Durrani leadership of Afghanistan 1747-1978

1747-1818 1818-1826 1826-1978Rule of the Barakzai brothers Sadozai clanTransitional period Muhammadzai clan

Popalzai subtribe Barakzai subtribe

Durrani tribeDurrani tribe

Ahmad Shah Baba1747-1772 Dost MuhammadTimur Shah 1826-1839, 1843-18631772-1793 Sher AliZaman Shah 1863-1866, 1868-18791793-1800 Muhammad AfzalShah Mahmud1866-18671800-1803, 1809-1818 Muhammad AzamShah Shuja1867-18681803-1809, 1839-1842Yaqub Khan1879Amir Abdur Rahman 1880-1901Amir Habibullah1901-1919King Amanullah1919-1929Nader Shah1929-1933*Zaher Shah1933-1973Reigned as monarch but power exercised by Prime Ministers: Hashim Khan, 1933-1946, Shah Mahmud, 1946-1953 and Daud Khan, 1953-1963

Not Members of Royal Family[Decade of Democracy 1963-1973 Prime MinistersDr. Muhammad YusufMarch 1963-October 1965Muhammad Hashim MaiwandwalOctober 1965-November 1967Nur Ahmad ItimadiNovember 1967-July 1971Dr. Abdul ZaherJuly 1971-December 1972Musa Shafiq, Dec. 1972-July 1973Daud Khan1973-1978

I. Ahmad Shah creates macrosocietya. Territory previously under Mughuls, Safavids, Uzbek princes, creates identifiable political unitb. Coalesces different ethnic,linguistic, sectarian, cultural and territorial groups through multi-ethnic accommodation and conquest empirec. Gains vast territory for Afghanistan in Indian subcontinent

II. Disintegration of Durrani Empirea. Weak structure, personalized rule absent institutionalized mechanismsb. Royal polygamy/no system of successionc. Major power rivalry/Napoleon invasion of Egypt

III. 19TH CENTURY-internal disorder and external aggressiona. Fragmentation/civil warAt the coronation of Ahmad Shah in 1747, Hajji Jamal Khan, head of the Mohammadzai family, and Ahmad Khan, head of the Saddozai family, were of equal rank and either could have been elected king of Afghanistan. But according to the sources, Hajji Jamal Khan showed great unselfishness and Ahmad Khan became king. Payenda, son of Hajji Jamal Khan, and father of Fateh Khan.

Timur Shah died in 1793 and left 36 sons, 24 of whom were males. He had not appointed an heir to the throne, but Prince Zaman whose mother was a Yusufzai Pashtun and a favourite of Timur Shah and gained favour in his fathers eyes in the years before his accession to the throne. Zaman Shah, took the throne with the active support of Payenda Khan, who was head of the Barakzai subtribe. When Zaman Shah took the throne, he jailed his brothers in order to prevent a revolt who were residing in Kabul. His brother, Humayun, governor of Herat, raised an army but it was put down by Payenda who defeated the army. Zaman Shah wanted to replace individual influence of tribal leaders with the strong central government. The continuation of tribal leadership meant the perpetuation of feudalism in Afghanistan, a state of affairs which Zaman Shah strongly opposed.

