Ahmad Shah and the Durrani Empire

From the death of Nadir Shah in 1747 until the communist coup of April 1978, Afghanistan was governed-at least nominally-by Pashtun rulers of the Abdali tribe. Indeed, it was under the leadership of the first Pashtun ruler, Ahmad Shah, that the nation of Afghanistan began to take shape after centuries of fragmentation and rule by invaders. Even before the death of Nadir Shah, the tribes of the Hindu Kush area had been growing stronger and were beginning to take advantage of the waning power of their distant rulers.

The Ghilzai Pashtuns had risen in rebellion against Iranian rule early in the eighteenth century, but they had been subdued and relocated by Nadir Shah. Although tribal independence would remain a threat to rulers of Afghanistan, the Abdali Pashtun established political dominance, starting in the middle of the eighteenth century with the rise of Ahmad Shah. Two lineage groups within the Abdali ruled Afghanistan from 1747 until the downfall of the monarchy in the 1970s-the Sadozai of the Popalzai tribe and the Muhammadzai of the Barakzai tribe.

Although the names of Timor, Genghis Khan, and Mahmud of Ghazni are well-known for the destruction they wrought in South and Central Asia, the name of the founder of the Afghan nation-state is relatively unknown to Westerners, though Ahmad Shah created an Afghan empire that, at its largest in the 1760s, extended from Central Asia to Delhi and from Kashmir to the Arabian Sea (see fig. 2). There have been greater conquerers in the region before and since Ahmad Shah, but never before his reign and rarely since has there been a ruler of this fragmented area capable not only of subduing the truculent Afghan tribes but also of pulling them together into a nation.

Ahmad was the second son of the chief of the Sadozai, which although small was the most honored of the Abdali lineages. Along with his brother, he had risen in rebellion against Nadir Shah and had been jailed by the Ghilzai in Qandahar. Finally released by Nadir Shah in 1738 when he took the city from the Ghilzai, Abroad rose in the personal service of the Iranian monarch to the post of commander of an elite body of Afghan cavalry. When Nadir Shah, who had become vicious and capricious in his later years, was killed by a group of dissident officers, Ahmad and some 4,000 of his cavalrymen escaped with the treasury Nadir Shah always carried with him for payments and bribes en route.

Ahmad and his Abdali horsemen rode past Herat and southeastward, joining the chiefs of the Abdali tribes and clans at a shrine near Qandahar to choose a paramount chief. Although his rivals for the post included Haji Jamal Khan-chief of the Muhammadzai, chief branch of the Barakzai, which would be the other royal branch of the Abdali-and although only 23, Ahmad was finally chosen after more than a week of discussion and debate.

Despite being younger than other claimants, Ahmad had several factors in his favor. He was a direct descendant of Sado, eponym of the Sadozai; he was unquestionably a charismatic leader and seasoned warrior, who had at his disposal a trained, mobile force of several thousand cavalrymen; and he had part of Nadir Shah's treasury in his possession. In addition, the other chiefs may have preferred someone from a small tribe who would always need the support of the larger groups to rule effectively.

One of Ahmad's first acts as chief was to adopt the title "Durr-i-Durran" (meaning "pearl of pearls" or "pearl of the age"), whether because of a dream or because of the pearl earrings worn by the royal guard of Nadir Shah. The Abdali Pashtuns were known thereafter as the Durrani.

Ahmad's rise was owing not only to his personality and talents but also to extraordinary luck. His reign coincided with the deterioration of the empires on both sides of Afghanistan-the Mughals to the southeast and the Safavis to the west. Even his first days as paramount chief were blessed with good fortune. Just before arriving in Qandahar, where some resistance was expected, Abroad encountered a caravan bound for the Iranian court laden with treasure. The new ruler seized it, used it to pay his cavalry and to bribe hostile chiefs, and invited its Qizilbash (Turkmen Shia who served as palace guards for many Afghan and Iranian rulers) escort to join his service.

