AFGHANISTAN HISTORY The geographical term Afghanistan ("land of the Afghans") is an anachronism as applied to the country before 1747, when it first became a separate and independent state, and though it is now the official name of the kingdom it is not in common use among the Afghans.
The Afghan chroniclers call their people Beni Israil, or "Chil dren of Israel," and claim for them descent from King Saul, whom they call Talfit, through a son named Jeremiah, who is said to have had a son named Afghana; but this legend assumes so many conflicting and improbable forms that it may be safely regarded as a late invention. According to one account Afghana was settled by Sulaiman (Solomon) in the Sulaiman Mountains, and according to another, evidently connected with the account of the captivity of the Ten Tribes, his descendants were removed from Palestine by Nebuchadrezzar and found their way to the mountainous country about Herat. Another legend related that in pre-Islamic times Bilo (father of the Biluchis), Uzbak (father of the Uzbaks) and Afghana were considered as brethren. The historian Firishta cites a legend which makes the Afghans Copts, of the race of Pharaoh ; and the Afghans explain their conversion to Islam by a story to the effect that nine years after Mohammed's announcement of his mission a holy man named Kais, sent to Medina to make inquiry of him, became a zealous Muslim and on his return converted his countrymen, adding that all true Afghans are descended from Kais and his three sons, but ignoring the other descendants of Afghana. Omitting the legend which attributes to the Afghans a Coptic descent we find the grandson of King Saul made contemporary with Mohammed Uzbak Khan, who flourished in the 14th century, as well as with King Solomon; and Kais, whose name suggests Kish, Saul's father, made con temporary with the prophet Mohammed.
Despite these and other discrepancies some intelligent British officers, well acquainted with the Afghans, have accepted the story of their Hebrew descent. Their belief has been based on certain Afghan customs and on the fancied resemblance of a well-known type of Afghan physiognomy to the physical charac teristics of the Jews ; but the Afghans, as Muslims, have many customs similar to those of the Hebrews, and they share their physical resemblance to the Jews with other races in no way connected with them.
He was succeeded in the eastern provinces of his empire by Seleucus Nicator, the founder of the Seleucid dynasty, but the Indian provinces and the Kabul valley fell to Chandragupta (Sandracottus), the founder of the Maurya dynasty.
The empire of Kanishka did not long survive his death, but kings of his race, known as the Turki Shahs, were found by Hiuen Tsang reigning in the Kabul valley in the 7th century, and were not overthrown until the end of the gth century, when a Hindu dynasty known as the Hindu Shahi ousted them.
The hitherto obscure town of Ghazni now became a great and splendid city, for Mahmud was no mere ravager and despoiler. It is in Mahmud's reign that we first hear of the small state of Ghor, in the southern ranges of the Safid Kuh, which Mahmud reduced to vassalage, and the rulers of which, eventually, ex tinguished his dynasty. He himself paved the way for the destruction of his empire by admitting into Khurasan the Seljuk Turks, who afterwards stripped his descendants of their posses sions in the north and west and founded a great empire on the ruins of that of Ghazni.
Mahmud died in 1030 and his descendants continued to reign over a gradually diminishing empire, with Ghazni as their capital, until 1153, when Alauddin Husain, chief of Ghor, to avenge the death of his brother, Saifuddin, who had been treacherously put to death by the sultan of Ghazni, captured and burnt the city, driving Mahmud's descendant, Khusrav Shah, into the Punjab. The destruction of the great city of Ghazni earned for its author the cognomen of Jahansuz, "the World-Burner." Ghor Dynasty.—In1186 the World-Burner's nephew, Muiz zuddin Mohammed, commonly known as Mohammed Ghori, treacherously enticed Khusrav Malik, the last of the Ghaznavids, from Lahore, and imprisoned him for the short remainder of his life. Having secured the Punjab, Mohammed invaded India, and founded there a Muslim empire which endured, in name at least, until 1858.