Zaman Shah-reconquest of India, made preparations for war while fighting his brother Mahmud who was based in Herat. Mahmud was supported by the Iranians and the British. At the same time, Zaman Shah had to break down several rebellions by the governors in his eastern provinces. The tribal leaders, meanwhile, aware of a decrease in their influence at court complained about the shahs lack of attention to the tribes. Zaman Shah listened with indifference. Late in 1799, several tribal leaders formed an opposition group and planned to remove Zaman Shah from the throne in favour of his brother, prince Shuja. Payenda also joined the opposition. The Shah finally realized he could no longer put off his decision about the elimination of tribal leaders, especially when faced with an increasing number of difficulties in the implementation of his own plans to reconquer India. One day, at Kandahar, he received a report that the Durrani leaders had decided to dethrone him and make Prince Shuja king. Zaman Shah ordered the arrest of the plotters including Payenda Khan.The sons of Payenda fled and decided to avenge the death of their father, Payenda. Zaman Shahs brother, Mahmud had found sanctuary with the Persian government and continued to be a source of anxiety to the Shah. The rise of Payendas sons against Zaman Shah prepared the ground for Mahmuds return with, of course, the assistance of Persia. Mahmud had previously lived in Iran as a guest of the Persian government and hoped to gain the throne of Afghanistan with the help of the Persian government.Mahmud received Persian assistance but initially failed and later he joined the forces of Payenda sons to overthrow Zaman Shah. They raised an army and Zaman Shah who was busy trying to recapture India rushed back to Kabul and raised an army to meet Mahmud.Shah Mahmud ascended the throne of Kabul in 1801. Fateh Khan became his chief minister. Outside forces applied pressure or helped to put Mahmud on the throne. The Persians and the British aided mainly to thwart Zaman Shahs dream of reconquering India. The British were deliberately seeking to foment discord in Afghanistan to prevent the Afghans from recapturing lost territories and also to prevent the Afghans from helping Napolean in invading India. Not long after Mahmuds accession, Prince Shuja marched against thenew king from the direction of Peshawar. Shujas purpose was to avenge the revenge the blinding of his full brother Zaman Shah. Mahmud disappointed the tribal leaders because of his indifference to governing. Prince Shuja gathered tribal allies and advanced to Shpan by the way of Jalalabad, where he was defeated by the kings forces. Shuja attacked again but was defeated. Finally, with the assistance of the British government in India, Shuja attacked Kabul again by way of Kandahar. Fateh Khan, left alone, assembled a new army of about 10,000 men and defeated Shuja. Later, one of the tribal leaders withdrew from Fateh Khans camp, forcing Fateh to retreat toward Kandahar. Shah Shuja entered Kabul. Mahmud surrendered but his life was spared, he was then sent to prison and Shah Shuja sat on the throne of Kabul in 1803.Shah Mahmud once again sat on the throne of Kabul in 1809. Shah Mahmud 1809-1818Fateh Khan is blinded by Kamran who becomes governor of Herat . Fatehs brothers, the Barakzai brothers are now the enemies of Shah Mahmud. Kamran and Shah Mahmud repeatedly try to gain the support of the Barakzai brothers and when they fail in their attempt, they try to get Fateh Khan to cooperate, he refuses, and then Mahmud and Kamran finally decide to kill Fateh Khan. Fateh Khans brothers, with Dost Muhammad at the lead, defeat Mahmud and force him to flee. Some Saddozai princes served as puppets, but the Barakzais now controlled all of the Saddozai kingdom.They eventually took the throne of Kabul.Kamran and Shah Mahmud eventually ended up in Herat where they ruled until 1842. By the early months of 1819, the Barakzai brothers (brothers of Fateh Khan) controlled most provinces in all of Afghanistan except Herat, where Mahmud and Kamran held on. Muhammad Azim ruled Kabul, Yar Muhammad ruled in Peshawar.The period from 1819-1826 was a transitional one between the rule of the Saddozai and Muhammadzai. No one geographic region clearly dominated the others, and a state of restlessness prevailed. Foreign forces exploited the sad state of affairs on purpose to keep the Afghan tribes in dissension, one from another.As the internal Afghan situation deteriorated, the Sikhs, the Afghans only formidable competitors found the time ripe to take over Kashmir, Peshawar and Derajat. Ranjit Singh

Afghan political life was dominated throughout the first quarter of the 19th century by a fierce struggle between the princely Sadozai and Muhammadzai clans of the Durrani tribe. The Sadozais were supported by the Popalzais and the Muhammadzais were supported by the Barakzais. The struggle sparked by the attempts of the Sadozai dynasty to consolidate political authority in its hands by curbing the power of the Barakzais and the other Durrani subtribes, was compounded by the blood feud that had grown out of the killing of the Muhammadzai leaders Payenda Khan and Fateh Khan. That act had not only alienated the Muhammadzai and the Sadozai clans but also pitted their respective subtribes, the Barakzais and Popalzais, against each other. After initially successful resistance by the Sadozai rulers Shah Mahmud and Shah Shuja, the kinsmen of Payenda Khan and Fateh Khan forced Shah Shuja into exile in India (1813); Shah Mahmud was driven to Herat where he founded a Sadozai principality. Mahmud is deposed by his son, Kamran and he dies in 1829The rest of Afghanistan came under either nominal or effective control of the Barakzais. The brothers of the murdered Fateh Khan ruled the region of Peshawar (Sultan Muhammad Khan)Kashmir (Nawab Jabbar Khan), Kandahar province (Kohendil Khan, Rahimdil Khan, Poordil Khan) and Kabul (Muhammad Azim Khan) Dost Muhammad (Ghazni). The intertribal and intrafamily strife between 1818 and 1834 not only dismembered and weakened the Afghan empire but also resulted in the loss of Kashmir, Multan, Peshawar and Baluchistan. The Uzbek chieftains of northern Afghanistan who were nominally tributaries of the Amir of Bukhara, dominated that region of the Afghan empire.

