King Muhammad Nadir Shah, 1929-33

The new ruler quickly abolished most of Amanullah's reforms, but despite his efforts the army remained weak while the religious and tribal leaders grew somewhat in strength. There were uprisings by the Shinwari and another Tajik leader in 1930, and in the same year a Soviet force crossed the border in pursuit of an Uzbek leader who had been harassing the Soviets from his sanctuary in Afghanistan. He was driven back to the Soviet side by the Afghan army in April 1930, and by the end of 1931 most of the country had been subdued.

Nadir Shah named a 10-man cabinet, consisting mostly of members of his family, and in September 1930 he called into session a Loya Jirgah of 286 men to confirm his accession to the throne. At the king's direction, the Loya Jirgah chose 105 members to make up a National Council. This body, with which the king was supposed to consult on legislation, automatically approved decisions by the cabinet. In 1931 the king promulgated a new constitution. Dupree's analysis of the 1931 constitution concludes that although it incorporated many of the ideals of Afghan society and appeared to establish a constitutional monarchy, in fact the document created a royal oligarchy, popular participation being only an illusion.

Although Nadir Shah placated religious elements with a constitutional emphasis on orthodox religious principles, he also worked to modernize Afghanistan in material ways, although far less obtrusively than his more impulsive cousin, Amanullah. He worked on the construction of roads, especially the Great North Road through the Hindu Kush, and improved the means of communication. Commercial links were also forged with the foreign powers with which Amaullah had

Historical Setting

established diplomatic relations in the 1920s, and, under the leadership of several leading entrepreneurs, a banking system and long-range economic planning were started. Schools, which had been closed during the chaos of the Tajik interregnum, were reopened. Although his efforts to improve the army did not bear fruit immediately, Nadir Shah, who had inherited virtually no national army at all, created a 40,000-strong force before his death in 1933, and he also established a military school and an arsenal. Except for a gift of rifles and a small sum of money from Britain, Nadir Shah's reintegration of the Afghan nation was carried out with no external assistance.

Nadir Shah's reign was brief and ended in violence, but he accomplished a feat of which his illustrious great-great-uncle, Dost Mohammad, would have been proud: He reunited a fragmented Afghanistan. Nadir Shah fell prey to assassination by a young man whose family had been carrying on a feud with the king since his accession to power. Only six months after his brother, Muhammad Aziz Khan, had been assassinated in Berlin by a young Afghan, Nadir Shah was shot and killed by the young son (or adopted son, according to some scholars) of a man whom he had had executed a year before. As Dupree comments, if the classic pattern of Afghan royal politics had prevailed, the 19-year-old crown prince would have been displaced by one of his uncles, one of whom was in Kabul and in command of the army. Remarkably, a new attitude prevailed in the royal family, and the uncles of the new king, Muhammad Zahir Shah, were content to remain the power behind the throne on which they placed their nephew.

This page maintained by Luke Griffin and last updated on 01/14/2002 .