This dynasty of Ghor is commonly believed to have been of Afghan origin, but the belief rests on a very slender foundation of evidence. Legend also assigns it descent from Zahak ; and though this is no better attested than their Afghan genealogy, it seems to be probable that they were Tajiks of Persian race. The Afghans themselves are Indo-Iranian by race, and their antiquity as a separate people is uncertain. Firishta's statement that the inhabitants of the Sulaiman mountains were known as Afghans in the 1st century of the Hifra (the 7th century of the Christian era) carries no weight, but the name occurs in al-'Utbi's History of Sultan Mahmud, written about A.D. 1030, coupled with that of the Khalaj or Khaljis, who were apparently a Turkish tribe domiciled in western Afghanistan, but always antagonistic to the true Afghans. Both names occur in the history of India during the 13th and 14th centuries, and the Indian historians are not careful to distinguish between the two peoples. Hence it is, probably, that some Europeans have carelessly classed all the five dynasties which preceded the Timurids on the throne of Dihli as "Pathans," or Afghans, though in fact two of them were Turkish, one was Khalji, and one was of Arab descent.
The Muslim empire in India was founded by a manumitted slave of Mohammed Ghori, and shortly after Mohammed's death his great empire fell to pieces and was divided between provincial governors and members of his own family holding small princi palities in Afghanistan. These petty princes were subdued by the shahs of Khvarazm, or Khiva, of whose great but ephemeral empire Afghanistan for a time formed part.
The greater part of Afghanistan remained under Mongol rule until the rise of Timur Lang (Tamerlane), who established him self in northern Afghanistan in the latter part of the 14th century, wresting Herat from the Kurts, a family which claimed descent from the princes of Ghor (see MONGOLS).
Babur's son, Humayun, was expelled from India by the Afghan, Sher Khan, and was compelled to seek an asylum with Shah Tahmasp of Persia, who helped him to recover Kandahar, held by his rebellious brother. From Kandahar Humayun proceeded to Kabul, from which city he ousted another brother, and after spending seven years in re-establishing his authority in Afghan istan was able, in to recover his Indian empire, but died shortly afterwards, as the result of an accident, leaving the task of extending and consolidating the dominions of his house in India to his young son Akbar (q.v.), the real founder of, the "Moghul" empire of India.
Afghanistan was then divided, Kabul remained a province of India, and Herat a province of Persia ; Balkh fell to the Uzbaks of Transoxiana, and Kandahar, after 'remaining for a time in the possession of the Timurids, was taken by the Persians. Akbar's grandson, Shah Jahan, made a disastrous attempt to recover Balkh and twice endeavoured to recover Kandahar, but without success.
In 1708 the Ghilzais of Kandahar, who perhaps represented the Khalaj, provoked by the oppressive rule of the Persian governor, Shahnavaz Khan, a Georgian prince of the Bagratid house, rose under Mir Vais and expelled the Persians. Mir Vais defeated the Persian armies sent against him and established his independence, but died in 1715. His son Mahmud, carrying out a project of his father's, invaded Persia, besieged Isfahan, and in Oct. 1722, compelled Shah Husain, the feeble Safavid, to surrender his crown to him, but the rule of the Ghilzais in Persia was brief—Mahmud died mad and his successor, Ashraf, was defeated by Nadir Kuli, the Afshar, who shortly afterwards ascended the throne. In 1737-38 Nadir Shah, one of Persia's greatest monarchs, recovered Kandahar and conquered the Indian province of Kabul, but conciliated the Afghans and enlisted many in his army—among them Ahmad Khan, a young chieftain of the Sadozai family of the Abdali tribe. Ahmad Khan rose to high rank in the Persian army, and after the assassination of Nadir Shah in 1747 was chosen by the Afghan chiefs at Kandahar as their leader and assumed the royal title. Among his titles was that of Durr-i-Dauran, "the Pearl of the Age," from which his tribe received the name of Durrani.
The land of the Afghans had been successively a congeries of petty states, the centre of great empires ruled by foreigners, and a dismembered country, furnishing provinces to three mon archies. It now became, for the first time, a distinct political entity, ruled by an independent native sovereign.
Ahmad Shah Abdali extended his kingdom westward nearly to the Caspian and eastward over the Punjab and Kashmir, which he wrested from the feeble successors of Babur on the throne of Delhi. He claimed and commanded the allegiance of Sind, which had been ceded by Mohammed Shah of Delhi to Nadir Shah. His northern boundary was the Oxus, and Baluchistan and Khurasan were tributary states of his kingdom. At the third battle of Panipat, fought on Jan. 6, 1761, he inflicted on the confederate Maratha chiefs, who were then at the zenith of their power and were the real masters of the great empire founded by Babur and Akbar, a crushing defeat, and with inferior numbers nearly annihilated their great army.
