one

Afghan Sultanates, 1260–1732

The fame of Bahlol and of Sher Shah too, resounds in my ears

Afghan Emperors of India, who swayed its sceptre effectively and well.
For six or seven generations, did they govern so wisely,
That all their people were filled with admiration of them.
Either those Afghans were different, or these have greatly changed.
Khushhal Khan Khattak

Amongst the Afghan tribes it is indisputable that where one [tribe]

possesses more men than the other, that tribe will set out to destroy
the other.
Sher Shah Suri1

M
odern histories of Afghanistan generally regard 1747 as
the founding date of the modern state of Afghanistan.2 This
is because in that year Ahmad Shah, a young Afghan of the
‘Abdali tribe, who later adopted the regnal name of Durrani, established
an independent kingdom in Kandahar and founded a monarchy that, in
one expression or another, ruled Afghanistan until 1978. In fact the history
of Afghan rule in the Iranian–Indian frontier can be traced back many
centuries before the birth of Ahmad Shah. Nor was Ahmad Shah the first
Afghan, or member of his family or tribe, to rule an independent kingdom.
In 1707 Mir Wa’is, of the Hotak Ghilzai tribe of Kandahar, rebelled
against Safavid Persia and founded a kingdom that lasted for more than
thirty years. In 1722 Mir Wa’is’ son, Shah Mahmud, even invaded Persia
and displaced the Safavid monarch and for seven years ruled an empire
that stretched from Kandahar to Isfahan. Even after Mir Wa’is’ descendants
were thrown out of Persia, they continued to rule Kandahar and south-
eastern Afghanistan until 1738.
In 1717, ten years after Mir Wa’is’ revolt, a distant cousin of Ahmad
Shah, ‘Abd Allah Khan Saddozai, established the first independent ‘Abdali
sultanate in Herat after seceding from the Safavid Empire and for a brief
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period both Ahmad Shah’s father and half-brother ruled this kingdom.
The dynasty founded by Ahmad Shah in 1747 lasted only until 1824,
when his line was deposed by a rival ‘Abdali clan, the Muhammadzais,
descendants of Ahmad Shah’s Barakzai wazir, or chief minister. In 1929
the Muhammadzais in turn were deposed and, following a brief interreg-
num, another Muhammadzai dynasty took power, the Musahiban. This
family was the shortest lived of all three of Afghanistan’s ‘Abdali dynasties:
its last representative, President Muhammad Da’ud Khan, was killed in a
Communist coup in April 1978. All these dynasties belonged to the same
Durrani tribe, but there was little love lost between these lineages. Indeed,
the history of all the Afghan dynasties of northern India is turbulent and
their internal politics marred by feuds and frequent civil wars.
While dozens of tribes call themselves ‘Afghan’, a term which now­
adays is regarded as synonymous with Pushtun, Afghanistan’s dynastic
history is dominated by two tribal groupings, the ‘Abdali, or Durrani, and
the Ghilzai. The Ghilzai, or Ghilji, as a distinct tribal entity can be traced
back to at least the tenth century where they are referred to in the sources
as Khalaj or Khallukh. At this period their main centres were Tukharistan
(the Balkh plains), Guzganan (the hill country of southern Faryab), Sar-i
Pul and Badghis provinces, Bust in the Helmand and Ghazni. Today the
Ghilzais are treated as an integral part of the Pushtun tribes that straddle
the modern Afghan–Pakistan frontier, but tenth-century sources refer to
the Khalaj as Turks and ‘of Turkish appearance, dress and language’; the
Khalaj tribes of Zamindarwar even spoke Turkish.3 It is likely that the Khalaj
were originally Hephthalite Turks, members of a nomadic confederation
from Inner Asia that ruled all the country north of the Indus and parts of
eastern Iran during the fifth to early seventh centuries ce.4 The Khalaj were
semi-nomadic pastoralists and possessed large flocks of sheep and other
animals, a tradition that many Ghilzai tribes have perpetuated to this day.

