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177-758: The First Anglo-Afghan War ( Pashto : ده انګريز افغان اولني جګړه ) was fought between the British Empire and the Emirate of Kabul from 1838 to 1842. The British initially successfully invaded the country taking sides in a succession dispute between emir Dost Mohammad Khan ( Barakzai ) and former King Shah Shujah ( Durrani ), whom they reinstalled upon occupying Kabul in August 1839. The main British Indian force occupied Kabul and endured harsh winters. The force and its camp followers were almost completely massacred during

354-453: A royal decree of Zahir Shah formally granted Pashto the status of an official language, with full rights to use in all aspects of government and education – despite the fact that the ethnically Pashtun royal family and bureaucrats mostly spoke Persian. Thus Pashto became a national language , a symbol for Pashtun nationalism . The constitutional assembly reaffirmed the status of Pashto as an official language in 1964 when Afghan Persian

531-558: A "bulldog" with his sword, cutting down any Afghan who tried to take him on so efficiently that by the end of the day no Afghan would challenge him. On the evening of 11 January 1842, General Elphinstone, Captain Shelton, the paymaster Johnston, and Captain Skinner met with Akbar Khan to ask him to stop his attacks on the column. Akbar Khan provided them with warm tea and a fine meal before telling them that they were all now his hostages as he reckoned

708-430: A "vulgar nose". William Fraser , who accompanied Elphinstone to meet Shah Shujah was "struck with the dignity of his appearance and the romantic Oriental awe." Fraser also judged him to be "about five feet six inches (168 cm) tall" and his skin colour was "very fair, but dead...his beard was thick jet black and shortened a little by the obliquely upwards, but turned again at the corners ... The eyelashes and

885-509: A building close-by, where he was protected by the gates being shut." Sturt was sent home to be cared for by Lady Sale and his wife with the former noting: "He was covered with blood issuing from his mouth and was unable to articulate. He could not lie down, from the blood choking him", only being capable hours later to utter one word: "bet-ter". Lady Sale was highly critical of Elphinstone's leadership, writing: "General Elphinstone vacillates on every point. His own judgement appears to be good, but he

1062-449: A bullet in her wrist while she had to watch as her son-in-law Sturt had "...his horse was shot out from him and before he could rise from the ground he received a severe wound in the abdomen". With his wife and mother-in-law by his side in the snow, Sturt bled to death over the course of the night. The incompetent, naive and gullible Elphinstone continued to believe that Akbar Khan was his "ally", and believed his promise that he would send out

1239-515: A counter-attack, whereupon the disorganized Bengal horse force was routed, with the Afghan Cavalry chasing them in pursuit and killing many. According to the depictions of Jonathan Lee, the 2nd Bengal Horse was disgraced for their inability to follow orders, later disbanded, and erased from records. Nonetheless, following this route, Sale ordered his infantry and Qizilbash to storm the heights, and after heavy fighting and heavy casualties, they secured

1416-600: A dark-skinned faqir who appeared in India in rags but was in fact a Scottish non commissioned officer who fled all the way to a British army Camp Deesa in Gujrat India, "This morning a strange man came into camp, covered with hair, and almost naked his face burnt very much; he turned out to be Lance-Sergeant Philip Edwards of the Queen's 44th Regiment who escaped the general slaughter at Gundamuch, Afghanistan, and after travelling 15 months in

1593-527: A deep state of depression as it finally dawned on him that his people hated him and wanted to see him dead. Captain Sturt was sent to the Bala Hissar by Elphinstone to see if it were possible to recover control of the city later that afternoon, where his mother-in-law Lady Sale noted in her diary: "Just as he entered the precincts of the palace, he was stabbed in three places by a young man well dressed, who escaped into

1770-583: A defeated man, as he had successfully defeated the British at Parwan Darra, and even forced their withdrawal from Bamiyan. The revolt in Kohistan also put the military favor within Dost Mohammad's reach, yet for some reason, he decided to give up resistance. Mohan Lal gives the most clear and coherent theory was to why Dost Mohammad surrendered, as according to Lal, Dost Mohammad Khan was plotted against, and in battle,

1947-625: A demoralized force in Peshawar used it to clear the Khyber Pass to arrive at Jalalabad, where General Sale had already lifted the siege. From Jalalabad, General Pollock inflicted a further crushing defeat on Akbar Khan. As the expedition advanced through Afghanistan, they bore witness to the countless dead comrades who perished following the retreat from Kabul. This enraged the British who took revenge on Afghan civilians by razing villages, murdering men and raping women. Neville Bowles Chamberlain described

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2124-529: A device). Post-7th century borrowings came primarily from Persian and Hindi-Urdu , with Arabic words being borrowed through Persian, but sometimes directly. Modern speech borrows words from English, French , and German . However, a remarkably large number of words are unique to Pashto. Here is an exemplary list of Pure Pashto and borrowings: naṛә́i jahān dunyā tod/táwda garm aṛtyā́ ḍarurah híla umid də...pə aṛá bāra bolә́la qasidah Shah Shuja Durrani Shujah

2301-638: A different interpretation that the fear of the East India Company was in fact the decision of Dost Mohammed Khan and the Qajar Ruler of Iran to form an alliance and extinguish Sikh rule in Punjab. The British feared that an invading Islamic army would lead to an uprising in India by the people and princely states therefore it was decided to replace Dost Mohammed Khan with a more pliant ruler. "Rumours could cost lives and Empire itself. Therefore instead of fixating on

2478-657: A grand review at Ferozepore as Ranjit Singh, the Maharajah of the Punjab brought out the Dal Khalsa to march alongside the sepoy troops of the East India Company and the British troops in India. Ranjit Singh agreed to a treaty with the British viceroy Lord Auckland to restore Shah Shoja to the Afghan throne in Kabul. In pursuance of this agreement, the British army of the Indus entered Afghanistan from

2655-499: A habit of mutilating people who displeased him in the slightest, Macnaghten's demand that the children of the chiefs go to the Emir's court was received with horror, which led the Ghazi chiefs to vow to fight on. Macnaghten, who had just been appointed as the governor of Bombay was torn between a desire to leave Afghanistan on a high note with the country settled and peaceful versus a desire to crush

2832-703: A large herd of cattle. The British intended to be comfortable – one regiment took its pack of foxhounds, another took two camels to carry its cigarettes, junior officers were accompanied by up to 40 servants, and one senior officer required 60 camels to carry his personal effects. By late March 1839 the British forces had crossed the Bolan Pass , reached the southern Afghan city of Quetta , and begun their march to Kabul. They advanced through rough terrain, across deserts and 4,000-metre-high mountain passes, but made good progress and finally set up camps at Kandahar on 25 April 1839. After reaching Kandahar, Keane decided to wait for

3009-670: A man. The standard Afghan weapon was a matchlock rifle known as the jezail . The "Army of the Indus" which included 21,000 British and Indian troops under the command of John Keane, 1st Baron Keane (subsequently replaced by Sir Willoughby Cotton and then by William Elphinstone ) set out from Punjab in December 1838. With them was William Hay Macnaghten , the former chief secretary of the Calcutta government, who had been selected as Britain's chief representative to Kabul. It included an immense train of 38,000 camp followers and 30,000 camels, plus

3186-551: A mansion in Kabul, where he installed his wife, crystal chandelier, a fine selection of French wines, and hundreds of servants from India, making himself completely at home. Macnaghten, who had once been a judge in a small town in Ulster before deciding he wanted to be much more than a small town judge in Ireland, was known for his arrogant, imperious manner, and was simply called "the Envoy" by both

3363-503: A minister to death with a hidden knife. Shuja had them all beheaded, which led Sir John Kaye, in his official history of the war, to write this act of "wanton barbarity", the "shrill cry" of the Ghazis , would be remembered as the "funeral wail" of the government's "unholy policy". On 23 July 1839, in a surprise attack, the British-led forces captured the fortress of Ghazni , which overlooks

3540-591: A near contemporary account of the First Anglo-Afghan War, elaborates further on the details of this plot. According to Al-Karim, Sales and Burnes were in contact with the Malik of ‘Ali Hissar, who agreed to kill or capture Dost Mohammad and his two sons in exchange for a substantial payment. According to confidential information shared by British officers, Macnaghten and Burnes had been intercepting communications from Sultan Muhammad Khan of Nijrab, and his supporters. As

3717-520: A pension from the East India Company, which thought Shujah might prove useful one day. Shujah stayed first in Ludhiana where he was joined by Zeman Shah in 1821. The place where he stayed in Ludhiana was occupied by the Main Post Office near Mata Rani Chowk and inside it there used to be a white marble stone commemorating his stay there. During his time in exile, Shujah indulged his cruelty by removing