Russia had succeeded France as the bugbear of British ad ministrators in the East, and the fear of Russian intrigue, as well as the prospect of active hostilities between the Amir Dost Mohammed and Ranjit Singh, induced the Company's government to despatch an envoy, Sir Alexander Burnes, to the court of the Amir. His mission was ostensibly commercial, but he was instructed to oppose the attempt of the shah of Persia to recover Herat. He was well received, but the Amir was disappointed by his refusal to pledge his Government to aid him against Ranjit Singh, and consequently held himself in no way bound to refuse to receive Captain Vikovitch, a Russian officer who then arrived in Kabul. The Governor-General, Lord Auckland, per emptorily demanded his dismissal and the renunciation of all claims to the Punjab and Kashmir, which Ranjit Singh had recovered from the Afghans, and rashly decided to make Dost Mohammed's natural refusal of these demands a casus belli, and to attempt to restore the fugitive Shah Shuja, who had already been tried and found wanting. Ranjit Singh, whose material interests were involved, bound himself to co-operate with the British, but when all was ripe for the invasion declined even to permit British troops to cross his territories, though a Sikh force, with Sir Claud Wade and a small British detachment, advanced through the Khyber Pass.
The "Army of the Indus," numbering 21,000, assembled in Upper Sind in 1838 and advanced through the Bolan under the command of Sir John Keane. It met with hardly any resistance and in April, 1839, occupied Kandahar, where Shah Shuja was crowned in his grandfather's mosque. On July 21 Ghazni was taken by storm and Dost Mohammed, deserted by his troops, fled northwards. On Aug. 7 Shah Shuja, escorted by the British army, entered Kabul. It was believed that the war was over, and Sir John Keane, who received a peerage for his services, returned to India with the greater part of the army, leaving Sir William Macnaghten as envoy and Sir Alexander Burnes as his colleague, with 8,000 British and Company's troops and the contingent which had been raised for the service of Shah Shuja for their protection. The trouble was in fact only beginning, for the best of rulers is not acceptable to a free people when imposed upon them by foreign arms, and Shah Shuja had already rendered` himself odious to the Afghans. He now, acting on the advice of the British Resident, attempted to raise a regular army to take the place of the tribal militia under its hereditary leaders ; but the opposition of the chiefs, who apprehended the diminu tion of their own power and influence and the extinction of their country's independence, ensured the failure of this design. Shah Shuja was obliged to rely more and more upon British assistance, and his rule grew daily more unpopular. A danger was removed by the surrender of Dost Mohammed, who was sent to India, but it was impossible to save Shah Shuja, and in Nov. 1841, discontent at Kabul culminated in a revolt in which Burnes and other officers were massacred. Akbar Khan, the son of Dost Mohammed, placed himself at the head of the national party, and at a conference with the British authorities stabbed Sir William Macnaghten with his own hand. The British agreed to evacuate the country, and, in accordance with a convention with the Afghans, the garrison, then reduced to 690 British and 3,810 Indian troops, with the enormous number of 12,000 fol lowers, marched out of Kabul on Jan. 6, 1842. The Afghans made no pretence of observing the terms of the convention, and the retreat of the demoralized army in the depth of a severe winter was a scene of confusion and massacre. On Jan. 13 the survivors of the force mustered at Gandamak only 20 muskets, and Dr. Brydon, the sole survivor of the Army of Kabul, except those whom the Afghans had captured, reached Jalalabad alone. The garrison of Ghazni had been obliged to surrender, but Kandahar was held by General Nott and Jalalabad by General Sale. In April, 1842, Shah Shuja was assassinated.
Preparations were made in India to avenge these disasters and to recover the prisoners. In April, 1842, General Pollock forced the Khyber Pass and relieved Jalalabad, and in September re-occupied Kabul, where he was joined by General Nott from Kandahar, who had recaptured and dismantled Ghazni. The prisoners were recovered from Bamiyan, where the Afghans had lodged them, and the army evacuated Afghanistan in Dec. 1842, after destroying the citadel and the central bazaar of Kabul. Dost Mohammed was permitted to return to his country and assumed the government, with the title of Amir.