The Khalji Sultanates of Delhi

During the era of the Ghaznavid dynasty (977–1186), so named because the
capital of this kingdom was Ghazni, the Khalaj were ghulams, or inden-
tured levies, conscripted into the Ghaznavid army.5 Often referred to as
‘slave troops’, ghulams were commonplace in the Islamic armies well into
the twentieth century, the most well known being the Janissaries of the
Ottoman empire. Ghulams, however, were not slaves in the European sense
of the word. Unlike tribal levies, whose loyalties were often to their tribal
leaders rather than the monarch, ghulams were recruited from subjugated
52
 afghan sultanat e s, 1 2 6 0 – 17 3 2

The minaret of the

Ghaznavid Sultan
Bahram Shah (1084–
1157), one of two
surviving ­medieval
minarets outside
Ghazni.

populations, usually non-Muslim tribes, forced to make a token conversion

to Islam and formed the royal guard of the ruling monarch, or sultan. The
ghulams thus provided a ruler with a corps of loyal troops that were bound
to him by oath and patronage and that offset the power of the sultan’s tribe
and other powerful factions at court.
The ghulams were generally better trained and armed than any other
military force in the kingdom and were the nearest thing to a professional
army. Their commanders enjoyed a privileged status, often held high office
and owned large estates. In a number of Muslim countries ghulams even-
tually became so powerful that they acted as kingmakers and on occasion
deposed their master and set up their own dynasty. The Ghaznavids were
a case in point. Sabuktigin (942–997), a Turk from Barskon in what is now
Kyrgyzstan, who founded this dynasty, was a ghulam general who was sent
to govern Ghazni by the Persian Samanid ruler of Bukhara, only for him
to eventually break away and set up his own kingdom.6
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Given that the Khalaj in the Ghaznavid army are referred to as ghulams
it is very likely that they were one of many kafir or pagan tribes that lived
in the hill country between the Hari Rud, Murghab and Balkh Ab water-
sheds. In 1005/6 Sultan Mahmud, the most famous of the Ghaznavid rulers,
invaded, subjugated and systematically Islamized this region. As part of
the terms of submission, the local rulers would have been required to
provide a body of ghulams to serve in the Ghaznavid army. The Khalaj
soon proved their worth, repelling an invasion by another Turkic group,
the Qarakhanids, and subsequently in campaigning against the Hindu
rulers of northern India.
In 1150 Ghazni was destroyed by the Ghurids, a Persian-speaking
dynasty from the hill country of Badghis, Ghur and the upper Murghab,
and by 1186 all vestiges of Ghaznavid power in northern India had been
swept aside. The Ghurids incorporated the Khalaj ghulams into their army
and it was during this era that they and probably the tribes of the Khyber
area began to be known as Afghan, though the origin and meaning of
this term is uncertain. Possibly Afghan was a vernacular term used to
describe semi-nomadic, pastoral tribes, in the same way that today the
migratory Afghan tribes are referred to by the generic term maldar, herd
owners, or kuchi, from the Persian verb ‘to migrate’ or ‘move home’. It was
not until the nineteenth century and under British colonial influence that
Afghans were commonly referred to as Pushtun or by the Anglo-Indian
term Pathan.
During the Ghaznavid and Ghurid eras many Khalaj and other Afghan
clans were relocated around Ghazni, others were required to live in the
Koh-i Sulaiman, or in the hinterland of Kandahar, Kabul and Multan,
where they were assigned grazing rights. This relocation may have been
a reward for their military service, but more likely it was a strategic deci-
sion, since it meant these tribes could be quickly mustered in the event
of war. By the early fourteenth century Afghans were a common feature
of the ethnological landscape of southern and southeastern Afghanistan.
The Arab traveller Ibn Battuta, who visited Kabul in 1333, records how the
qafila, or trade caravan, he was travelling with had a sharp engagement
with the Afghans in a narrow pass near the fortress of ‘Karmash’, probably
on the old Kabul–Jalalabad highway.7 Ibn Battuta damned these Afghans
as ‘highwaymen’, but on the basis of the limited sources available it is likely
these tribes expected payment for safe passage and the head of the caravan
had failed to pay the customary dues. Significantly, Ibn Battuta notes that
the Afghans of the Kabul–Jalalabad region were Persian-speakers, though
whether they spoke Pushtu too is not recorded.
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Other sources from this era portray the Afghans as a formidable

