through Afghanistan.
j It is a book written by James Burnes, A Sketch of the History of the Knight’s Templars (1840), that first links the Freemasons to the Templars and Roslyn Chapel near Edinburgh. It is the ultimate progenitor of a wash of popular nonsense like The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code.
k For more on Henry Russell, see my White Mughals (London, 2002).
l The same title was later taken by Mullah Omar of the Taliban who in 1996 looked explicitly to the example of Dost Mohammad for inspiration for the founding of the Taliban Islamic Amirate of Afghanistan.
m The hunky male eighteen-year-old Chippendales of Islamic heaven, counterparts to the supermodel houris.
n The selective editing of Burnes’s despatches for the Blue Book in order to win Parliamentary approval for the war later became a major scandal, the ‘dodgy dossier’ of its day. See G. R. Alder, ‘The Garbled Blue Books of 1839’, Historical Journal, vol. XV, no. 2 (1972), pp. 229–59.
o Home of the future Bhutto dynasty.
p This at least is what Nesselrode told Palmerston. In reality it is clear that Simonitch was ready to rejoin the beautiful Princess Orbeliani and their ten children in Tiflis. Since the murder of Griboyedov, a previous Russian envoy to Iran, the Teheran Legation had been considered unsafe for spouses or children, much like the British and American embassies in modern Pakistan. After Simonitch’s return to Georgia, his successor Duhamel initially took a similar diplomatic line to Simonitch.
q This has become a famous line and is widely remembered even today. In 2003 it was repeated to me by Javed Paracha, a wily Pashtun lawyer who has successfully defended al-Qaeda suspects in the Peshawar High Court. In his fortress-like stronghouse in Kohat, deep in the lawless tribal belt that acts as a buffer between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Paracha had sheltered wounded Taliban fighters – and their frost-bitten women and children – fleeing across the mountains from the American daisy-cutters at Tora Bora, and was twice imprisoned in the notorious prison at Dera Ismail Khan. There he was kept in solitary while being questioned – and he alleges tortured – by CIA interrogators. Despite seeing at close quarters what modern western weaponry was capable of, he knew his history, and never believed NATO would succeed in its occupation of Afghanistan. When I went to interview him in Kohat soon after the installation of President Karzai he quoted Mehrab Khan’s line to me as evidence of the futility of the attempt to install another Popalzai in power.
r The land appears to be much drier today – the ‘Dasht which stretches from Spin Boldak at the foot of the mountains south of Kandahar is now a virtual desert with only a little spring grazing and the dwarf oaks confined to the mountain slopes. But the descriptions left by members of the Army of the Indus reveal a greener landscape, as do the place names: Chaman, the present-day border post between Pakistan and Afghanistan in these parts, means ‘meadow’ in Persian.
s The Haji in fact had a point. The Hajigak Pass is extremely formidable even in daytime and during summer. Moreover he had especially good reason to be cautious as the pass was controlled by Hazaras whom Haji Khan had suppressed some years earlier and who would no doubt have seized the opportunity to take revenge on their former persecutor.
t This was rather rich coming from Dost Mohammad, who had in his time killed several of his enemies after pledging them safe conduct, notably the Mirs of Tagab, Kohistan and Deh Kundi.
u The Russian attack on Khiva ended as disastrously as the British retreat from Kabul would do, with Perovsky losing half his camels and nearly half his men to the blizzards of the Central Asian winter. It put back Russian ambitions on the steppe for a generation: Khiva would not fall to Russian arms until 1872, just as a British army did not return to Afghanistan for almost forty years. See Alexander Morrison, Twin Imperial Disasters: The Invasion of Khiva and Afghanistan in the Russian and British Official Mind, 1839–1842 (forthcoming).
v The child born to the Warburtons went on to become Colonel Sir Robert Warburton, who put his mixed heritage and bilingualism to good use when he commanded the Frontier Force in the Khyber between 1879 and 1898, where he founded the Khyber Rifles. See Robert Warburton, Eighteen Years in the Khyber, 1879–1898, London, 1909.
w Wade had encouraged the Kohistanis to rise up and had promised their pirs, Mir Masjidi and his brother Mir Haji, inducements of 500 tomans a year if they did so. The money was never paid. So the Tajik rebellion was led by the same members of the ‘ulema who had just removed Shah Shuja’s name from Friday Prayers in Kabul.
x The arrival of the US-led coalition in Kabul in 2002 had a similar effect, leading in a few months to a ten-fold hike in house prices.
y There were two recent precedents for the use of the language of the jihad in the region: Shuja’s grandfather Ahmad Shah Durrani had adopted the jihad as a justification for his invasion of the Punjab, as had Dost Mohammad when he attempted to recapture Peshawar from Ranjit Singh.
z Charles Rattray was the brother of the artist James Rattray who went on to produce some of the most celebrated lithographs of the war.
aa The barracks still stand, a short distance from the US Air Force base of Bagram.
bb One of the tasks of the Ghilzai had been to supply grain and forage to the cantonment. When Macnaghten cut their subsidy they retaliated by refusing to supply provisions.
cc The village and its shrine are still there, above the airport road, overlooking the large Kabul ISAF base and the heavily sandbagged American Embassy compound.
dd It would have been far better for the retreating army to have travelled at night when the snow would have been frozen, and the Ghilzai unable to shoot with any accuracy: the Afghan Mujehedin, travelling in the same terrain in the 1980s always travelled at night for these very reasons. But this was an army untrained and ill-equipped for either mountain or winter warfare.