In 1848, during the second Sikh War, Dost Mohammed was induced to go to the aid of the Sikhs. The adventure was un fortunate for him, for at the battle of Gujarat, in Feb. 1849, his cavalry was ignominiously routed and pursued as far as the hills, and the Peshawar territories were annexed to British India and thus lost to Afghanistan. Balkh was recovered in 185o and Kandahar in 1855, in which year also a treaty of peace was concluded between him and the British Government at Peshawar. In 1856 the Persians captured Herat but were obliged to surrender it to an independent ruler after the British expedition to Persia. In 1857 the Amir met, at Peshawar, Sir John Lawrence, who promised him arms and a subsidy to aid him in defending his country against Persia, and a British mission under Major Lumsden was received at Kandahar. During the Indian Mutiny the Amir declined to listen to those who instigated him to aid the rebels, and remained faithful to his alliance.
In 1863 Dost Mohammed captured Herat after a long siege, and, dying almost immediately afterwards, was succeeded by his son Sher Ali Khan, the early years of whose reign were disturbed by contests with his brothers. Early in 1873 the British Government succeeded in obtaining from the Russian Government a declaration that Afghanistan was beyond the field of Russian influence, and the recognition of the Oxus as the northern frontier of the State. Later, the Amir's failure to secure a British guarantee for his sovereignty and family succession, and his refusal to admit British agencies into Afghanistan led to estrange ment between him and the British Government, and when, in July, 1878, he ostentatiously received a Russian mission at Kabul and shortly afterwards refused to permit a British mission to cross the frontier, his attitude was regarded as definitely hostile. After some warnings the Government of India delivered an ultimatum, his disregard of which led to the decision to invade Afghanistan. In Nov. 1878, the British forces inflicted severe defeats on the Afghan troops and occupied the Khyber pass and the Kurram valley, and early in 1879 occupied Kandahar, Kelat-i-Ghilzai, and Girishk. The Amir, with the Russian mission, had fled from Kabul, and he died, a fugitive, in March, 1879. His second son, Yakub Khan, who was recognized by the people of Kabul as Amir, voluntarily visited the British camp at Ganda mak in May, 1879, and there concluded a treaty, by the terms of which he ceded the Kurram valley, Pishin, and Sibi, and the control of the Khyber and Michni passes and of the tribes in their neighbourhood. He also agreed to receive a British resident at Kabul and to subordinate the foreign affairs of Afghanistan to British influence. Major Sir Louis Cavagnari was well received by him as Resident, but the Amir was either unable or unwilling to control the fanatical element in Kabul, and in Sept. 1879, the Residency was attacked by a mob of townspeople and soldiers, and the Resident and his escort were murdered after a gallant defence.
Sardar Sher Ali Khan, a Barakzai of Kandahar, had already been recognized as independent ruler of that province, but in July, 188o, Ayub Khan, a younger brother of Yakub Khan, advanced from Herat, inflicted a crushing defeat on a brigade of British troops at Maiwand and invested Kandahar. On Aug. 8 General Roberts left Kabul with a relieving force, which reached Kandahar on the 31st, and on Sept. I defeated the besiegers and captured their camp, artillery, and baggage. Ayub Khan fled with a few followers, and, peace having been restored in southern Afghanistan, the British forces evacuated the country in 1881. Sher Ali was unable to maintain his authority in Kandahar and retired to India, where he ended his days as a pensioner. Ayub Khan again took the field, defeated Abdur Rahman's troops, and occupied Kandahar, but in Sept. 1881, Abdur Rahman utterly defeated him and drove him to seek refuge in Persia. In 1888 he went to India, and lived there as a pensioner of the British Government until his death.
Abdur Rahman had been recognized as Amir of Kabul only, but within a year of ascending the throne had made himself master of Kandahar and Herat also, and he succeeded in quelling tribal disturbances and in establishing his rule on a firm basis. No attempt was made to fetter his independence except with regard to his foreign relations, which he agreed to conduct subject to the control of the Government of India, from whom he received an annual subsidy to be devoted to the payment of his troops and the defence of his north-western frontier, and considerable supplies of war material, together with facilities for importing arms through India at his own cost.
In 1884 it was agreed that a joint commission of British and Russian officers should demarcate the northern boundary of Afghanistan, but the Russian commissioners did not immediately arrive on the scene, and in March, 1885, while the Amir was conferring with Lord Dufferin, the Viceroy of India, at Rawal Pindi, Russian troops attacked and drove from Panjdeh, a small town on the frontier, an Afghan force. In 1888 the Amir's authority was seriously menaced by the revolt of his cousin, Ishak Khan, who held a quasi-independent position as governor of Afghan Turkistan and caused himself to be proclaimed Amir, but the rebellion was crushed. Ishak was expelled and settled at Bukhara as a pensioner of the Russian Government, and Abdur Rahman's authority was established in the northern province. In 1895 he completely subjugated Kafiristan, a wild mountainous tract to the north-east of Kabul, the inhabitants of which had hitherto successfully resisted all attempts to destroy their inde pendence.
