180

The Abdālī or Durrānī Rulers and Kings of Afghanistan

1160–1393/1747–1973

1. The Sadōzays or Popalzays

2. The Bārakzays or Muḥammadzays

The Ghilzay Afghans had played a leading part in Persian affairs during the declining years of the Ṣafawids, overrunning and occupying much of Persia during the third decade of the eighteenth century (see above, no. 148). Although Nādir Shāh ended this Afghan domination, he recruited large numbers of Afghans into his forces. One of his leading commanders was Aḥmad Khān of the Sadōzay section of the Abdālī tribe of Afghans, a tribe which was originally from the Herat region but which Nādir allowed to settle around Kandahar. After Nādir’s assassination in 1160/1747, the Afghan troops aclaimed Aḥmad as their leader and as Shāh, and he assumed the title Durr-i Durrān ‘Pearl of Pearls’, whence the name Durrani which then became applied to the Abdālīs in general and to the dynasty which he now proceeded to found in particular. It is roughly from this time, also, that, under the stimulus of Aḥmad’s imperial ambitions and conquests, the name and the concept of ‘Afghanistan’ comes into existence and, for the first time, into literary and historical usage.

Aḥmad Shāh regarded himself as heir to Nādir’s eastern conquests, and invaded India several times, clashing with the Mughals, the Marāt́hās and the Sikhs, and in 1170/1757 sacking Delhi and Agra. A great empire was built up in north-western India, including Sind, Baluchistan, much of the Panjab and Kashmīr, and his victory at the third battle of Pānīpat in 1174/1761 checked the ambitions of the Marāt́hās and, among other things, indirectly enabled the British to consolidate their power in India from their Bengal base. In Khurasan, Aḥmad established a protectorate over Nādir’s descendant, the blind Shāh Rukh (see above, no. 149), although in the reign of Aḥmad’s grandson Zamān Shāh the Afghans were powerless to stem the Qājār annexation of Khurasan and the deposition of Shāh Rukh. The last years of the eighteenth century and the early decades of the nineteenth were, indeed, disastrous for the Durrani empire. The family was rent by internal feuds, with members of it at odds with each other from bases in the three key cities of the land, Kabul, Kandahar and Herat, and the Marāt́hās and Sikhs were able to eject the Afghans from most of their Indian possessions.

Meanwhile, the star of another branch of the Abdālīs, the Bārakzays or Muḥammadzays, was already rising. In 1233/1818, Dūst Muḥammad controlled Kabul, where he set up a puppet Sadōzay ruler, himself assuming the title of Amīr of Kabul some sixteen years later. With the loss of the Indian possessions, the Afghan kingdom was now a geographically compact unit, essentially one of mountains and plateaux, prolonged occupation of which by outside powers was extremely difficult to achieve, as British expeditions were to find during the course of the nineteenth century. Hence Afghanistan survived intact into the twentieth century, fighting off Persian ambitions regarding Herat, pressure from Imperial Russia in the north and two wars with Britain. Dūst Muḥammad resisted temptations to intervene in India, and remained indifferent to the rebels’ cause during the Indian Sepoy Mutiny. After the Second Afghan-British War, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Khān established careful and correct relations with the Great Powers, and this policy was only broken by the impetuousness of Aman Allāh in 1337/1919, provoking the Third Afghan-British War. His later, over-hasty attempts at the modernisation of a profoundly conservative and traditionalist Islamic society led to his abdication. The throne passed to another branch of the family, which retained power until monarchical rule was replaced in 1393/1973 by a republican régime under the last king’s cousin Muḥammad Dāwūd b. Muḥammad ‘Azīz b. Muḥammad Yūsuf, the prelude to a Communist takeover of the country and its being plunged into a period of bloody warfare which still continues today.

Lane-Poole, 330–5; Zambaur, 304–5.

EI² ‘Afghanistan. V. History’ (M. Longworth Dames).

M. Longworth Dames, ‘The coins of the Durrānls’, NC, 3rd series, 8 (1888), 325–63.

L. White King, ‘History and coinage of the Bārakzai dynasty of Afghānistān’, NC, 3rd series, 16(1896), 276–344.

W. K. Fraser-Tytler, Afghanistan. A Study of Political Developments in Central and Southern Asia, 3rd edn, London 1967, with a genealogical table of the Bārakzays on p. 346.

Louis Dupree, Afghanistan, Princeton 1973, Parts III-IV.

Vartan Gregorian, The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan. Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880–1946, Stanford CA 1969.