Dost Muhammad Khan
Dost Muhammad Khan Barakzai (23 December 1792 – 9 June 1863), nicknamed the Great Emir, was the founder of the Barakzai dynasty and ruled Afghanistan for thirty-six years across two periods (1826–1839, 1843–1863). He was the eleventh son of Payandah Khan, chief of the Barakzai Pashtun clan, and brought the region that today constitutes Afghanistan under the control of a single central government for the first time since the decline of the Durrani Empire.[1][2]
Early life and the Barakzai rise
Dost Muhammad Khan was born in Kandahar to an influential Pashtun family. His mother, Zainab Begum, belonged to the Qizilbash group and was reportedly Payandah Khan's favourite wife. The Barakzai clan was a branch of the Abdal (later called Durrani) tribe.[1][2]
In 1799, King Zaman Shah Durrani had Payandah Khan executed. Dost Muhammad's elder brother, Fateh Khan, played a key role in installing Mahmud Shah Durrani as sovereign in 1800 and restoring him to the throne in 1809. Fateh Khan served as prime minister but was brutally assassinated by Mahmud Shah in 1818, incurring the enmity of the Barakzai tribe. After bloody conflict, Mahmud Shah was deprived of all possessions but Herat, and the rest of his dominions were divided among Fateh Khan's brothers. Dost Muhammad received Ghazni, to which he added Kabul in 1826.[1][2]
Dost Muhammad spoke Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, and Turkish, and was credited with knowledge of Kashmiri. At the time of his enthronement, his government revenue was about 500,000 rupees; by the 1830s it had increased to 2.5 million rupees.[1]
First reign and the Sikh wars
From the commencement of his reign, Dost Muhammad found himself involved in disputes with Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler of the Punjab, who used the dethroned Sadozai prince Shah Shuja Durrani as his instrument. In March 1823, the Afghans lost their former stronghold of the Peshawar Valley to the Sikh Khalsa Army at the Battle of Nowshera, where Afghan forces were led by Dost Muhammad's half-brother Muhammad Azim Khan.[1][2]
In 1834, Shah Shuja made an attempt to recover his kingdom. Dost Muhammad mobilised for this, beginning with the Jalalabad campaign and then marching on Kandahar, where Shah Shuja was defeated under the walls of the city. However, Ranjit Singh seized the opportunity to annex Peshawar, which had been ruled by Dost Muhammad's deposed brother Sultan Muhammad Khan. Dost Muhammad's great concern became the recovery of Peshawar.[1][2]
In 1837, Dost Muhammad sent his son Akbar Khan to defeat the Sikhs at the Battle of Jamrud near Jalalabad. The final battle was fought on 30 April 1837; the Afghans withdrew after the Sikh commander Hari Singh Nalva was killed, but the strategic situation remained unchanged. In 1838, with the help and agreement of Ranjit Singh who had joined the Tripartite Treaty with British viceroy Lord Auckland, Shah Shuja was restored to the Afghan throne in Kabul on 7 August 1839. Dost Muhammad adopted the title amīr-al-moʾmenīn ("commander of the faithful") in 1838 and began issuing coinage bearing the inscription: "Amir Dost Muhammad resolved to wage jehād / And to mint coins, may God grant him victory."[1][2]
Exile and the First Anglo-Afghan War
With the British determined to place Afghanistan under their influence, Dost Muhammad initially sought an alliance with Britain as the only way to ensure the survival of the state. When the British invaded in 1839, he fled to Bokhara but escaped, advanced on Kabul, made a stand at Bajgah, but was defeated and fled again. On 3 November 1840, he surrendered to the British envoy and was sent to Calcutta, remaining in captivity during the British occupation and the disastrous retreat of the army in January 1842.[1][2]
After the murder of Shah Shuja in April 1842, the British resolved to abandon the attempt to intervene in Afghan internal politics. Dost Muhammad was set at liberty and returned to Kabul in triumph in 1842. He was received with acclaim and set himself to re-establish his authority on a firm basis.[1][2]
Second reign and expansion
After the end of the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1842, Dost Muhammad was now in a position to expand his state dramatically. In 1843, he subdued the Hazarajat (Behsud, Dai Zangi, Dai Kundi) and Bamian, which had seized the power vacuum during the British invasion to become independent. In 1846, a rebellion by the Kohistani Tajiks of Tagab was suppressed.[1][2]
In July 1848, he intended to send a force to conquer Balkh, but the Second Anglo-Sikh War prevented this. The Sikhs proposed to cede Peshawar to the Afghans, and as a result Dost Muhammad sent 5,000 Afghans under his son Muhammad Akram Khan to aid the Sikhs. When the Sikhs were defeated and the British retook Peshawar, it was feared in Kabul that the British would follow up their victory by invading Afghanistan. However, this never happened, and Dost Muhammad sent Muhammad Akram Khan to invade Balkh in the spring of 1849.[1][2]
On 30 March 1855, Dost Muhammad reversed his former policy by concluding an offensive and defensive alliance with the British government, signed by Sir Henry Lawrence, Chief Commissioner of the Punjab. In November 1855, he conquered Kandahar. In 1857, he declared war on Persia in conjunction with the British, and in July a treaty was concluded by which the province of Herat was placed under a Barakzai prince. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, Dost Muhammad refrained from assisting the insurgents, remaining staunch to the British.[1][2]
Final campaign and death
In March 1862, Ahmad Khan, the ruler of Herat, captured Farah, which had been controlled by the Barakzai Emirs since October 1856. This became Dost Muhammad's casus belli. On 29 June or 8 July 1862, Farah was captured by the Muhammadzais. On 22 July, Sabzawar was captured. By 28 July, Herat was besieged.[1][2]
After a ten-month siege, Dost Muhammad captured Herat on 27 May 1863. But on 9 June, just days later, he died suddenly in the midst of victory, after playing a great role in the history of South and Central Asia for forty years. He named his son Sher Ali Khan as his successor. By the time of his death, the annual state revenue of his government had risen to 7 million rupees. He was buried at the Shrine of Khwaja Abd Allah in Herat.[1][2]
Legacy
Dost Muhammad Khan was the first ruler to bring the region that today constitutes Afghanistan under the control, occasionally tenuous, of a single central government. He laid the foundations of the modern Afghan state, which was developed by his descendants. He managed to rule by playing one segment of society against another, allying with Shiʿites — particularly the Qizilbash and Hazara tribes — and making use of them in his military and civil administrations. Marriage was another political instrument that he used effectively; at the time of his death he had sixteen wives, twenty-seven sons, and twenty-five daughters.[1][2]
His reign of thirty-six years was exceeded only by Muhammad Zahir Shah more than a century later. His ability to survive the British invasion, maintain Afghan independence during the Great Game, and reunite the principalities of Kandahar, Herat, and Kabul with the central government made him one of the most significant rulers in Afghan history.[1][3] A contemporary biography by Mohan Lal, an Indian diplomat attached to the British mission in Kabul, remains one of the most detailed eyewitness accounts of his reign.[4]