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3894-859: A plain leading eastward into the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa . The British troops blew up one city gate and marched into the city in a euphoric mood. During the battle, the British suffered 200 killed and wounded, while the Afghans suffered 500 killed and 1,500 captured. Ghazni was well-supplied, which eased the further advance considerably. Following this and an uprising of Tajiks in Istalif , the British marched to Kabul with no resistance from Dost Mohammad's troops. With his situation rapidly deteriorating, Dost Mohammed offered to accept Shuja as his overlord in exchange for becoming his wazir (a common practice in Pashtunwali ), which

4071-419: A planned withdrawal) and Ghazni. Ghazni was stormed, but the other garrisons held out until relief forces arrived from India, in spring 1842. Akbar Khan was defeated near Jalalabad and plans were laid for the recapture of Kabul and the restoration of British control. However, Lord Auckland had suffered a stroke and had been replaced as governor-general by Lord Ellenborough , who was under instructions to bring

4248-760: A powerful Company lobby in Parliament while the Company regularly gave "gifts" to influential people in Britain. The East India Company was sufficiently wealthy to maintain the three Presidency armies , known after their presidencies as the Bengal Army , the Bombay Army and the Madras Army , with the supreme field headquarters for commanding these armies being at Simla . The East India Company's army totaled 200,000 men, making it one of

4425-645: A promoter of the wealth and antiquity of Afghanistan's Pashto culture." From the 16th century, Pashto poetry become very popular among the Pashtuns. Some of those who wrote in Pashto are Bayazid Pir Roshan (a major inventor of the Pashto alphabet ), Khushal Khan Khattak , Rahman Baba , Nazo Tokhi , and Ahmad Shah Durrani , founder of the modern state of Afghanistan or the Durrani Empire . The Pashtun literary tradition grew in

4602-458: A remote and mysterious part of Asia. According to Mountstuart Elphinstone , "The King of Kabul [Shah Shujah] was a handsome man". He also wrote "of an olive complexion with a thick black beard ... his voice clear, his address princely." Shujah wore the Koh-i-Noor ("Mountain of Light") diamond in one of his bracelets when Elphinstone visited him, but rather undiplomatically described Shujah as having

4779-513: A result, Macnaghten forged a letter from a well-wisher in Kabul, sending a letter to Dost Mohammad Khan, where it warned the Amir of a plot on his life. Dost Mohammad Khan, having read this letter, was convinced that there was indeed, a plot on his life, as he did not have reason to trust the Kohistanis, as decades prior, he attacked and razed the region. As a result, the only person he seemed to have trusted

4956-405: A sniper planned to assassinate him. As further explained by Lal, this was plotted out by Kohistani Amirs, who would then blame the British for this. Lal's accounts and claims are supported by letters to Dost Mohammad Khan from Sultan Muhammad Khan of Nijrab, who had warned the Amir of a plot that was circulating from Maliks who were planning to betray and assassinate him. Abd al-Karim Alawi, who wrote

5133-422: A southerly direction by the sun, he found his way into camp here, not knowing where he was."" Many of the women and children were taken captive by the Afghan warring tribes; some of these women married their captors, mostly Afghan and Indian camp followers who were wives of British officers. Children taken from the battlefield at the time who were later identified in the early part of the 20th century to be those of

5310-495: A strong defensive position with over 400 cavalrymen, with his forces dug in on a ridge overlooking Sale's advance. Sale sent Captain Fraser and his Bengal horse force to attack the enemy infantry, however, only a handful of men followed the order, leaving the British officers to charge against the Afghan force alone and essentially without any support. Dr Lord, earlier political officer of Bamiyan who offered Dost Mohammad terms of surrender

5487-578: A surgeon with the East India Company's troops in the First Burma War. Shuja Shah had been deposed in 1809 and had been living in exile in British India since 1818, collecting a pension from the East India Company, which believed that he might be useful one day. The British denied that they were invading Afghanistan, claiming they were merely supporting its "legitimate" Shuja government "against foreign interference and factious opposition." Shuja Shah by 1838

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5664-406: A survivor reached the besieged garrison at Jalalabad . At Gandamak, some 20 officers and 45 other ranks of the 44th Foot regiment, together with some artillerymen and sepoys, armed with some 20 muskets and two rounds of ammunition to every man, found themselves at dawn surrounded by Afghan tribesmen. The force had been reduced to fewer than forty men by a withdrawal from Kabul that had become, towards

5841-610: A threat and could possibly march all the way to Khulm. Dennie, however, was not in a position to do so due to the already overstretched Bamiyan garrison facing shortage of manpower, and as a result, they decided not to garrison Saighan, Kahmard, or Ajar. Threats of a British sponsored attack from Herat by Shah Kamran were a threat, and this forced the Wali of Maimana to pledge allegiance to Shah Shuja's rule. On 2 November 1840, Dost Mohammad finally confronted Sale's forces, halting his advance and engaging battle at Parwan Darra. Dost Mohammad held

6018-522: A variety very similar to it, while others have attempted to place it closer to Bactrian . However, neither position is universally agreed upon. What scholars do agree on is the fact that Pashto is an Eastern Iranian language sharing characteristics with Eastern Middle Iranian languages such as Bactrian, Khwarezmian and Sogdian . Compare with other Eastern Iranian Languages and Old Avestan : Zə tā winə́m /ɐz dɐ wənən/ Az bū tū dzunim Strabo , who lived between 64 BC and 24 CE, explains that

6195-476: A victory. However he was unable to conceal the fact of the 2nd Bengal horse defying orders, and as a result, many British officers were killed. Atkinson, the armies surgeon general, called the encounter a “disaster”, Kaye also called the battle a defeat. However, early in the evening of 2 November 1840, a horsemen identified as Sultan Muhammad Khan Safi rode up to Macnaghten, as with this, he was followed by another lone horsemen, who came up to Macnaghten. This horsemen

6372-522: A village of Begramee: "There were no tents, save two or three small palls that arrived. Everyone scraped away the snow as best they might, to make a place to lie down. The evening and night were intensely cold; no food for man or beast procurable, except a few handfuls of bhoosay [chopped stew], for which we had to pay five to ten rupees". As the night fell and with it, the temperature, dropped well below freezing. The retreating force then learned that they lost all of their supplies of food and their baggage. On

6549-479: A way, they really didn't. They would die, all of them - shot, stabbed, frozen to death - in these mountain passes, and no one bothered to write down the name of even one of them". The military force consisted mostly of Indian units and one British battalion, 44th Regiment of Foot . They were attacked by Ghilzai warriors as they struggled through the snowbound passes. On the first day, the retreating force made only five miles and as Lady Sale wrote about their arrival at

6726-483: Is a difficult one", and finally concluding "We must see what the morning brings". The British situation soon deteriorated when Afghans stormed the poorly defended supply fort inside Kabul on 9 November. In the following weeks, the British commanders tried to negotiate with Akbar Khan. Macnaghten secretly offered to make Akbar Afghanistan's vizier in exchange for allowing the British to stay, while simultaneously disbursing large sums of money to have him assassinated, which

6903-478: Is swayed by the last speaker", criticising him for "...a very strange circumstance that troops were not immediately sent into the city to quell the affair in the commencement, but we seem to sit quietly with our hands folded, and look on".." Despite both being in the cantonment, Elphinstone preferred to write letters to Macnaghten, with one letter on 2 November saying "I have been considering what can done tomorrow" (he decided to do nothing that day), stating "our dilemma

7080-555: Is taught poorly in schools in Pakistan. Moreover, in government schools material is not provided for in the Pashto dialect of that locality, Pashto being a dialectically rich language. Further, researchers have observed that Pashtun students are unable to fully comprehend educational material in Urdu. Professor Tariq Rahman states: "The government of Pakistan, faced with irredentist claims from Afghanistan on its territory, also discouraged

7257-461: Is the primary language of the Pashtun diaspora around the world. The total number of Pashto-speakers is at least 40 million, although some estimates place it as high as 60 million. Pashto is "one of the primary markers of ethnic identity" amongst Pashtuns. A national language of Afghanistan , Pashto is primarily spoken in the east, south, and southwest, but also in some northern and western parts of

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7434-655: Is the principle of these vagabonds". Macnaghten ordered an expedition. On 10 October 1841, the Ghazis in a night raid defeated the Thirty-fifth Native Infantry, but were defeated the next day by the Thirteenth Light Infantry. After their defeat, which led to the rebels fleeing to the mountains, Macnaghten overplayed his hand by demanding that the chiefs who rebelled now send their children to Shuja's court as hostages to prevent another rebellion. As Shuja had