Ahmad Shah began by taking Ghazni from the Ghilzai Pashtuns and then wrested Kabul from a local ruler. In 1749 the Mughal ruler, to save his capital from Afghan attack, ceded to Ahmad Shah sovereignty over Sind province and over the areas of northern India west of the Indus. He returned to his headquarters in Qandahar to put down one of an endless series of tribal uprisings and then set out westward to take Herat, which was ruled by Nadir Shah's grandson, Shah Rukh. Herat fell to Ahmad after almost a year of bloody siege and conflict, as did also Meshed (in present-day Iran). Abroad left Shah Rukh, a 16-year-old who had previously been blinded by a rival, to rule the eastern Iranian province of Khorasan for him. At Nishapur, Ahmad was temporarily halted, but the following spring he struck again, this time employing a cannon that fired a 500-pound projectile. Although the cannon exploded on its first shot, Ahmad Shah's determination and the effect of the huge missile convinced the local rulers that they should surrender. Before returning to Herat, Ahmad's troops plundered the city and massacred much of the population.

Stopping by Meshed to remind the rebellious Shah Rukh of his subservient position, Ahmad next sent an army to subdue the areas north of the Hindu Kush. In short order the army brought under control the Turkmen, Uzbek, Tajik, and Hazara tribes of northern Afghanistan. Ahmad invaded India a third, and then a fourth, time, taking control of the Punjab, Kashmir, and the city of Lahore. Early in 1757 he sacked Delhi, but he permitted the attenuated Mughal Dynasty to remain in nominal control as long as the ruler acknowledged Ahmad's suzerainty over the Punjab, Sind, and Kashmir. Leaving his second son Timor (whom Ahmad married to a Mughal princess) in charge, Ahmad left India to return to Afghanistan. Like Babur, he preferred his homeland to any of his other domains. Dupree quotes an Afghan writer's translation of one of Ahmedd Shah's poems:

Whatever countries I conquer in the world, I would never forget

your beautiful gardens. When I remember the summits of your beau-

tiful mountains I forget the greatness of the Delhi throne.

The collapse of Mughal control in India, however, also facilitated the rise of rulers other than Ahmad Shah. In the Punjab the Sikhs were becoming a potent force, and from their capital at Poona the Marathas, who were Hindus, controlled much of western and central India and were beginning to look northward to the decaying Mughal empire, which Ahmad Shah now claimed by conquest. After Ahmad returned to Qandahar in 1757, he was faced not only with uprisings in Baluch areas and in Herat but also with attacks by the Marathas on his domains in India, which succeeded in ousting Timor and his court. Herat was quickly brought under control, and the Baluch revolt was quelled by a combination of siege and compromise, but the campaign against the Marathas was a more substantial operation.

Ahmad called for Islamic holy war against the Marathas, and warriors from the various Pashtun tribes, as well as other tribes such as the Baluch, answered his call. Early skirmishes ended in victory for the Afghans, and by 1759 Ahmad and his army had reached Lahore. By 1760 the Maratha groups had coalesced into a great army. Once again Panipat was the scene of a historical confrontation between two contenders for control of northern India. This time the battle was between Muslim and Hindu armies, numbering as many as 100,000 troops each, who fought along a 12-kilometer front. Although he decisively defeated the Marathas, Ahmad Shah was not left in peaceful control of his domains because of other challenges to the ailing monarch in his last years. Moreover, the ultimate effect of the 1761 Battle of Panipat may have had detrimental effects on the rule of Ahmed Shah's descendants; by thwarting the consolidation of Maratha power in northern and central India, the battle may have set the stage for the rise of both Sikh and British power in the region.

The victory at Panipat was the high point of Ahmad Shah's-and Afghan-power. Afterward, even before his death, the empire began to unravel. Ahmad Shah was less fit to cope with insurrection because he suffered from severe ulceration of the face, an ailment that was probably cancer. Even before the end of 1761 the Sikhs had risen and taken control of much of the Punjab. In 1762 Abroad Shah crossed the passes from Afghanistan for the sixth time to subdue the Sikhs. He assaulted Lahore, and when he had taken the Sikh holy city of Amritsar, he massacred thousands of its Sikh inhabitants, destroyed their temples, and desecrated their holy places with cow blood.

The Sikhs rebelled again within two years, but Abroad Shah's efforts to put down the uprising of 1764 were not as successful. Again in 1767 he crossed the mountain passes. Although much harassed by Sikh guerrilla warfare, Abroad Shah took Lahore and again laid waste to Amritsar, killing many of its inhabitants. After this attempt Abroad Shah tried two more times to subjugate the Sikhs permanently, but he failed. By the time of his death, he had lost all but nominal control of the Punjab to the Sikhs, who remained in control until defeated by the British in 1849.

