Mohammad Yaqub Khan

Mohammad Yaqub Khan (1849 – November 15, 1923) was Emir of Afghanistan from February 21 to October 12, 1879. He was the son of the previous ruler, Sher Ali Khan.

Mohammad Yaqub Khan was the governor of Herat province in Afghanistan and decided to rebel against his father in 1870 but was imprisoned in 1874.

The Second Anglo-Afghan War erupted in 1878, leading Sher Ali Khan to flee the capital of Afghanistan, and eventually die in February 1879 in the north of the country. As Sher Ali's successor, Yaqub signed the Treaty of Gandamak with the British in May 1879, relinquishing solely the control of Afghanistan foreign affairs to the British Empire. An uprising against this agreement led by Ayub Khan in October of the same year led to the abdication of Yaqub Khan. He was succeeded by the new ruler, Amir Ayub Khan.

Treaty of Gandamak

During the Second Anglo-Afghan War, the British defeated the Amir Sher Ali's forces, wintered in Jalalabad, waiting for the new Amir Yakub Khan to accept their terms and conditions. One of the key figures in the negotiations was Pierre Louis Napoleon Cavagnari. A half-Irish, half-Italian aristocrat, descended from the royal family of Parma on his father's side, he had been brought up in England, with schooling at Addiscombe. He served with the East India Army in the 1st Bengal Fusiliers and then transferred into political service, becoming Deputy Commissioner at Peshawar, and was appointed as envoy by the Viceroy Lord Lytton in the 1878 mission to Kabul which the Afghans refused to let proceed. This refusal was one of a series of events which led to the Second Afghan War.