warrior race. One author graphically compares them to ‘a huge elephant . . .
[a] tall tower of a fortress . . . daring, intrepid, and valiant soldiers, each one
of whom, either on mountain or in forest, would take a hundred Hindus
in his grip, and, in a dark night, would reduce a demon to utter helpless-
ness’.8 These Afghan ghulams certainly lived up to this reputation during
their campaigns in India and the Ghurids rewarded their commanders
with hereditary estates, or jagirs, in the plains of northern India. This led
to a substantial migration of Afghan tribes from the hill country of what
is now south and southwestern Afghanistan to the fertile, frost-free and
well-watered lands of the Indian plains. Eventually the Khalaj, by this time
referred to as the Khaljis or Khiljis, became so powerful that they placed
their own nominee on the throne of Delhi. In 1290 they seized power and
for the next thirty years ruled northern India in their own right.
The Khaljis and other Afghan tribes kept apart from their mostly Hindu
subjects, living in cantonments, or mahalas, based on clan affili­ation. Jalal
al-Din Firuz, the first Khalji sultan, even refused to attend the court in
Delhi and built a new capital a few kilometres away in the Afghan enclave
of Kilokhri.9 This cultural isolation was reinforced by the practice of endog-
amy, for the Khalji would only marry women from their own tribe. As for the
Khalji tribal leaders, they showed scant respect for the authority of the sultan
and there were frequent clashes between them and the crown as the former
fought the monarch’s efforts to curb their traditional right to the autonomous
government of their tribes.10 The Khalji were also notorious for their blood
feuds, which they pursued regardless of the consequences to the body politic.
Rivals even fought each other in the court and, on one occasion, in the royal
presence itself. The Khalji, however, were also a formid­able military power.
Sultan Jalal al-Din Firuz (r. 1290–96) and his successor Sultan ‘Ala’ al-Din,
or Juna Khan (r. 1296–1316) even defeated the invading Mongol armies on
several occasions and in so doing saved northern India from the ravages
they inflicted on Afghanistan, Persia and the Middle East.
The last Khalji, Sultan Ikhtiyar al-Din, was assassinated in 1320 and a
Turkish dynasty, the Tughlaqs, seized power, but the Afghans remained
a force in the political and military life of northern India. Between 1436
and 1531 one branch of the Khalji dynasty ruled Malwa in modern Madhya
Pradesh, while thousands of Khaljis owned large tracts of land in western
India and dozens of their military cantonments were scattered throughout
northern India from the Punjab to Bengal. The Afghans also continued
to provide high-quality troops for the Tughlaq army and some held high
military office.
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In 1451 Bahlul Khan, a Khalji of the Lodhi clan, deposed the then sultan
and founded a second Afghan sultanate, the Lodhi Dynasty, which ruled
northern India for 75 years (1451–1526). Under the Lodhis, another wave
of Afghans migrated into northern India and perpetuated the tradition of
living in separate cantonments and the practice of endogamy. Ludhiana,
now close to the frontier between India and Pakistan, for example, derives
its name from having originally been a Lodhi cantonment. The Lodhis,
while Muslims, were still only semi-Islamized. After Sultan Bahlul Lodhi
conquered Delhi he and his followers attended Friday prayers in the main
mosque to ensure that his name was recited in the khutba, which was an
essential act of the Friday congregational prayer service. The imam, or
prayer leader, observing how the Afghans struggled to perform the prayers
according to prescribed rituals, was heard to exclaim: ‘what a strange
(‘ajab) tribe has appeared. They do not know whether they are followers
of Dajal [the Antichrist] or if they are themselves Dajal-possessed.’11

