People

The peoples of Afghanistan: ethnic groups and tribes, rulers and reformers, poets and scholars, and individual lives that shaped the country.

• Abdur Rahman Khan — The Iron Amir (r. 1880–1901) who unified Afghanistan, built its first modern army, and drew the Durand Line
• Ahmad Shah Durrani — founder of the Afghan state, crowned at Kandahar in 1747
• Alexander Burnes — Scottish explorer and British political agent assassinated in Kabul, 1841
• Ali Mardan Khan — Kurdish governor who defected from Safavids to Mughals, built Lahore's Shalimar Garden canal and Kabul's Char Chatta Bazaar
• Ayub Khan — the Victor of Maiwand — Herat governor, rival amir, and exile in Lahore
• Babur — the exiled Timurid who made Kabul his kingdom and left his memoirs
• Dost Muhammad Khan — Founder of the Barakzai dynasty — the Great Emir who reunited Afghanistan and survived the First Anglo-Afghan War
• Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts — "Bobs" — the Victorian general who marched to Kandahar and foresaw the Great War
• Habibullah Kalakani — Tajik rebel leader who briefly ruled Afghanistan as Emir in 1929 before being overthrown and executed.
• Habibullah Khan — Emir of Afghanistan from 1901 to 1919 who modernized the country and maintained neutrality during World War I.
• Khushal Khan Khattak — the warrior-poet of Pashto literature who fought the Mughal Empire
• Malalai of Maiwand — the legendary heroine of the 1880 Battle of Maiwand
• Mirwais Hotak — the Ghilji chief who overthrew Safavid rule and founded the first Afghan state
• Muhammad Alam Khan Barakzai — Son of Rahim Dil Khan; Kandahar commander who surrendered to Dost Muhammad and died returning from exile
• Rahim Dil Khan — the last Sardar of the Principality of Kandahar
• Rahman Baba — the Sufi poet of Peshawar, the most beloved voice in Pashto literature
• Shah Shuja Durrani — A Durrani monarch who ruled Afghanistan in two separate reigns during the early 19th century.
• Sher Ali Khan — Amir of Afghanistan 1863–1879, whose reign ended in the Second Anglo-Afghan War
• Sir Louis Cavagnari — British military administrator and diplomat whose 1879 assassination in Kabul triggered the Second Anglo-Afghan War.
• Timur Shah Durrani — the Durrani ruler who moved Afghanistan's capital to Kabul
• Wazir Akbar Khan — Afghan leader of the 1842 retreat from Kabul, celebrated as a national hero