It was not only the fierce Sikhs who rebelled against the rule of Abroad Shah. His empire was being seriously eroded in other areas as well. Ahmad Shah's Indian domains refused to pay homage, and other regions simply declared their independence. The amir (ruler) of Bukhara claimed some of the northern provinces, and Ahmad Shah reached an agreement with him to accept the Amu Darya as the border between them. Three years before his death, Ahmad Shah had to put down a revolt in Khorasan.

In 1772 Ahmad Shah retired to his home, the mountains east of Qandahar, where he died. He was buried in Qandahar, where his epitaph, recalling his early connection with the Iranian monarchy, calls him a ruler equal to Emperor Cyrus. Despite his relentless military attacks and his massacres of Sikhs and others in imperial warfare, he is known in Afghan history as Ahmad Shah Baba, or "father." Although confusion reigned after his death, Ahmad Shah was clearly the creator of the nation of Afghanistan. As scholar Leon B. Poullada notes, the loyalty of the Afghan tribes was not transferred from their own leaders and kin to the concept of nation, but Ahmad Shah succeeded to a remarkable degree in balancing tribal alliances and hostilities and in directing tribal energies away from rebellion into his frequent foreign excursions. He certainly enjoyed extraordinarily good luck, but he was clever in exploiting his good fortune, and he showed exemplary intelligence in dealing with his own people. Having started his rule as merely the paramount chief of the Durrani, Ahmad Shah never sought to rule the Pashtuns by force. He reigned in consultation with a council of eight or nine sirdars (or sardars), the most powerful Durrani Pashtuns, each of whom was responsible for his own group. He sought the advice of his council on all major issues. Although he favored the Durrani, and especially his own lineage, the Sadozai, he was conciliatory to the other Pashtun chiefs as well. Ahmad Shah's successors were not so wise, and the nation he had built almost collapsed because of their misrule and the intratribal rivalry that they could not manage.

By the time of Ahmad Shah, the Pashtuns included many groups whose greatest single common characteristic was their Pashto language. Their origins were obscure; most were believed to have descended from ancient Aryan tribes, but some, such as the Ghilzai, may have been Turks. To the east, the Waziris and their close relatives, the Mahsuds, have been located in the hills of the central Suleiman Range since the fourteenth century. By the end of the sixteenth century and the final Turkish-Mongol invasions, tribes such as the Shinwaris, Yusufzais, and the Mohmands had moved from the upper Kabul River Valley into the valleys and plains west, north, and northeast of Peshawar, and the Afridis had long been established in the hills and mountain ranges south of Khyber Pass. By the end of the eighteenth century the Durranis had blanketed the area west and north of Qandahar. 

Successors of Ahmad Shah

Ahmad Shah's successors presided incompetently over a period of unrest so marked that within half a century of Ahmad Shah's death, Afghanistan was embroiled in civil war. Many of the territories conquered by the military skill of Ahmad Shah fell to others in the 50 years following his death. Sind was virtually independent by 1786; much of northern Afghanistan was controlled by semi-independent khans by 1800; Baluchistan, virtually independent by the 1790s, was annexed by the Sikhs in 1818; and the nominal control of the Punjab was lost to the Sikhs in 1818 and Kashmir to them the following year. By 1818 the Sadozai rulers who succeeded Abroad Shah controlled little more than Kabul and the territory within a 160kilometer radius. They not only lost the outlying territories but also alienated the other tribes and lineage groups among the Durrani Pashtuns.

Timor Shah, Ahmad's second son and designated heir, still formally turned to the other Durrani sirdars for advice (especially the chief of the powerful Muhammadzai Painda Khan), but in other ways he alienated his fellow Pashtuns. Although there were only two major internal rebellions in the 20 years of Timur's reign, his turn away from the council of Durrani advisers to the Qizilbash guards began a process of alienation of the Sadozai rulers from their Pashtun subjects. Although Timor's reign was relatively uneventful by Afghan standards of the day and although the Durrani Empire still included (at least nominally) all of the Hindu Kush area and much of northern India, Baluchistan, and Iranian Khorasan, the seeds of the downfall of the dynasty had been sown. Abroad Shah had involved his heir in a number of dynastic marriages, and when Timor died suddenly in 1793, he left 36 legitimate children, of whom over 20 were sons. He had failed to designate an heir, and all his sons claimed the throne.