The Mughal conquest of India and Afghan-Mughal rivalry

The Lodhi dynasty came to an abrupt end at the Battle of Panipat in 1526,
when the last sultan was defeated by the Mughal armies of Zahir al-Din
Babur. Babur, a descendant of both Timur Lang and Chinggis Khan,
thus became the latest in a series of Turkic rulers of India whose empire
included Kabul and southeastern Afghanistan. Born in Andijan in the
Fergana Oasis of what is now Uzbekistan, Babur’s father had ruled a king-
dom that included Samarkand and Bukhara, but after his death Babur had
been ousted from the region by the Shaibanid Uzbeks and fled across the
Amu Darya, eventually taking Kabul from its Timurid ruler. Prior to his
invasion of India, Babur had conducted a series of expeditions against the
Afghan tribes of Laghman and Nangahar as well as the Mohmands of the
Khyber area, and the Ghilzais of Ghazni.12
Following his victory at Panipat, Babur did his best to reconcile the
Afghan tribes that lay across the key military road between Kabul and the
Punjab. To this end he married the daughter of a Yusufzai khan, the most
numerous and powerful tribe in the region of the Khyber Pass. Dilawar
Khan Lodhi, a member of the deposed dynasty, also became one of Babur’s
most trusted advisers and was given the hereditary title of Khan Khanan,
Khan of Khans. Other members of the Lodhi dynasty were appointed as
governors or held high rank in the army. Despite this, there were numerous
Afghan rebellions against Mughal rule. In 1540, following Babur’s death,
there was civil war between his sons and eventually Farid al-Din Khan,
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 afghan sultanat e s, 1 2 6 0 – 17 3 2

A Timurid ­miniature
from Herat, early 16th
century, depicting a
battle scene.

of the Suri clan of the Kakar tribe, who had been a high-ranking officer
under the Lodhis, ousted Babur’s son and successor Humayun from Delhi,
and adopted the regnal title of Sher Shah Suri. He ruled Delhi and much
of northern India for fifteen years, though Humayun’s brothers continued
to govern Kandahar, Ghazni, Kabul and Peshawar. Humayun himself fled
to Persia but after fifteen years in exile he finally regained the throne of
Delhi and restored the Mughal supremacy.
Sher Shah Suri’s rebellion hardened Mughal attitudes towards the Afghan
tribes. Humayun’s son and heir, Akbar the Great (r. 1556–1605), confiscated
their jagirs and banned them from governorships and high military rank.
Racial prejudice too ran deep, with Mughal historians regularly referring to
Afghans as ‘black-faced’, ‘brainless’, vagabond’ and ‘wicked’.13 The suppres-
sions, confiscations and general prejudice caused deep resentment, for many
Afghans continued to serve the Mughal empire faithfully.
One response to this disenfranchisement was the rise of a militant
millenarian movement known as the Roshaniyya (Illuminated), which
posed a serious threat to Mughal rule in northwestern India for almost half
57
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a century.14 Its founder, Bayazid Ansari (b. 1525), or Pir Roshan, was from
the small Ormur or Baraki tribe, whose mother tongue was not Pushtu but
Ormuri. His father was a religious teacher but Ansari fell out with him and
his tribe because of his unorthodox opinions. Forced to flee, he made his
way into Mohmand tribal territory in the Khyber region and later made
his base in the mountain country of Tirah.
From the mid-1570s onwards Pir Roshan began to claim he was the
Mahdi, the Restorer whose appearance in the Last Days, according to
Islamic teaching, would usher in the Golden Age in which all the world
would be converted to Islam. After a visit to an unnamed Sufi mystic in
the Kandahar area, Pir Roshan declared jihad on the Mughals and found
strong support for his cause among the Yusufzai, Afridi, Orakzai and
Mohmand tribes. The Roshaniyya movement was heterodox in its theology
and was condemned by the orthodox Sunni establishment as heretical. Its
many critics punning referring to the movement as the tarikiyya, from the
Persian word for ‘darkness’. At the same time the Roshaniyya had strong
nationalistic overtones and one of Pir Roshan’s key demands was complete
independence from Mughal rule.
The Roshaniyya rebellion came at a difficult time for Akbar the Great,
who was already embroiled in a civil war with his brother Hakim, governor
of Lahore, as well as the conquest of Kashmir. When Akbar finally regained
control of Lahore and Peshawar in 1581, he marched up the Khyber Pass
and soundly defeated Pir Roshan at the Battle of Baro in Nangahar. A

The Khyber Pass, looking back towards Peshawar and the Indus plains.