7611-512: The Dal Khalsa , and they considered the Sikh army to be a far more formidable threat than the Afghans who did not have a well-disciplined army, instead of having only a tribal levy where under the banner of jihad tribesmen would come out to fight for the Emir. For this reason, Lord Auckland preferred an alliance with the Punjab over an alliance with Afghanistan. The British could have had an alliance with

7788-590: The 1842 retreat from Kabul . The British then sent what was widely termed an " Army of Retribution " to Kabul to avenge the destruction of the previous forces. After recovering prisoners, they left Afghanistan by the end of the year. Dost Mohammed returned from exile in India to resume his rule. It was one of the first major conflicts during the Great Game , the 19th century competition for power and influence in Central Asia between Britain and Russia. The 19th century

7965-509: The Pashtun tribes spoke Pashto as their native tongue . King Amanullah Khan began promoting Pashto during his reign (1926–1929) as a marker of ethnic identity and as a symbol of "official nationalism" leading Afghanistan to independence after the defeat of the British Empire in the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919. In the 1930s, a movement began to take hold to promote Pashto as a language of government, administration, and art with

8142-618: The Punjab province , areas of Gilgit-Baltistan and in Islamabad . Pashto speakers are found in other major cities of Pakistan, most notably Karachi , Sindh, which may have the largest Pashtun population of any city in the world. Other communities of Pashto speakers are found in India , Tajikistan , and northeastern Iran (primarily in South Khorasan Province to the east of Qaen , near

8319-496: The Safavid Persia before 1709. Lord Auckland's plan was to drive away the besiegers and replace Dost Mohammad with Shuja Shah Durrani , who had once ruled Afghanistan and who was willing to ally himself with anyone who might restore him to the Afghan throne. At one point, Shuja had hired an American adventurer - Josiah Harlan - to overthrow Dost Mohammad Khan, despite the fact Harlan's military experience comprised only working as

8496-603: The Second Anglo-Afghan War . Pashto language Pashto ( / ˈ p ʌ ʃ t oʊ / PUH -shto , / ˈ p æ ʃ t oʊ / PASH -toe ; پښتو , Pəx̌tó , [pəʂˈto, pʊxˈto, pəʃˈto, pəçˈto] ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family , natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan . It has official status in Afghanistan and

8673-632: The Sikh army. He stayed in Lahore from 1813 to 1814. During his time in India, Shujah was imprisoned and forced to give up the Timur Ruby, Koh-i-Noor, and the sister diamond Dray-i-Nur to Ranjit Singh . He escaped from Ranjit's detention at the Mubarek Haveli Lahore for Ludhiana and the East India Company. From 1818 onward, Shujah who liked to live in a lavish style with his wives and concubines had collected

8850-457: The blood feud with the powerful Barakzai family and also forgave them. To create an alliance with them, he married their "sister" Wafa Begum. In 1809, Shujah allied Afghanistan with British India , as a means of defending against an invasion of Afghanistan and the Punjab Region by France. In 1809, a British diplomatic mission was sent to Afghanistan, which at the time was to the British

9027-532: The "Grand Army of the Indus" would now start the march on Kabul to depose Dost Mohammed and put Shuja Shah back on the Afghan throne, ostensibly because the latter was the rightful Emir, but in reality to place Afghanistan into the British sphere of influence. Speaking in the House of Lords, the Duke of Wellington condemned the invasion, saying that the real difficulties would only begin after the invasion's success, predicting that

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9204-574: The 19th century, Russia was viewed as "the enemy" in Britain; any Russian advance into Central Asia, into what is now Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, was always assumed (in London) to be directed towards the conquest of India, as the American historian David Fromkin observed, "no matter how far-fetched" such an interpretation might be. In 1832, the First Reform Bill lowering

9381-497: The 19th century, the East India Company ruled 90 million Indians and controlled 70 million acres (243,000 square kilometres) of land under its own flag while issuing its own currency, making it into the most powerful corporation in the world. The East India Company had been granted monopolies on trade by the Crown, but it was not owned by the Crown, though the shares in the East India Company were owned by numerous MPs and aristocrats, creating

9558-638: The 43rd Native Infantry and the 2nd Light Cavalry, which were all Company regiments while the 16th Lancers and the 13th Somersethire Light Infantry came from the British Army in India. The units from the Bombay Army chosen for the Grand Army of the Indus were the 19th Native Infantry and the Poona Local Horse, which were Company regiments, and the 2nd Queen's Regiment , the 17th Lincolnshire Regiment , and

9735-505: The 4th Dragoons, which were all British Army regiments. Of the two divisions of the Grand Army of the Indus, the Bombay division numbered fifty-six hundred men and the Bengal division numbered ninety-five hundred men. Shuja recruited 6,000 Indian mercenaries ("Shah Shujah's Levy") out of his pocket for the invasion. Ranjit Singh, the elderly and ailing Maharaja of the Punjab and the British assembled in

9912-805: The 8th century, and they use the writings found in Pata Khazana . Pə́ṭa Xazāná ( پټه خزانه ) is a Pashto manuscript claimed to be written by Mohammad Hotak under the patronage of the Pashtun emperor Hussain Hotak in Kandahar ; containing an anthology of Pashto poets. However, its authenticity is disputed by scholars such as David Neil MacKenzie and Lucia Serena Loi. Nile Green comments in this regard: "In 1944, Habibi claimed to have discovered an eighteenth-century manuscript anthology containing much older biographies and verses of Pashto poets that stretched back as far as

10089-431: The Afghan border). In India most ethnic Pashtun (Pathan) peoples speak the geographically native Hindi-Urdu language rather than Pashto, but there are small numbers of Pashto speakers, such as the Sheen Khalai in Rajasthan , and the Pathan community in the city of Kolkata , often nicknamed the Kabuliwala ("people of Kabul "). Pashtun diaspora communities in other countries around the world speak Pashto, especially

10266-426: The Afghan throne had vanished. The British historian Sir John William Kaye wrote that the failure of the Persians to take Herat "cut from under the feet of Lord Auckland all ground of justification and rendered the expedition across the Indus at once a folly and a crime". But at this point, Auckland was committed to putting Afghanistan into the British sphere of influence and nothing would stop him from going ahead with

10443-411: The Afghans and the British. The wife of one British officer, Lady Florentia Sale created an English style garden at her house in Kabul, which was much admired and in August 1841 her daughter Alexadrina was married at her Kabul home to Lieutenant John Sturt of the Royal Engineers. The British officers staged horse races, played cricket and in winter ice skating over the frozen local ponds, which astonished

10620-440: The Afghans who had never seen this before. Afghanistan had no army, and instead had a feudal system under which the chiefs would maintain a certain number of armed retainers, principally cavalry together with a number of tribesmen who could be called upon to fight in a time of war; when the Emir went to war, he would call upon his chiefs to bring out their men to fight for him. In 1840, the British strongly pressured Shuja to replace

10797-400: The Anglo-Indian force was repeatedly attacked by the Ghilzais, with one especially fierce Afghan attack being beaten off with a spirited bayonet charge by the 44th Foot. While trying to cross the Koord-Kabual pass in the Hindu Kush that was described as five miles long and "so narrow and so shut in on either side that the wintry sun rarely penetrates its gloomy recesses", the Anglo-Indian force

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10974-422: The Anglo-Indian forces would rout the Afghan tribal levy, only to find themselves struggling to hold on, as the Hindu Kush mountains and Afghanistan had no modern roads, and calling the entire operation "stupid" since Afghanistan was a land of "rocks, sands, deserts, ice and snow". British India at this time was a proprietary colony run by the East India Company , which had been granted the right to rule India by

11151-431: The Bala Hissar, he held a secret court, with many coming to pay their respects to the former Amir. This had shown Dost Mohammad's popularity, and opposite to Shah Shuja's claims, Shah Shuja was seen as unpopular by many. In Macnaghten's letters, it was shown that he expressed sympathy for Dost Mohammad, showing a very clear contrast to what he referred to him now compared to two years prior, where he denounced Dost Mohammad in

11328-448: The British Ambassador in St. Petersburg, Lord Clanricarde , that Britain and Russia sign a treaty delimiting spheres of influence in Asia to end the "Great Game" once and for all. By 1840 Clanricarde was reporting to London that he was quite certain a mutually satisfactory agreement could be negotiated, and all he needed was the necessary permission from the Foreign Office to begin talks. From Calcutta, Lord Auckland pressed for acceptance of

11505-426: The British Crown. India was only one of several proprietary colonies in the British Empire around the world, where various corporations or individuals had been granted the right to rule by the Crown, with for instance Rupert's Land , which was a vast tract covering most of what is now Canada being ruled by the Hudson's Bay Company , but India was easily the most wealthy and profitable of all the proprietary colonies. By