The three strongest contenders were the governors of Qandahar, Herat, and Kabul, although the latter Muhammad Zeman, was in the most commanding position. When Painda Khan, who had been Timur's adviser and was the chief of the Muhammadzai clan, came to Zeman's support, his accession to the throne was assured. Zeman, Timor's fifth son, became shah at the age of 23; his half-brothers accepted this only by force majeure, having been imprisoned upon their arrival in the capital to elect a shah. The quarrels among Timur's descendants threw Afghanistan into turmoil and provided the pretext for the intervention of outside forces in the country for the first time since its unification under Abroad Shah in 1747.

The efforts of the Sadozai heirs of Timor to impose a true monarchy on the truculent Pashtun tribes and to rule absolutely and without the advice of the other (larger) Pashtun tribes' leaders were ultimately unsuccessful. The accession of Zeman was the beginning of along quarrel that ended with the deposition of the Sadozai by the Muhammadzai, who were of the largest and most powerful lineage of the Barakzai. Zeman's reign lasted only seven tumultuous years. Zeman's half-brothers rose in revolt every time he left Kabul to subdue a rebellion in an outlying area. The Sikhs were particularly troublesome and, after several unsuccessful efforts to subdue them, Zeman made the mistake of appointing a forceful young Sikh chief, Ranjit Singh, as his governor in the Punjab. Ranjit Singh became an implacable enemy of Pashtun rulers in Afghanistan.

Zeman's downfall was triggered by his attempts to consolidate power. Although it had been through the support of the Muhammadzai chief, Painda Khan, that Zeman had come to the throne instead of his brothers, Zeman began removing prominent Muhammadzai leaders from positions of power and replacing them with men of his own lineage, the Sadozai. This upset the delicate balance of Durrani tribal politics that had been established by Ahmad Shah and may have prompted Painda Khan and other Durrani chiefs to plot against the shah. Although it is uncertain whether such a plot existed or not, Zeman moved against the tribal leaders, executing Painda Khan and the chiefs of two other Durrani clans (the Nurzai and the Alizai), as well as the chief of the Qizilbash. This was an act of foolhardiness for a ruler who reigned not by reason of his tribe's size and power but by its royal antecedents and by the consent of the other Durrani chiefs. Painda Khan's son fled to Iran and offered the substantial support of his Muhammadzai followers to a rival claimant to the throne, Zeman's older brother, Mahmud. The tribes of the other chiefs who had been executed by Zeman joined the rebels, and they took Qandahar without bloodshed. The shah was blinded and imprisoned, but he escaped to spend the rest of his life as a pensioner of the British in India.

The overthrow of Zeman in 1800 was not the end of civil strife in Afghanistan; it was the beginning of even greater violence. Shah Mahmud lasted only three years before being replaced by yet another of Timur Shah's sons, Shuja, who ruled for six years, from 1803 to 1809. Only a few weeks after signing an agreement with the British in 1809, Shuja was deposed by his predecessor, Mahmud, whose second reign lasted nine years, until 1818. Mahmud's downfall in 1818 was certainly the result of his foolish behavior. He had returned to the throne again only as a result of the support of Painda Khan's son, Fateh Khan, now chief of the Muhammadzai and the most powerful chief among the Durrani Pashtuns. Fateh Khan was an able administrator, and some semblance of normal life returned to parts of Afghanistan during this period. He appointed his brothers to important posts all over the country and to some of the remaining outside provinces. While defending Herat against an Iranian assault, Fateh Khan arrested the governor of the city. A serious breach of custom occurred when he sent his younger brother, Dust Mohammad Khan, into the deposed governor's harem, where he snatched a jeweled girdle from a woman who was the daughter of Mahmud. When news of this reached Mahmud's heir, Kamran, who already resented the power of Fateh Khan and his brothers, the young man urged his father to act against the powerful Muhammadzai chief. Fateh Khan was seized and blinded. His 20 brothers, most of whom were in important posts all over Afghanistan, led the Muhammadzai in rebellion. Fateh Khan's youngest brother, Dost Mohammad, whose mother had been a Qizilbash, persuaded his mother's tribesmen in Kabul to join him in removing all of the shah's followers from Kabul. Mahmud and his followers took refuge in Herat.