In 1901 Abdur Rahman died, after a reign of 21 years, in the course of which he gave Afghanistan a government such as it had never known before. This he effected, first, by substituting for a feudal militia under tribal chiefs a standing army, well trained, well armed, and regularly paid, owning allegiance to none but himself. By means of this force he was able to establish an efficient central administration, retaining all power in his own hands, and to improve the public revenues not only by increasing the burden of taxation, but by ensuring the collection of all assessed taxes. He was harsh and ruthless, but he relieved his subjects from the petty tyranny of local chieftains and he sup pressed highway robbery and violent crime. It is probable that he fully appreciated the advantages which his country might gain from projects of a commercial or strategical nature, such as railways, telegraphs, and mines; but it was his settled convic tion that these advantages would be purchased at too high a price by the necessary employment of large numbers of foreigners, whose activities in the country might have amounted to peaceful penetration and menaced Afghan independence.
By the Anglo-Russian convention signed on Aug. 13, 1907, Great Britain disclaimed any intention of altering the political status of Afghanistan, and Russia declared Afghanistan to be beyond her sphere of influence.
Habibullah, though as suspicious as his father, was more sus ceptible to modern influences, and among the many mixed bless ings of civilization which he introduced into an unappreciative country were motor-cars, telephones, newspapers, a hydro-electric scheme, and the Habibia college, a high school in Kabul, the staff of which was chiefly composed of teachers from India. Many of these were regarded by the ignorant clerics of Afghanistan as inventions of the devil and the seed of infidelity, and it was partly from a sense of the antagonism which their introduction had aroused and partly with a view to conciliating the hereditary enemies of his house that Habibullah treated with great and unusual leniency the Ghilzais and Mangals of Khost, the district lying immediately to the west of the Kurram valley, who in 1912 had been goaded into rebellion by the rapacity of the local governor.
In opening up his country to Western civilization Amanullah departed from the traditional policy of his dynasty, and he was in many respects so far more enlightened than the generality of his subjects as to be in some danger of alienating them, as in the case of his scheme for female education, which led the clerics to foment the dangerous rebellion which broke out in Khost early in 1924, and was not suppressed until the following spring.
Amanullah seemed to be making some progress in overcoming the ignorant prejudices of his subjects. The establishment of Afghan Legations in Moscow, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Tehran, Angora and London, and the reception of foreign legations in Kabul made them more familiar with the life of the outside world. In addition to a wireless station at Kabul, which is in regular communication with Peshawar and Tashkent, Kabul and neigh bouring towns are linked with the Indian telegraph system and it is possible that Kabul may soon be linked, through Kandahar and Herat, with the Russian system. Since 1910 the introduction of motor-cars has had its natural result in the improvement of the roads. Those in the neighbourhood of the capital have al ready been completed, and the projected roads from Kabul to the Khyber, and from Kabul to Kandahar, and thence to Chaman will influence profoundly the economic and political development of the country. The extension, in 1925, of the Khyber railway from Jamrud to the head of the pass has stimulated trade by this route. The Hindu Kush, with its steep ascents and difficult passes, for the present effectively blocks communication by mechanical transport between Kabul and the north.
The extensive employment of Europeans on technical, educa tional, and other work can hardly be said to be popular, but its necessity, for the present at least, is gradually coming to be recognized. The wisdom of entrusting the development of the air force and some other essential services exclusively to Russians may well be doubted, but there seemed little doubt of Amanullah's ability to rid himself of Soviet agents should he find himself embarrassed by their intrigues.
A trade convention signed at Kabul on June 5, 1923, provided for three transit routes across British India for the forwarding of goods to and from Indian ports. Late in 1927 Amanullah left Afghanistan for an extensive tour of India, Egypt, and Europe. On his return he tried to introduce unpopular reforms, and late in 1928 the country revolted. Amanullah abdicated in Jan. 1929. After an interim rule by Habibullah Ghazi, Nadir Shah became king on Oct. 16, 1929, and after his assassination in Nov. 1933 he was succeeded by his son, Mohammed Zahir Shah.
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