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short time later Bayazid died, but the revolt was perpetuated by his son
Jalal al-Din, known to his followers as Jalala. In order to strengthen the
Indus frontier, Akbar ordered major improvements to the road between
Lahore and Peshawar, widened the mule track through the Khyber Pass
to facilitate the passage of wheeled carriages and artillery, and built the
massive fortress at Attock on the left bank of the Indus as a forward base
for military operations against the Afghan tribes.
In 1585 Akbar’s rebellious brother Hakim finally drank himself to
death and the civil war petered out, leaving Akbar free to concentrate on
suppressing the Roshaniyyas. To achieve this end he adopted a policy of
divide and rule, securing the support of the Afghan tribes of the Indus
plains who had suffered from Yusufzai raids on their villages and crops.
To better manage these tribes, the Mughals dealt with them indirectly
through representatives, or maliks, who were either chosen by the king or
nominated by a tribal council or jirga. In return for subsidies and other
royal favours, the maliks were required to keep their tribe loyal, maintain
internal law and order and provide tribal levies when required. The maliks
also were entrusted with collecting the tribes’ annual tribute and main-
taining security on the royal roads that ran through their territory. Malik
Akoray of the Khattak tribe, for example, was responsible for security on
the key military road from the right bank of the Indus to Peshawar.
Akbar also sent an army into the Khyber and Yusufzai hill country to
suppress the rebels, but the Mughal military machine was not trained or
equipped for mountain warfare. The rebel tribes lured the Mughals into
the narrowest parts of the Khyber Pass, blocked the exits and proceeded to
slaughter the trapped army. When a relief column tried to break through
it was repulsed with heavy loss of life. A second column sent against the
Yusufzais suffered a similar fate and a thousand more men died before they
fought their way out of the trap. Emboldened by this success, in 1593 Jalala
laid siege to Peshawar and the city was only saved at the last minute by
the arrival of a relief force. Later in the same year the Roshaniyyas sacked
Mughal-ruled Ghazni and sent representatives to Kandahar to seek support
from the Afghan tribes in that region.
After these defeats Akbar adopted a policy of gradual attrition, know-
ing that he commanded far more resources in terms of manpower, artillery
and cash than the Roshaniyyas. Afghan resistance slowly collapsed and,
as one stronghold after the other fell, there were harsh reprisals. Yusufzai
resistance was eventually broken and never again did they risk challenging
the might of the Mughal empire. The Roshaniyya’s legacy, however, inspired
subsequent millenarian, nationalist movements among the Afghan tribes
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of the Indian frontier, of which the Taliban are the latest manifestation.
Another legacy of the Roshaniyya was some of the earliest Pushtu poems
written by Mirza Khan Ansari (d. c. 1630/31), a descendant of Pir Roshan.
Akbar’s successor, Jahangir (r. 1605–27), adopted a more conciliatory
policy to the Afghan tribes, appointing Dilawar Khan Kakar as governor
of Lahore while Khan Jahan, a descendant of Pir Khan Lodhi, was given
the high title of farzand (son). Jahangir records of this individual that:

there is not in my government any person of greater influence than

he, so much so that on his representation I pass over faults which
are not pardoned at the intercession of any of the other servants
of the Court. In short, he is a man of good disposition, brave, and
worthy of favour.15

Afghan fortunes, however, suffered another blow during the reign of

Shah Jahan (r. 1628–58) when Khan Jahan backed a rival candidate for
the succession. Khan Jahan fled to the Punjab, where he tried to raise an
army from the Afghan tribes, only for his appeal to fall on deaf ears. On
17 February 1631 Khan Jahan’s revolt was crushed at the Battle of Sahindra
and he, his sons and many of his Afghan followers were put to death.
Shah Jahan’s successor, Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707), continued the repres-
sive policy against the Afghans and tried to exert more direct control
over them. He imprisoned Khushhal Khan Khattak, a grandson of Malik
Akoray Khattak, despite his family having served the Mughals loyally for
three generations. When Khushhal Khan was finally freed after a decade
of incarceration, he fled to the Afridis of the Khyber Pass and raised the
banner of revolt. Aurangzeb responded by distributing large sums of gold
as well as titles and gifts to the maliks and Khushhal’s uprising collapsed.
Aurangzeb even paid Khushhal’s son, Bahram, to assassinate his father
but, despite several attempts on his life, Khushhal Khan died of natural
causes at a ripe old age.
Khushhal Khan Khattak’s most important legacy, however, is his liter-
ary output and he is regarded today as one of the most famous of all Pushtu
poets. His works include scathing attacks on Mughal rule and his own
people for their preference for Mughal gold, rather than tribal honour and
independence. A contemporary of Khushhal Khan, Rahman Baba (c. 1632–
1706), a Mohmand, was another great Pushtu poet who was famed for his
mystical verses and homilies. His verse is regarded with such veneration
that ‘when a [Rahman Baba] couplet is cited in Jirga, heads bow down and
arguments are settled’.16
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The rise of the Saddozais and the Mughal and Safavid