11682-497: The British and Sikhs left. Upon being restored, Shujah announced that he considered his own people "dogs" who needed to be taught how to be obedient to their master. He generally shut himself away in Bala Hissar , the citadel of Kabul, and spent his time exacting bloody vengeance on those Afghans whom he felt had betrayed him, making him extremely unpopular with his people. Obliged by religious pressure, he mustered an army near Kabul on April 4, 1842, notionally to launch an attack on

11859-444: The British government, in times of need”. Macnaghten was elated to hear the news, as according to Jonathan Lee, he stated: “The Afghans are gunpowder and the Dost is a lighted match”. Dost Mohammad was treated honourably, and even was housed in the Bala Hissar, with Dost Mohammad allowed to meet his family, and write to his sons that were in open resistance. Dost Mohammad was also allowed to ride on horse with an escort. During his stay in

12036-423: The British had vacated the fortress of Bala Hissar and relocated to a cantonment built to the northeast of Kabul. The chosen location was indefensible, being low and swampy with hills on every side. To make matters worse, the cantonment was too large for the number of troops camped in it and had a defensive perimeter almost two miles long. In addition, the stores and supplies were in a separate fort, 300 yards from

12213-682: The British. Burnes wrote home after having dinner with Count Witkiewicz and Dost Mohammad in late December 1837: "We are in a mess home. The emperor of Russia has sent an envoy to Kabul to offer...money [to the Afghans] to fight Rajeet Singh!!! I could not believe my own eyes or ears." On 20 January 1838, Lord Auckland sent an ultimatum to Dost Mohammad telling him: "You must desist from all correspondence with Russia. You must never receive agents from them, or have aught to do with them without our sanction; you must dismiss Captain Viktevitch [Witkiewicz] with courtesy; you must surrender all claims to Peshawar". Burnes himself had complained that Lord Auckland's letter

12390-399: The British. The British cantonment at Kabul was only a few hours ride from Parwan Darra, and he had already received assurances that he would be treated honourably in captivity and exile. As a result, Dost Mohammad’s “surrender” is treated by Jonathan Lee and many other historians as nothing akin to surrender, rather seeking refuge with the British government through an old tradition of grabbing

12567-414: The Crown of the Air. I pray for the possession of those pleasures which my native country alone can afford". When Harlan pressed him on whether he wanted to accept his offer or not, Shujah agreed. Harlan had a tailor sew up an American flag, which Harlan hoisted up in Ludhiana, and started to recruit mercenaries for the invasion of Afghanistan, suggesting that he was working for the U.S. government (which he

12744-547: The East India Company would not pay a ransom for Indian women and children, Akbar refused to accept them, and so the Indian women and children died with the rest of the force in the Hindu Kush. The camp followers captured by the Afghans were stripped of all their clothing and left to freeze to death in the snow. Lady Sale wrote that as she was taken back to Kabul she noticed: "The road was covered with awful mangled bodies, all naked". In

12921-522: The East India Company would pay good ransoms for their freedom, and when Captain Skinner tried to resist, he was shot in the face. Command now fell to Brigadier Thomas Anquetil. The evacuees were killed in huge numbers as they made their way down the 30 miles (48 km) of treacherous gorges and passes lying along the Kabul River between Kabul and Gandamak , and were massacred at the Gandamak pass before

13098-501: The East India Company's army. Officers from the British Army serving in India tended to look down on officers serving in the company's army, and relations between the two armies were cool at best. The regiments chosen for the invasion of Afghanistan came from the Bengal and Bombay armies. The commander in India, Sir Henry Fane , chose the regiments by drawing lots. The units from the Bengal Army going into Afghanistan were Skinner's Horse,

13275-508: The East India Company's chief political officer in Afghanistan, described Witkiewicz: "He was a gentlemanly and agreeable man, of about thirty years of age, spoke French, Turkish and Persian fluently, and wore the uniform of an officer of the Cossacks". The presence of Witkiewicz had thrown Burnes into a state of despair, leading one contemporary to note that he "abandoned himself to despair, bound his head with wet towels and handkerchiefs and took to

13452-461: The Ghazis, which led him to temporize, at one moment threatening the harshest reprisals and the next moment, compromising by abandoning his demand for hostages. Macnaghten's alternating policy of confrontation and compromise was perceived as weakness, which encouraged the chiefs around Kabul to start rebelling. Shuja was so unpopular that many of his ministers and the Durrani clan joined the rebellion. On

13629-478: The Kabul-Ghazni road led to the death of British Lieutenant Colonel Herring. Beyond the Hindu Kush, diplomats of Dost Mohammad were sent to the rulers of Balkh and Bukhara to appeal to them for aid against the British. These risks forced the British to continue to keep troops they were planning to send back to India. Dost Mohammad's request for aid, however, did not come lightly received, as Dost Mohammad had invaded

13806-535: The King of the French was a man whom Nicholas hated as an "usurper". The duc d'Orleans had once been Nicholas's friend, but when he assumed the throne of France after the revolution of 1830, Nicholas was consumed with hatred for his former friend who, as he saw it, had gone over to what he perceived as the dark side of liberalism. The idea that Russia was a threat to the East India Company is one version of events. Scholars now favour

13983-485: The Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa . It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani ( افغانی , Afghāni ). Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns , it is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan alongside Dari , and it is the second-largest provincial language of Pakistan , spoken mainly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the northern districts of Balochistan . Likewise, it

14160-517: The Pashto Movement and eventually allowed its use in peripheral domains only after the Pakhtun elite had been co-opted by the ruling elite...Thus, even though there is still an active desire among some Pakhtun activists to use Pashto in the domains of power, it is more of a symbol of Pakhtun identity than one of nationalism." Robert Nicols states: "In the end, national language policy, especially in

14337-526: The Punjab or Afghanistan, but not both at the same time. When Governor-General of India Lord Auckland heard about the arrival of Russian envoy Count Jan Prosper Witkiewicz (better known by the Russian version of his name as Yan Vitkevich ) in Kabul and the possibility that Dost Mohammad might turn to Russia for support, his political advisers exaggerated the threat. Alexander Burnes , the Scotsman who served as

14514-478: The Qajar shahs had long desired to take it back. It is located in a plain so fertile that is known as the "Granary of Central Asia"; whoever controls Herat and the surrounding countryside also controls the largest source of grain in all of Central Asia. Russia, wanting to increase its presence in Central Asia, had formed an alliance with Qajar Persia , which had territorial disputes with Afghanistan as Herat had been part of

14691-508: The Russian offer to end the "Great Game" as he believed that as long as the "Great Game" continued, Britain could inconvenience Russia in Asia to better achieve her foreign policy goals in Europe much more than Russia could inconvenience Britain in Asia to achieve her foreign policy goals in Europe. Palmerston noted that because the British had more money to bribe local rulers in Central Asia, this gave them

14868-561: The Russian offer, writing "I would look forward to a tripartite Treaty of the West under which a limit shall be placed to the advance of England, Russia and Persia and under which all shall continue to repress slave dealing and plunder". Though Britain rejected the Russian offer, after 1840 there was a marked decline in Anglo-Russian rivalry and a "fair working relationship in Asia" had developed. The British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston rejected

15045-576: The Simla declaration. Macnaghten even asked the Governor General to treat Dost Mohammad better than when they had Shah Shuja in his exile, since to his statement: “We ejected the Dost, who never offended us, in support of our policy, of which he was the victim”. The majority of the British troops returned to India, leaving 8,000 in Afghanistan, but it soon became clear that Shuja's rule could only be maintained with

15222-653: The Society's annual meeting in 1927. In 1955, Pashtun intellectuals including Abdul Qadir formed the Pashto Academy Peshawar on the model of Pashto Tolana formed in Afghanistan. In 1974, the Department of Pashto was established in the University of Balochistan for the promotion of Pashto. In Pakistan, Pashto is the first language around of 15% of its population (per the 1998 census). However, Urdu and English are

15399-430: The advantage in this "game", and it was thus better to keep the "Great Game" going. Palmerston believed it was Britain that held the advantage in the "Great Game", that the Russian offer to definitely mark out spheres of influence in Asia was a sign of weakness and he preferred no such treaty be signed. From Palmerston's viewpoint accepting the Russian offer would be unwelcome as the end of the "Great Game" in Asia would mean

15576-451: The backdrop to weakening Pashtun power following Mughal rule: Khushal Khan Khattak used Pashto poetry to rally for Pashtun unity and Pir Bayazid as an expedient means to spread his message to the Pashtun masses. For instance Khushal Khattak laments in : "The Afghans (Pashtuns) are far superior to the Mughals at the sword, Were but the Afghans, in intellect, a little discreet. If