For eight years, from 1818 until the ascendancy of Dost Mohammad in 1826, chaos reigned in the domains of Ahmad Shah's Afghanistan while various sons of Painda Khan struggled among themselves for supremacy. Afghanistan ceased to exist as a single nation, disintegrating temporarily into a group of small units, each ruled by a different Durrani leader. Mahmud and Kamran controlled Herat, where they later acknowledged the sovereignty of the Iranian monarch. Mahmud died in 1829, and his heir, Kamran, ruled the city until he was assassinated in 1842. Different sons of the dead Painda Khan controlled Kabul, Qandahar, Kashmir, and Peshawar.

The Rise of Dost Mohammad and the Beginning of the Great Game

It was not until 1826 that the energetic Dost Mohammad was able to exert sufficient control over his own brothers to take over the throne in Kabul, where he proclaimed himself amir, not shah. Although the British had begun to show interest in Afghanistan as early as 1809 with their agreement with Shuja, it was not until the reign of Dost Mohammad, the first of the Muhammadzai rulers, that the opening gambits were played in what came to be known as the Great Game. The Great Game involved not only the confrontation of two great empires whose spheres of influence moved steadily closer to one another until they met in Afghanistan, but also the repeated attempts by a foreign power to impose a puppet government in Kabul. The remainder of the nineteenth century was a time of European involvement in Afghanistan and the adjacent areas and of conflicting ambitions among the various local rulers.

Dost Mohammad achieved predominance among his ambitious brothers through clever use of the support of his mother's Qizilbash tribesmen and his own youthful apprenticeship under his brother, Fateh Khan. He was, by all accounts, a shrewd and charming leader. Many problems demanded his attention: consolidating his power in the areas under his command, controlling his half-brothers who ruled the southern areas of Afghanistan, defeating Mahmud in Herat, and repulsing the encroachment of the Sikhs on the Pashtun areas east of the Khyber Pass. After working assiduously to establish control and stability in his domains around Kabul, the amir next chose to confront the Sikhs.

In 1834 Dost Mohammad defeated an invasion by ex-shah Shuja, but his absence from Kabul gave the Sikhs the opportunity to expand westward. The forces of Ranjit Singh occupied Peshawar and moved from there into territory ruled directly by Kabul. In 1836 Dost Mohammad's forces, under the command of his son, defeated the Sikhs at Jamrud, a post some 15 kilometers west of Peshawar. The Afghan leader, however, did not follow up this triumph by retaking Peshawar. Instead, Dost Mohammad decided to contact the British directly for help in dealing with the Sikhs. In the spring of 1836 he wrote the new governor general of India, Lord Auckland, a letter of congratulations and asked his advice on dealing with the Sikhs. Just as Dost Mohammad's letter formally set the stage for British intervention in Afghanistan, so also did Lord Auckland's reply foreshadow the duplicitous policy of the British in dealing with the Afghans. Auckland responded that he would send a commercial mission to Kabul and stated that "it is not the practice of the British Government to interfere with the affairs of other independent states." In fact, at the heart of the Great Game lay the willingness of Britain and Russia to subdue, subvert, or subjugate the small independent states that lay between them.

The British-through the East India Company-had first become involved in the subcontinent of India in 1612 during the heyday of the Mughal Empire. British influence spread until, by the end of the eighteenth century, their interests in northern India impinged on Central Asia. Although by that time the empire of Ahmad Shah Durrani was already disintegrating, the British were well aware of his exploits in northern India only four decades before, and they feared what they thought was a formidable Afghan force. By the end of the eighteenth century the British had approached the Iranians, asking that they keep the Afghans in check. By the last years of the eighteenth century, a new worry motivated the British in the region-fear of French involvement. Napoleon was, in the British view, capable of overrunning areas of Central Asia and northern India, just as he had defeated much of Europe. In 1801 the British signed an agreement with Iran not only to halt any possible Afghan moves into India by attacking their western flank but also to prevent the French from doing the same thing. In 1807 Napoleon signed with the tsar of Russia the Treaty of Tilsit, which envisaged a joint invasion of India though Iran. The British hastened to cement their relationship with the Iranians and signed an agreement with Shuja in 1809, only a few weeks before he was deposed.

The debacle of the Afghan civil war left a vacuum in the Hindu Kush area that concerned the British, who were well aware of the many times this area had been the invasion route to India. In the first decades of the nineteenth century it became clear to the British that the major threat to their interests in India would not come from the fragmented Afghan empire, the vitiated Persians, or from the French, but from the Russians, who had begun a steady advance southward from the Caucasus.

