Mirwais Hotak
Mirwais Khan Hotak (c. 1673 – November 1715), known as Mirwais Nikka ("Mirwais the Good"), was a Ghilji Pashtun chief of Kandahar who led the revolt that overthrew Safavid Persian rule in 1709 and established the first independent Afghan state in over two centuries.[1][2]
Under Safavid rule
By 1700 Kandahar had been in Safavid hands for half a century. The Shah appointed as governor George XI of Kartli (Gurgin Khan), a Georgian convert to Islam, who arrived in 1704 with a contingent of Georgian soldiers. His rule was oppressive: he taxed the Sunni Afghan population heavily, reportedly desecrated mosques with pigs and wine, and treated the local tribes as subjects of a conquered land. Mirwais, as head of the Hotak sub-tribe of the Ghilji and one of the wealthiest men in Kandahar, initially sought redress through the Safavid court. Instead he was arrested and sent to Isfahan.[1][2][3]
The fatwa and the revolt
In Isfahan Mirwais observed the Safavid court's decadence and internal weakness. He travelled to Mecca and obtained a fatwa from the religious authorities legitimising rebellion against a tyrannical Shia ruler. Returning to Kandahar in 1708 or early 1709, he waited for his moment: when Gurgin Khan marched most of his Georgian troops out of the city to suppress a tribal revolt, Mirwais invited the governor and his remaining officers to a banquet and killed them. On 21 April 1709 Afghan forces seized Kandahar.[1][2][3]
Building an independent state
Mirwais proclaimed independence for the Loy Kandahar region and assembled a jirga of tribal leaders, but he refused the title of king, taking instead the rank of "national leader." Over the next six years he defeated five Persian punitive expeditions — including a large army under Kaikhosro Khan in 1711 — and extended his control over the whole province. He sent an envoy to the Mughal court to secure diplomatic recognition, and maintained tense but pragmatic relations with neighbouring powers until his death in November 1715.[1][3][4]
His brother Abdul Aziz succeeded him, but was murdered eighteen months later by Mirwais's son Mahmud, who in 1722 marched into Persia itself and conquered Isfahan — a consequence of the independence Mirwais had planted thirteen years earlier.[2]