15753-417: The battle. Another theory to Dost Mohammad's surrender was his family being in custody with the British, and about to be exiled to British India. This theory is even less credible, however, due to the fact that the British promising to treat them honourably, as Dost was in no position regardless to change this. Nonetheless, whatever reason Dost Mohammad had surrendered for, it was clear he was not surrendering as

15930-675: The blessings associated with this auspicious date of 17 Ramadan. The call to jihad was given on the morning of 2 November from the Pul-i-khisti mosque in Kabul Lady Sale wrote in her diary on 2 November 1841: "This morning early, all was in commotion in Kabul. The shops were plundered and the people all fighting." That same day, a mob "thirsting for blood" appeared outside of the house of the East India Company's second political officer, Sir Alexander 'Sekundar' Burnes, where Burnes ordered his sepoy guards not to fire while he stood outside haranguing

16107-505: The call of jihad proved stronger. Macnaghten did not take the threat seriously at first, writing to Henry Rawlinson in Kandahar on 7 October 1841: "The Eastern Ghilzyes are kicking up a row about some deductions which have been made from their pay. The rascals have completely succeeded in cutting communications for the time being, which is very provoking to me at this time; but they will be well trounced for their pains. One down, t'other come on,

16284-410: The captured supplies if he stopped the retreat on 8 January. Adding to the misery of the British, that night a ferocious blizzard blew in, causing hundreds to freeze to death. On 9 January 1842, Akbar sent out a messenger saying he was willing to take all of the British women as hostages, giving his word that they would not be harmed, and said that otherwise his tribesmen would show no mercy and kill all

16461-712: The cold in Jalalabad. On 13 November 1839, while en route to India, the Bombay column of the British Indian Army attacked, as a form of reprisal, the Baloch tribal fortress of Kalat , from where Baloch tribes had harassed and attacked British convoys during the move towards the Bolan Pass. With Shah Shuja's regime continuing to grow in unpopularity, resistance already began formulating in Autumn 1839, with raids from Ghilzais attacking

16638-406: The corpses of the camp followers with heavy losses to themselves. From a hill, Akbar Khan and his chiefs watched the slaughter while sitting on their horses, being apparently very much amused by the carnage. Captain Shelton and a few soldiers from the 44th regiment held the rear of the column and fought off successive Afghan attacks, despite being outnumbered. Johnson described Shelton as fighting like

16815-400: The countenance of the ex-King an appearance of melancholy and resignation." Harlan, a man without much military experience and knowledge of Pashto , offered to lead an invasion of Afghanistan to restore Shujah, an offer that led the former monarch to break "into a poetical effusion in praise of Kabul" and its gardens, its trees laden with fruits, and its music, culminating with "Kabul is called

16992-416: The country. The exact number of speakers is unavailable, but different estimates show that Pashto is the mother tongue of 45–60% of the total population of Afghanistan . In Pakistan , Pashto is spoken by 15% of its population, mainly in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and northern districts of Balochistan province. It is also spoken in parts of Mianwali and Attock districts of

17169-452: The crops to ripen before resuming his march, so it was not until 27 June that the Grand Army of the Indus marched again. Keane left behind his siege engines in Kandahar, which turned out to be a mistake as he discovered that the walls of the Ghazni fortress were far stronger than he expected. A deserter, Abdul Rashed Khan, a nephew of Dost Mohammad Khan, informed the British that one of the gates of

17346-432: The defeat at Saighan, Dost Mohammad was free to surrender without loss of honour. Another theory being that Dost Mohammad surrendered due to the brave suicidal charge done by Captain Fraser and Dr Lord, where he could have recognized resistance as futile. This theory however, did not make any sense as where the 2nd Bengal horse faced many defy orders to charge with them, the British lost multiple men due to this and inevitably,

17523-410: The different tribes would but support each other, Kings would have to bow down in prostration before them" Pashto is a subject–object–verb (SOV) language with split ergativity . In Pashto, this means that the verb agrees with the subject in transitive and intransitive sentences in non-past, non-completed clauses, but when a completed action is reported in any of the past tenses, the verb agrees with

17700-469: The distinctive high-pitched voice of a eunuch; Harlan noted he was lucky as the rest of his body was still intact. Despite or perhaps because he was mutilated, Shujah's grand vizier took a great deal of pleasure in mutilating others and was always inciting his master to have somebody mutilated. Harlan commented on "the grace and dignity of His Highness's demeanor", observing the sense of power he projected, but also that "years of disappointment had created in

17877-479: The early morning of 10 January, the column resumed its march, with everyone tired, hungry, and cold. Most of the sepoys by this time had lost a finger or two to frostbite, and could not fire their guns. At the narrow pass of Tunghee Tareekee, which was 50 yards long, and only 4 yards wide, the Ghizye tribesmen ambushed the column, killing without mercy all of the camp followers. The Anglo-Indian soldiers fought their way over

18054-464: The edge of mutiny, as well as Sale losing hundreds of men and many more wounded with nothing to show for it. With supplies running low as well, he obliged and returned to Charikar, crossing the Panjshir river, with those villages he had campaigned for at great cost quickly being reoccupied. Despite Sale having little to show for the campaign and the trail of devastation left by him, Sale called Parwan Darra

18231-575: The edges of his eyelids were blackened with antimony ." He also described Shujah's voice as "loud and sonorous". In June 1809, he was overthrown by his predecessor Mahmud Shah in the battle of Nimla , and went into exile in The Punjab , where he was captured by Jahandad Khan Bamizai and imprisoned at Attock (1811–1812) and then taken to Kashmir (1812–1813) by Atta Muhammad Khan. When Mahmud Shah 's vizier Fateh Khan invaded Kashmir alongside Ranjit Singh 's army, Shujah chose to leave with

18408-443: The eighth century. It was an extraordinary claim, implying as it did that the history of Pashto literature reached back further in time than Persian, thus supplanting the hold of Persian over the medieval Afghan past. Although it was later convincingly discredited through formal linguistic analysis, Habibi's publication of the text under the title Pata Khazana ('Hidden Treasure') would (in Afghanistan at least) establish his reputation as

18585-561: The end, a running battle through two feet of snow. The ground was frozen, the men had no shelter and had little food for weeks. Of the weapons remaining to the survivors at Gandamak, there were approximately a dozen working muskets, the officers' pistols, and a few swords. The British formed a square and defeated the first couple of the Afghan attacks, "driving the Afghans several times down the hill" before running out of ammunition. They then fought on with their bayonets and swords before being overwhelmed. The Afghans took only 9 prisoners and killed

18762-465: The entire force's officers defected to the resistance's side, while the remaining Afghan levies were captured and disarmed. Dost Mohammad followed up this success by marching on Bamiyan, however he encountered Colonel Dennie, who had an army of Gurkhas and native cavalrymen. Despite being outnumbered, Dennie ordered his Gurkhas to storm the enemy positions, successfully routing the Uzbek army. Dennie then pursued

18939-638: The entire rationale for the occupation of Afghanistan was changed by the Oriental Crisis when Mohammad Ali the Great, the vali (governor) of Egypt who was a close French ally, rebelled against the Sublime Porte; during the subsequent crisis, Russia and Britain co-operated against France, and with the improvement in Anglo-Russian relations, the need for a buffer state in Central Asia decreased. The Oriental Crisis of 1840 almost caused an Anglo-French war, which given

19116-547: The establishment of a Pashto Society Pashto Anjuman in 1931 and the inauguration of the Kabul University in 1932 as well as the formation of the Pashto Academy (Pashto Tolana) in 1937. Muhammad Na'im Khan, the minister of education between 1938 and 1946, inaugurated the formal policy of promoting Pashto as Afghanistan's national language, leading to the commission and publication of Pashto textbooks. The Pashto Tolana

19293-449: The fallen soldiers were brought up by Afghan families as their own children. At the same time as the attacks on the garrison at Kabul, Afghan forces beleaguered the other British contingents in Afghanistan. These were at Kandahar (where the largest British force in the country had been stationed), Jalalabad (held by a force which had been sent from Kabul in October 1841 as the first stage of

19470-466: The ferociously warlike Pashtuns were forever fighting each other, when not being called up for service for the tribal levy by the Emir, meaning most Pashtun men had at least some experience of warfare. The Pashtun tribes lived by their strict moral code of Pashtunwali ("the way of the Pashtuns") stating various rules for a Pashtun man to live by, one of which was that a man had to avenge any insult, real or imagined, with violence, in order to be considered