b. Two anglo-afghan warsc. Dost Muhammad and Sher Ali limited reforms

IV. Emergence of Amir Abdur Rahmana. Anglo-Russian

Initially Abdur Rahman only controlled Kabul1. In his autobiography, Amir Abdur Rahman very vividly depicts the state of affairs upon his ascension to the throne. He mentions that at the time of his succession to the throne, he had to face the difficulty of having no house to live in because the palace of the Bala Hissar which was the ancestral home of the Afghan kings had been destroyed by the British during the Anglo-Afghan War and there was no other house ready. Neither was there any other type of lodging where he could live temporarily, since there were no hotels at all in Afghanistan. He goes on to say that very few, perhaps hardly any, examples in history where a king has been without a room in which to sleep. Until the time that it took him to build a new palace for himself, he lived in tents and in borrowed mud-houses belonging to his subjects2. There was not a penny in the State Treasury with which to pay the army or any of the state servants; not only that, there was no such thing as a Treasury at all! The revenue from the country had been already borrowed and collected for a year or two in advance by Sher Ali, Yaqub, and the English army, so he could not collect anything from the revenue himself, because it had been borrowed already.3. War materials and ammunition, which were necessary for keeping peace in the country did not exist4. Chaotic internal conditions--- Herat was separated from his kingdom and placed under the rule of Ayub, who was stirring up the people against him, and preparing for war. Kandahar was placed by the British under the rule of Sardar Sher Ali, then governor of Kandahar, who was, on the other hand, persuading people to join his party. At Maimana, the Governor named Dilawar, was intriguing against him. Throughout the rest of the country, according to Amir Abdur Rahman Khan, because of the weakness of former kings he mentions Shah Shuja, Sher Ali, and Yaqub, every chief, sayid, or mullah was proclaiming himself an independent ruler, and extorting money from the subjects. The Kings had neither the courage nor the power to punish such usurpers and to put the country into a state of peace and order.

For most of his reign, two themes dominated: internal imperialism and the drawing of Afghanistans borders

Internally, the country could still be characterized as a patchwork of decentralized provincial kingdoms. The tribal leaders continued to remain independent from Kabuls rule, so the Amir initiated the policy to bring all the different parts of the country under one centralized rule. Louis Dupree calls this internal imperialism.

AAR says in his autobiography that of the civil wars that took place since the day of his accession to the throne, some were small and were quickly suppressed through an ordinary force and attention without causing him much anxiety, or being followed by any serious consequences. There were others, which took rather a serious form, and extended over a long period; more than that, there were troubles and signs of a general rebellion all over the country, which resulted in 4 civil wars; namelyWar with Muhammad Ayub Khan in 1881---he says that at this time the ignorant priests had tried to incite the people all over the country to rise against me in a religious war, but they failed to do so2. The Ghilzai rebellion---lasted 2 years3. The rebellion of his cousin, Muhammad Ishaq, son of Muhammad Azam, in Turkestan in 18884. The general uprising in the Hazarajat from 1891-1893

Wholesale executions and deportations usually followed the suppression of each rebellion or the conquest of independent areas.AAR described his task as one of putting in order all those hundreds of petty chiefs, plunderers, robbers, and cutthroats. This necessitated breaking down the feudal and tribal system and substituting one grand community under one law and one rule

Forced migrations helped break the traditional power of the tribal kingdoms. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, AAR shifted thousands of Ghilzai Pashtun (his major enemies) and others from southern and south-central Afghanistan to north of the Hindu Kush where their descendants still live. By moving large numbers of his enemies, AAR accomplished two immediate aims: he removed dissidents from areas which they might again infect with the germs of revolt, and he created a force loyal to himself, for although the Ghilzai might be anti-Durrani while living in their own territorial tribal zones, they were pro-Pashtun in the northern non-Pashtun areas. Also in an attempt to mollify the non-Pashtun elements, Abdur Rahman abolished the sarmardeh, a tax imposed on non-Pashtun peoples by Amir Sher Ali Khan.

As he conquered his country and subjugated the different groups in various parts of the country, he instituted various innovations in governing Afghanistan. Unlike prior rulers, he kept his sons in Kabul and appointed loyal followers as provincial governors. The provincial governors contributed greatly to the breakdown of the territorial tribal system. The villagers and tribesmen, who were not used to recognizing any but tribal law, knew little about the initial actions of the central government. The new provincial boundaries, drawn by Abdur Rahman, and the old tribal areas seldom coincided, however. Many tribes were split and divided between two and more provinces or subprovinces. The provincial army, under the command of the provincial governor enforced the governors dictums and the Amirs farman.