As in earlier times, two great empires confronted each other, with Central Asia lying between them. The Russians feared permanent British encroachment into Central Asia as the British moved northward, taking control of the Punjab, Sind, and Kashmir. Equally suspicious, the British viewed Russian absorption of the Caucasus and Georgia, Kirghiz and Turkmen lands, and Khiva and Bukhara as a threat to British interest in the Indian subcontinent (see fig. 3).

Background to the First Anglo-Afghan War

Historians are unanimous in condemning the stupidity of Auckland's policies, which led to the British invasion of Afghanistan in 1838. The governor general sent to Kabul a young official of the East India Company, Alexander Burnes, without investing him with appropriate negotiating powers and without heeding the sensible advice that Burnes sent back. Auckland ignored not only the advice of Burnes but also that of other advisers on his staff, and the First Anglo-Afghan War, unlike most other military adventures of imperial Britain in the nineteenth century, was unpopular with many journalists and prominent officials in London.

In addition to the general rivalry that existed between Russia and Britain, there were two specific reasons for British concern over Russia's intentions. First was the Russian influence at the Iranian court, which culminated in Russian support for the Iranian attempt to take Herat, historically the western gateway to Afghanistan and northern India. Herat was still formally ruled by the deposed Sadozai, Kamran. In 1837 the Iranians advanced on Herat with the support and advice of Russian officers. The second immediate reason for British anxiety over Russian intentions was the presence in Kabul in 1837 of alone Russian agent who was ostensibly there, like Burnes, for commercial discussions.

The concerns of Dost Mohammad are also easy to discern. Although he was certainly interested in gaining control of both Herat and Qandahar (which was under the control of his brothers), his most immediate objective was to remove the Sikhs from the area around Peshawar. To that end he was willing to delay taking Herat and Qandahar and to deal with whatever foreign power could advance his objectives. Clearly he preferred the British, and he was apparently even willing to agree to the humiliating British ultimatum delivered to him by Burnes in March 1838. The British demanded that Dust Mohammad desist from all contact with the Iranians and Russians, dismiss the Russian agent from Kabul, surrender all claims to Peshawar, and respect Peshawar's independence as well as that of Qandahar. In return, the British government suggested that it would ask Ranjit Singh to reconcile himself with the Afghans and to appoint any Afghan he chose, on whatever terms he chose, to rule Peshawar. Dust Mohammad's agreement to these disadvantageous terms was not enough to placate Auckland, however, and when he refused to put the agreement in writing, Dust Mohammad turned away from the British and began to negotiate with the Russian agent.

In July 1838 an agreement was signed by Auckland, Ranjit Singly and Shuja. By the agreement's provisions, Shuja would regain control of Kabul and Qandahar with British and Sikh assistance Herat would remain independent, and Shuja would accept Sikh rule of the former Afghan provinces that Ranjit Singh already controlled. In practice the plan was to replace Dust Mohammad with a British protege whose autonomy would be as limited as that of the various princes in British India. Although this plan was formulated in light of the pressing Iranian-Russian threat to occupy Herat, the withdrawal of the Iranians and their Russian advisers from the siege of Herat

In September 1838 did not alter Auckland's determination to depose Dost Mohammad. As British historian Sir John W. Kaye declared in his 1874 study of the First Anglo-Afghan War, as soon as the Iranian-Russian threat to Herat had been removed, the plan to invade Afghanistan became "a folly and a crime."

It soon became apparent to the British that Sikh participation-to advance by way of the Khyber Pass toward Kabul while Shuja and the British advanced through Qandahar-was not going to be forthcoming. Auckland's plan in the spring of 1835 for the Sikhs-with some British support-to place Shuja on the Afghan throne was transformed by summer's end to a plan for the British alone to impose the compliant Shuja.

Historians have had difficulty understanding Auckland's wrong-headed policy, but a twentieth-century analyst of the First Anglo-Afghan War, J. Norris, suggests that the global great power situation must also be taken into consideration in assessing British policy at this point. The determination to avoid war with Russia in Europe and to coax the tsar into a joint great power strategy with respect to the faltering Ottoman Empire (the "Eastern question") made it necessary to tread very lightly in Central Asia, where British interests were to be protected as far as possible without directly engaging the Russians. The Russians, meanwhile, having suffered a disappointment in their support of the Iranian siege of Herat, continued to be as suspicious of the British as the British were of them.

This page maintained by Luke Griffin and last updated on 10/25/2006 .