19647-468: The feudal system with a standing army , which threatened to do away with the power of the chiefs, and which the Emir rejected under the grounds that Afghanistan lacked the financial ability to fund a standing army. Dost Mohammad successfully defeated the British at the battle of Parwan Darra on 2 November 1840. However, following his victory, he surrendered and was sent to India in exile after hearing rumours of assassination plots against him. In 1839–40,

19824-447: The field of education in the NWFP, had constructed a type of three tiered language hierarchy. Pashto lagged far behind Urdu and English in prestige or development in almost every domain of political or economic power..." Although Pashto used as a medium of instruction in schools for Pashtun students results in better understanding and comprehension for students when compared to using Urdu, still

20001-452: The fortress was in bad state of repair and might be blasted open with a gunpowder charge. Before the fortress, the British were attacked by a force of the Ghilji tribesmen fighting under the banner of jihad who were desperate to kill farangis , a pejorative Pashtun term for the British, and were beaten off. The British took fifty prisoners who were brought before Shuja, where one of them stabbed

20178-515: The franchise requirements to vote and hold office in the United Kingdom was passed, which the ultra-conservative Emperor Nicholas I of Russia openly disapproved of, setting the stage for an Anglo-Russian "cold war", with many believing that Russian autocracy and British democracy were bound to clash. In 1837, Lord Palmerston and John Hobhouse , fearing the instability of Afghanistan , the Sindh , and

20355-399: The government of Pakistan has only introduced Pashto at the primary levels in state-run schools. Taimur Khan remarks: "the dominant Urdu language squeezes and denies any space for Pashto language in the official and formal capacity. In this contact zone, Pashto language exists but in a subordinate and unofficial capacity". Some linguists have argued that Pashto is descended from Avestan or

20532-498: The increasing power of the Sikh kingdom to the northwest, raised the spectre of a possible Russian invasion of British India through Afghanistan. The British tended to misunderstand the foreign policy of the Emperor Nicholas I as anti-British and intent upon an expansionary policy in Asia; whereas in fact though Nicholas disliked Britain as a liberal democratic state that he considered to be rather "strange", he always believed it

20709-541: The invasion. On 25 November 1838, the two most powerful armies on the Indian subcontinent assembled in a grand review at Ferozepore as Ranjit Singh , the Maharajah of the Punjab brought out the Dal Khalsa to march alongside the sepoy troops of the East India Company and the British troops in India with Lord Auckland himself present amid much colorful pageantry and music as men dressed in brightly colored uniforms together with horses and elephants marched in an impressive demonstration of military might. Lord Auckland declared that

20886-564: The killings as "truly wicked." The combined British forces defeated all opposition before taking Kabul in September. A month later, having rescued the prisoners and demolished the city's main bazaar as an act of revenge for the destruction of Elphinstone's column, they withdrew from Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass. Dost Muhammad was released and re-established his authority in Kabul. He died on 9 June 1863. During his lifetime no Russian mission

21063-493: The largest armies in the entire world, and was an army larger than those maintained by most European states. The majority of the men serving in the presidency armies were Indian, but the officers were all British, trained at the East India Company's own officer school at the Addiscombe estate outside of London. Furthermore, the politically powerful East India Company had regiments from the British Army sent to India to serve alongside

21240-594: The largest were the Pashtuns, the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, and the Hazaras, who were all in their turn divided into numerous tribes and clans. Islam was the sole unifying factor binding these groups together, though the Hazaras were Shia Muslims while the rest were Sunni Muslims. The Pashtuns were the dominant ethnic group, and it was with the Pashtun tribes that the British interacted the most. The Pashtun tribesmen had no military training, but

21417-565: The long-standing Franco-Russian rivalry caused by Nicholas's detestation of Louis-Philippe as a traitor to the conservative cause, inevitably improved relations between London and St. Petersburg, which ultimately led to the Emperor Nicholas making an imperial visit to London in 1844 to meet Queen Victoria and the Prime Minister Lord Peel. As early as 1838, Count Karl Nesselrode , the Russian Foreign Minister, had suggested to

21594-404: The main British camp was attacked by a force of Ghazis , of whom 50 were captured. When the prisoners were brought before Shujah, one of them used a knife, hidden in his robes, to stab one of Shujah's ministers to death, causing Shujah to fly into one of his rages and order all 50 prisoners to be beheaded on the spot. The British historian, Sir John William Kaye wrote the "wanton barbarity" of

21771-631: The main cantonment. The British commander, Major-General George Keith Ephinstone who arrived in April 1841 was bed-ridden most of the time with gout and rheumatism. Between April and October 1841, disaffected Afghan tribes were flocking to support resistance against the British in Bamiyan and other areas north of the Hindu Kush mountains. They were organised into an effective resistance by chiefs such as Mir Masjidi Khan and others. In September 1841, Macnaghten reduced

21948-453: The mass execution as all 50 prisoners were beheaded strained the campaign, stating the "shrill cry" of the prisoners as they waited to be executed, was the "funeral wail" of the "unholy policy" of attempting to restore Shujah. Shujah was restored to the throne by the British with the help of the Sikhs, on August 7, 1839, 30 years after his deposition. He did not, however, remain long in power when

22125-512: The mob in Pashto, attempting unconvincingly to persuade the assembled men that he did not bed their daughters and sisters. Captain William Broadfoot who was with Burnes saw the mob march forward, leading him to open fire with another officer writing in his diary that he "killed five or six men with his own hand before he was shot down". The mob smashed in to Burnes's house, where he, his brother Charles, their wives and children, several aides and

22302-476: The native elements of the lexicon are related to other Eastern Iranian languages . As noted by Josef Elfenbein, "Loanwords have been traced in Pashto as far back as the third century B.C., and include words from Greek and probably Old Persian". For instance, Georg Morgenstierne notes the Pashto word مېچن mečә́n i.e. a hand-mill as being derived from the Ancient Greek word μηχανή ( mēkhanḗ , i.e.

22479-491: The night of 1 November 1841, a group of Afghan chiefs met at the Kabul house of one of their number to plan the uprising, which began in the morning of the next day. In a flammable situation, the spark was provided unintentionally by the East India Company's second political officer, Sir Alexander 'Sekundar' Burnes. A Kashmiri slave girl who belonged to a Pashtun chief Abdullah Khan Achakzai living in Kabul ran away to Burne's house. When Ackakzai sent his retainers to retrieve her, it

22656-446: The noses, ears, tongues, penises, and testicles of his courtiers and slaves when they displeased him in the slightest. When the American adventurer Dr. Josiah Harlan visited Shujah's court in exile, he noted that all of Shujah's courtiers and slaves were missing some part of their bodies as all had in some way displeased their master at some point along the line — and yet they were all slavishly devoted to him — as Harlan noted that there

22833-425: The oriental other, the East India Company played up the threat of the Russian bear". In 1834, Shah Shuja Durrani invaded Kandahar with the aid of the British, but was defeated. The Company sent an envoy to Kabul to form an alliance with Afghanistan's Amir, Dost Mohammad Khan against Russia. Amidst the Afghan civil war, the Sikhs seized Peshawar from the Peshawar sardars and subjugated them. The British feared

23010-427: The poor defensibility of the cantonment, an agreement was reached that provided for the safe exodus of the British garrison and its dependents from Afghanistan. Five days later, the withdrawal began. The departing British contingent numbered around 16,500, of which about 4,500 were military personnel, and over 12,000 were camp followers . Lieutenant Vincent Eyre commented about the camp followers that "These proved from

23187-465: The possessed in the genitive construction, and adjectives come before the nouns they modify. Unlike most other Indo-Iranian languages, Pashto uses all three types of adpositions —prepositions, postpositions, and circumpositions. *The retroflex rhotic or lateral, tends to be a lateral flap [ 𝼈 ] at the beginning of a syllable or other prosodic unit, and a regular flap [ ɽ ] or approximant [ ɻ ] elsewhere. In Pashto, most of

23364-419: The presence of a stronger British force. The Afghans resented the British presence and the rule of Shah Shuja. As the occupation dragged on, the East India Company's first political officer William Hay Macnaghten allowed his soldiers to bring their families to Afghanistan to improve morale; this further infuriated the Afghans, as it appeared the British were setting up a permanent occupation. Macnaghten purchased

23541-440: The realm of Balkh just before the British invasion. As from this invasion, Dost Mohammad had annexed Saighan, Balkh, Kahmard, and Duab. In the winter of 1839, against the advice of Jabbar Khan, Dost Mohammad traveled to Bukhara to be received in person to appeal to the ruler of Bukhara in person. Dost Mohammad along with his sons, Akram Khan and Afzal Khan were initially well received, respected as guests. However, it came clear that