Although AAR was fundamentally an autocrat he did create a Supreme Council, similar to the modern cabinet. The Council had no prime minister, and no authority; it could only advise. He also created a General Assembly. Or Loya Jirgah. But the ultimate source of his power, his institution for control and implementation was the army.

While he was busy pacifying the interior of his country, attempting to create a nation-state, foreign powers drew his external boundaries, with or without his consent. One scholar called it demarcation with representation.

An early major boundary dispute is famously known as the Panjdeh crisis of 1885, it ultimately cost AAR several thousand square miles of Herat, and brought the British and the Russians on the verge of war. Earlier Russian advances in Central Asia precipitated the crisis.1884-Russian armies completed their conquest of the Turkoman with the submission of the Merv Oasis, once a part of Iran, and this alarmed British politicians. This was the prelude of Slowly, the Russians pushed within shooting distance of the Afghan outposts in the Panjdeh. Insulting letters were exchanged between the Afghan and Russian military commanders. Britain communicated to the Russians that an attack on the Panjdeh would be a threat to the British.

March 30, 1885---the Panjdeh incident occurred. Russian troops moved towards the Afghans in battle order; the Afghan commander shifted his men across the Murghab River to meet the threat. Nobody knows who fired first, but a battle took place, and although the Afghans fought bravely, according to both British and Russian observers, they were overwhelmed in the end and forced to retreat. The Russians occupied the Panjdeh Oasis and this precipitated the drawing of Afghanistans boundaries.

The Russians had gained the territory that they wanted; the British hoped to stop them there. Next came the battle of the conferences.

The Russians agreed to give up Zulfiqar, the point of farthest advance, but kept the Panjdeh. The proposed line ran from Zulfiqar on the Hari Rud to Khoja Saleh on the Amu Darya. The British agreed, and the Afghan Amir had no choice in the matter. Actually, AAR personally did not consider Panjdeh as important as Zulfiqar, Maruchak, and Gulran.

So, a compromise, reached at the expense of Afghan territory and British integrity, averted a major war. More Russian-British arguments led to further Afghan relinquishment of more land in the Panjdeh area.

By 1891, the Russians attempted to explore and annex the Wakhan area. This would have given Russia a common border with British India. Considering themselves, totally threatened, the British reacted strongly and forced Russia to negotiate. AAR was just a bystander. Britian and Russia agreed to give Russia all the land north of the Amu Darya and Afghanistan all land south of the Amu Darya. Also, the British forced Afghanistan to accept control of the Wakhan, a rugged area still incompletely mapped. AAR objected. This was designed to prevent the Russians from having a common border with British India. Another Joint Boundary Commission fixed the extreme northeast boundary in 1895-96. The boundary moves through a mass of perpetual glaciers to touch China. In 1964, the Afghans and Chinese actually demarcated this boundary on the ground for the first time.

By 1896, the northern boundaries of Afghanistan were fixed. Nobody bothered to define the boundary along the Amu Darya itself. This led to several disputes, none serious, until 1946, the mid channel river became the official border between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan.

The British had been penetrating the Pashtun tribal areas since 18771879

Under British pressures, AAR agreed to receive a mission under Sir Mortimer Durand in 1893. To demarcate once and for all British and Afghan responsibilities in the Pashtun area, the Durand Mission travelled to Kabul in September 1893.. Before Durand left Kabul on November 14, 1893, both sides agreed on a boundary from Chitral and Baroghail Pass up to Peshawar, and from there to Koh-i Malik Siyah in this way that Wakhan, Kafiristan, Asmar, Mohmand of Lalpura and one portion of Waziristan came under my rule, and I renounce my claims for the railway station of New Chaman, Chagai, the rest of Waziri, Biland Khel, Kurram, Afridi, Bajaur, Swat, Buner, Dir, Chilas, and Chitral.

The first threat to Amir Abdur Rahmans power came from his cousin, Mohammad Ayub Khan, hero of the Battle of Maiwand. Ayub moved from Herat in July 1881 and he defeated the forces of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan., commanded by Ghulam Haidar Charkhi near Girishk on July 20. For a while it seemed as though Ayub had overpowered the Amir and might soon sit on the throne himself. But AAR personally took to the battlefield and defeated his cousin on September 22, 1881. Ayub Khan retreated to Herat and found himself cut off from the city by two of Abdur Rahmans generals, Abdul Quddus Khan and Anbia Khan Taimani.