23718-445: The redeployment of Russian power to Europe, the place that really counted for him, and it was better to keep the "Great Game" going, albeit at a reduced rate given the tensions with France. At the same time, the lowering of Anglo-Russian tension in the 1840s made holding Afghanistan more of an expensive luxury from the British viewpoint as it no longer seemed quite as essential to have a friendly government in Kabul anymore. By this time,

23895-583: The rest. The remnants of the 44th were all killed except Captain James Souter, Sergeant Fair, and seven soldiers who were taken prisoner. The only soldier to reach Jalalabad was Dr. William Brydon and several sepoys over the following nights. Another source states that over one hundred British were taken prisoner. One British NCO fled from Gandamak to Gujrat India on foot according to a source cited from The Times of 2 March 1843 by Farrukh Husain who writes: "The oddest account of escape from Gundamuck concerns that of

24072-412: The retreating army with his cavalrymen, slaying those who had defected and the rest of the Uzbek army. Following this victory, Dr Lord, the political officer in Bamiyan, offered Dost Mohammad honourable exile in India if he surrendered. Only to be informed that Dost Mohammad was “determined to conquer or fall in the attempt”. The Mir Wali and Murad Beg had sought co-operation, as they believed Dennie posed

24249-428: The ridge, to their dismay where they saw Dost Mohammad withdraw his forces in good order. Both sides withdrew, and later, the Afghans re-occupied the ridge, which was left undefended. With the ridge position, they fired onto the British camp below. As the following day came, Timur Mirza and Burnes urged Sale to abandon the campaign. This was due to the Afghan troops loyal to Shah Shuja who had not deserted, already being on

24426-466: The ritual bath that follows it: but we have to put a stop right here and now, otherwise these English will ride the donkey of their desires into the field of stupidity, to the point of having all of us arrested and deported to a foreign field". At the end of his speech, all of the chiefs shouted " Jihad ". November 2, 1841 actually fell on 17 Ramadan which was the anniversary date for the battle of Badr. The Afghans decided to strike on this date for reasons of

24603-490: The ruler of Bukhara was not willing to support Dost Mohammad. Instead, Dost Mohammad was essentially put under house arrest, and later treated as a prisoner. Suspicions even rose that the ruler of Bukhara would try to have Dost Mohammad and his sons poisoned. It was not until the following summer did Dost Mohammad escape, and through a series of events, made his way to Khulm. However, following this, he found out that Jabbar Khan had accepted Mcnaghten's offer of amnesty and took back

24780-489: The second day all of the men of the Royal Afghan Army's 6th regiment deserted, heading back to Kabul, marking the end of the first attempt to give Afghanistan a national army. For several months afterwards, what had once been Shuja's army was reduced to begging on the streets of Kabul as Akbar had of all of Shuja's mercenaries mutilated before throwing them on the streets to beg. Despite Akbar Khan's promise of safe conduct,

24957-627: The sepoys were all torn to pieces. The mob then attacked the home of the paymaster Johnston who was not present, leading to later write when he surveyed the remains of his house that they "gained possession of my treasury by undermining the wall...They murdered the whole of the guard (one officer and 28 sepoys), all my servants (male, female, and children), plundered the treasury...burnt all my office records...and possessed themselves of all my private property". The British forces took no action in response despite being only five minutes away, which encouraged further revolt. The only person who took action that day

25134-464: The sizable communities in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia . Pashto is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, along with Dari Persian . Since the early 18th century, the monarchs of Afghanistan have been ethnic Pashtuns (except for Habibullāh Kalakāni in 1929). Persian, the literary language of the royal court, was more widely used in government institutions, while

25311-560: The smelling bottle". Dost Mohammad had in fact invited Count Witkiewicz to Kabul as a way to frighten the British into making an alliance with him against his archenemy Ranjit Singh , the Maharaja of the Punjab, not because he really wanted an alliance with Russia. The British had the power to compel Singh to return the former Afghan territories he had conquered whereas the Russians did not, which explains why Dost Mohammad Khan wanted an alliance with

25488-450: The south, while Ranjit Singh's troops went through the Khyber Pass and took part in the victory parade in Kabul. Accompanying the invasion force were 38,000 Indian camp followers and 30,000 camels to carry supplies. The Emirate of Afghanistan had no army, and instead under the Afghan feudal system, the tribal chiefs contributed fighting men when the Emir called upon their services. The Afghans were divided into numerous ethnic groups, of which

25665-405: The stirrup. An old Turco-Mongolian tradition called rikab giriftan. Atkinson states that Dost Mohammad was seeking the protection of the British government through this action, and as a result, a famous sketch was produced showing Macnaghten and Dost Mohammad shaking hands as a sign of friendship. According to Jonathan Lee, Akbar Khan had later stated that his father “Thrown himself upon the honour of

25842-444: The subject if it is intransitive, but with the object if it is transitive. Verbs are inflected for present, simple past, past progressive, present perfect, and past perfect tenses. There is also an inflection for the subjunctive mood . Nouns and adjectives are inflected for two genders (masculine and feminine), two numbers (singular and plural), and four cases (direct, oblique, ablative, and vocative). The possessor precedes

26019-412: The subsidies paid out to Ghilzai tribal chiefs in exchange for accepting Shuja as Emir and to keep the passes open, which immediately led to the Ghazis rebelling and a jihad being proclaimed. The monthly subsidies, which were effectively bribes for the Ghazi chiefs to stay loyal, was reduced from 80,000 to 40,000 rupees at a time of rampant inflation, and as the chiefs' loyalty had been entirely financial,

26196-402: The support of the British and Ranjit Singh for wresting power from Dost Mohammad Khan. George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland , believed that most Afghans would welcome the return of Shujah as their rightful ruler, but in fact, by 1838, most people in Afghanistan could not remember him, and those that did, remembered him as a cruel, tyrannical ruler and absolutely hated him. During the march on Kabul,

26373-534: The tribes inhabiting the lands west of the Indus River were part of Ariana . This was around the time when the area inhabited by the Pashtuns was governed by the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom . From the 3rd century CE onward, they are mostly referred to by the name Afghan ( Abgan ). Abdul Hai Habibi believed that the earliest modern Pashto work dates back to Amir Kror Suri of the early Ghurid period in

26550-411: The two official languages of Pakistan. Pashto has no official status at the federal level. On a provincial level, Pashto is the regional language of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and north Balochistan . Yet, the primary medium of education in government schools in Pakistan is Urdu. The lack of importance given to Pashto and its neglect has caused growing resentment amongst Pashtuns. It is noted that Pashto

26727-464: The very first mile a serious clog on our movements". Lady Sale brought with her 40 servants, none of whom she named in her diary while Eyre's son was saved by a female Afghan servant, who rode through an ambush with the boy on her back, but he never gave her name. The American author James M. Perry noted: "Reading the old diaries and journals, it is almost as if these twelve thousand native servants and sepoy wives and children didn't exist individually. In

26904-516: The war as rash and insensate. The perceived threat from Russia was vastly exaggerated, given the distances, the almost impassable mountain barriers, and logistical problems that an invasion would have to solve. In the three decades after the First Anglo-Afghan War, the Russians did advance steadily southward towards Afghanistan. In 1842, the Russian border was on the other side of the Aral Sea from Afghanistan. By 1865 Tashkent had been formally annexed, as

27081-439: The war to an end following a change of government in Britain. Ellenborough ordered the forces at Kandahar and Jalalabad to leave Afghanistan after inflicting reprisals and securing the release of prisoners taken during the retreat from Kabul. In August 1842 General William Nott advanced from Kandahar, capturing Ghazni and partially demolishing the city's fortifications. Meanwhile, General George Pollock , who had taken command of

27258-408: The women and children of Dost Mohammad's camp. Despite his family being in British hands, Dost Mohammad did not show any intent to surrender. The Mir Wali raised a force of over 6,000 Uzbeks, and in September 1840, marched up to Surkhab, forcing the British to abandon their outposts of Ajar, Kahmard, and Bajgah, falling back on Bamiyan. During the encounter at Bajgah, half of Shah Shuja's cavalry while

27435-482: The women and children. One of the British officers sent to negotiate with Akbar heard him say to his tribesmen in Dari (Afghan Farsi) – a language spoken by many British officers – to "spare" the British while saying in Pashto, which most British officers did not speak, to "slay them all". Lady Sale, her pregnant daughter Alexandria and the rest of British women and children accepted Akbar's offer of safe conduct back to Kabul. As

27612-518: Was Samarkand three years later. A peace treaty in 1873 with Amir Alim Khan of the Manghit Dynasty , the ruler of Bukhara , virtually stripped him of his independence. Russian control then extended as far as the northern bank of the Amu Darya. The war would also be renowned as the "greatest military humilation of the nineteenth century" for the British. In 1878, the British invaded again, beginning

27789-472: Was "popular throughout Afghanistan" and would enter his former realm "surrounded by his own troops and be supported against foreign interference and factious opposition by the British Army". As the Persians had broken off the siege of Herat and the Emperor Nicholas I of Russia had ordered Count Vitkevich home (he was to commit suicide upon reaching St. Petersburg), the reasons for attempting to put Shuja Shah back on

27966-473: Was "so dictatorial and supercilious as to indicate the writer's intention that it should give offense", and tried to avoid delivering it for long as possible. Dost Mohammad was indeed offended by the letter, but in order to avoid a war, he had his special military advisor, the American adventurer Josiah Harlan , engage in talks with Burnes to see if some compromise could be arranged. Burnes in fact had no power to negotiate anything, and Harlan complained that Burnes

28143-504: Was Shuja who ordered out one of his regiments from the Bala Hissar commanded by a Scots mercenary named Campbell to crush the riot, but the old city of Kabul with its narrow, twisting streets favored the defenders, with Campbell's men coming under fire from rebels in the houses above. After losing about 200 men killed, Campbell retreated back to the Bala Hissar. After hearing of the defeat of his regiment, Shuja descended into what Kaye called "a pitiable state of dejection and alarm", sinking into

28320-555: Was Sultan Muhammad Khan of Nijrab. As a result, Dost Mohammad’s options were limited, as the Mir Wali and Murad Beg signed a treaty with Shah Shuja, no longer offering sanctuary for Dost Mohammad. His experience in Bukhara and how he had to escape swayed Dost Mohammad from trying to seek refuge in Balkh, as he could be imprisoned, or even killed. Therefore, he went to the only choice he could think of,

28497-463: Was a period of diplomatic competition between the British and Russian empires for spheres of influence in South Asia known as the " Great Game " to the British and the "Tournament of Shadows" to the Russians. With the exception of Emperor Paul (whose 1800 order to invade India was cancelled after his assassination in 1801), no Russian tsar ever seriously considered invading India. However, for most of

28674-545: Was allowed to march his troops through Punjab, and in return, he would cede Peshawar to the Sikhs if they could manage to take it. In a concerted campaign, the following year, Shujah marched on Kandahar, while the Sikhs commanded by General Hari Singh Nalwa , attacked Peshawar. In July, Shujah was defeated at Kandahar by an alliance between the Qandahar Sardars and Dost Mohammad Khan . Shujah fled. The Sikhs for their part reclaimed Peshawar. In 1838, Shujah had gained

28851-554: Was ambushed by the Ghilzai tribesmen. Johnson described "murderous fire" that forced the British to abandon all baggage while camp followers regardless of sex and age were cut down with swords. Lady Sale wrote: "Bullets kept whizzing by us" while some of the artillerymen smashed open the regimental store of brandy to get drunk amid the Afghan attacks. Lady Sale wrote she drank a tumbler of sherry "which at any other time would have made me very unlady-like, but now merely warmed me." Lady Sale took

29028-508: Was an "earless assemblage of mutes and eunuchs in the ex-king's service". When Shujah went out for a picnic with his four wives and the wind blew down his tent, Shujah flew into a rage and, much to Harlan's horror, he had the man responsible for putting up his tent, Khwajah Mika—a slave from East Africa who had already had his ears chopped off—to be castrated on the spot. Shujah's grand vizier, Mullah Shakur, had grown his hair long to cover up that both his ears had been chopped off, and he spoke in

29205-481: Was barely remembered by most of his former subjects and those that did viewed him as a cruel, tyrannical ruler who, as the British were soon to learn, had almost no popular support in Afghanistan. On 1 October 1838, Lord Auckland issued the Simla Declaration attacking Dost Mohammed Khan for making "an unprovoked attack" on the empire of "our ancient ally, Maharaja Ranjeet Singh", going on to declare that Shuja Shah

29382-418: Was discovered that Burnes had taken the slave girl to his bed, and he had one of Azkakzai's men beaten. A secret jirga (council) of Pashtun chiefs was held to discuss this violation of pashtunwali , where Ackakzai holding a Koran in one hand stated: "Now we are justified in throwing this English yoke; they stretch the hand of tyranny to dishonor private citizens great and small: fucking a slave girl isn't worth

29559-454: Was established in Afghanistan. Dost Mohammad is reported to have said: I have been struck by the magnitude of your resources, your ships, your arsenals, but what I cannot understand is why the rulers of so vast and flourishing an empire should have gone across the Indus to deprive me of my poor and barren country. Many voices in Britain, from Lord Aberdeen to Benjamin Disraeli , had criticized

29736-483: Was just stalling, which led to Dost Mohammad expelling the British diplomatic mission on 26 April 1838. British fears of a Persian and Afghan invasion of India took one step closer to becoming a reality when negotiations between the Afghans and Russians broke down in 1838. The Qajar dynasty of Persia, with Russian support, attempted the Siege of Herat . Herat, in Afghanistan, is a city that had historically belonged to Persia;

29913-399: Was killed amongst this fighting that broke out. According to British historian William Dalrymple , Lord led a cavalry charge which was too late to realize that the rest of the force fled from the field. Fortunately, Fraser survived this charge and returned to British lines, however, with his sabre nearly severed at the wrist. Dost Mohammad, seeing what had happened ordered his cavalry to lead

30090-575: Was later incorporated into the Academy of Sciences Afghanistan in line with Soviet model following the Saur Revolution in 1978. Although officially supporting the use of Pashto, the Afghan elite regarded Persian as a "sophisticated language and a symbol of cultured upbringing". King Zahir Shah (reigning 1933–1973) thus followed suit after his father Nadir Khan had decreed in 1933 that officials were to study and utilize both Persian and Pashto. In 1936

30267-451: Was no other than Dost Mohammad Khan . Dost Mohammad's surrender has been given much speculation by historians as to why he surrendered. A number of explanations range from Dost Mohammad's surrender, oddly even after his victory at Parwan Darra. According to Jonathan lee, some of these depictions include Dost Mohammad believing that the British were destined to rule between the Indus and more. Others claim according to Jonathan lee, that, after

30444-422: Was not). Harlan ultimately grew disillusioned with Shujah, writing that he did not view him as the "legitimate monarch, the victim of treasonable practices", but rather as "a wayward tyrant, inflexible in moods, vindictive in his enmities, faithless in his attachments, unnatural in his affections. He remembered his misfortunes only to avenge them". In 1833, Shujah struck a deal with Ranjit Singh of Punjab where he

30621-565: Was officially renamed to Dari . The lyrics of the national anthem of Afghanistan are in Pashto. In British India , prior to the creation of Pakistan by the British government, the 1920s saw the blossoming of Pashto language in the then NWFP : Abdul Ghafar Khan in 1921 established the Anjuman-e- Islah al-Afaghina (Society for the Reformation of Afghans) to promote Pashto as an extension of Pashtun culture; around 80,000 people attended

30798-418: Was possible to reach an understanding with Britain on spheres of influence in Asia, believing that the essentially conservative nature of British society would retard the advent of liberalism. The main goal of Nicholas's foreign policy was not the conquest of Asia, but rather upholding the status quo in Europe, especially by co-operating with Prussia and Austria , and in isolating France, as Louis Philippe I ,

30975-477: Was promptly turned down. In August 1839, after thirty years, Shuja was again enthroned in Kabul. Shuja promptly confirmed his reputation for cruelty by seeking to wreak vengeance on all who had crossed him as he considered his own people to be "dogs" who needed to be taught to obey their master. In the absence of the traditional winter capital of Peshawar, on November 2 Shuja left the Bala Hissar to seek refuge from

31152-556: Was reported to Akbar Khan. A meeting for direct negotiations between Macnaghten and Akbar was held near the cantonment on 23 December, but Macnaghten and the three officers accompanying him were seized and slain by Akbar Khan. Macnaghten's body was dragged through the streets of Kabul and displayed in the bazaar. Elphinstone had partly lost command of his troops already and his authority was badly damaged. On 1 January 1842, following some unusual thinking by Major-General William George Keith Elphinstone , which may have had something to do with

31329-412: Was the governor of Herat and Peshawar from 1798 to 1801. He proclaimed himself King of Afghanistan in October 1801 (after the deposition of his brother Zaman Shah ), but only properly ascended to the throne on July 13, 1803. In Afghanistan, a blind man by tradition cannot be Emir, and so Shujah's step-brother Mahmud Shah had Zaman blinded, however not killed. After coming to power in 1803, Shujah ended

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