struggle for Kandahar
While the Mughals fought to contain the tribes of India’s northwest frontier,
further west another Afghan tribe, the ‘Abdalis, were emerging as a major
political force under the patronage of Safavid Persia. Unlike the Ghilzai, the
‘Abdalis are not mentioned in the histories until the middle of the sixteenth
century and little is known about their ethnogenesis, though prior to the
Mughal era one of their key strongholds was the Obeh valley in the upper
Hari Rud. The Makhzan-i Afghani, written during the reign of Jahangir,
states that the ‘Abdalis fought in the army of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni,
while Mountstuart Elphinstone, the first European to attempt a system-
atic account of the Afghan tribes, records that the ‘Abdalis claimed their
original homeland was the mountains of Ghur.17 Another tradition states
that Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni rewarded the ‘Abdalis for some unspecified
service by granting them grazing rights in and around Kandahar.
These accounts bear an uncanny resemblance to the early history of
the Khalaj and it is possible that they are an attempt to co-opt a rival tribe’s
history. If there is any historical basis for this claim, however, it suggests
that the ‘Abdalis too were probably ghulams in the Ghaznavid army and,
like the Khalaj, probably recruited from the non-Muslim tribes of Ghur.
However, in respect of their internal management, the ‘Abdalis and Ghilzais
differ substantially, which suggests a somewhat different cultural back-
ground for the two tribes. The Ghilzais are referred to as Turks in early
Islamic sources and at least some spoke a Turkic language as their mother
tongue. In 1809 Mountstuart Elphinstone noted all the leading ‘Abdalis
at the Durrani court spoke Persian and dressed in the Persian manner.
This, of course, was primarily due to having been ruled by the Timurids
and subsequently Safavid Persia, though it may suggest that originally
the ‘Abdalis were a Persianate, rather than a Turkic, tribe from the central
highlands of the Hindu Kush.
One of many traditions concerning the origin of the name ‘Abdali is
that it is derived from ‘abdal, a Sufi title accorded to individuals who have
obtained a high degree of gnosis. The ‘Abdalis claim that this title was due
to them being mukhlis, or devotees, of Khwaja ‘Abu Ahmad ‘Abdal (d. 941),
founder of the Chishtiyya Sufi Order.18 Claiming links to a famous pir
or a major figure of early Islam is not uncommon among the tribes and
dynasties of the region, for it enhanced their spiritual and political legit­
imacy. However, ghulams were usually affiliates of a particular Sufi Order:
the Ottoman Janissaries, for example, were all initiates of the Bektashiyya
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The 12th-century Ghurid mausolea of Sufi pirs at Chisht-i Sharif in the upper Hari Rud.
During the Mughal era the Chishtiyya Order was the most prominent Sufi movement
in northern India.

Order. Even so, it is improbable that the ‘Abdalis were historically affiliated
to the Chishtiyya Order, even though its original centre, Chisht-i Sharif,
was just upstream from Obeh. Had this been the case this link would have
been perpetuated through the centuries. Instead Saddu Khan, the epony-
mous founder of the Saddozai royal line, was bound to another Sufi Order,
the Qadiriyya, which originated in Syria. From the late eighteenth century
several of the ‘Abdali tribes affiliated themselves to the northern Indian,
Mujadidi tariqa of Naqshbandism.
The early accounts of the ‘Abdalis relate mainly to the rise of the royal
Saddozai clan. According to tribal genealogies, the many ‘Abdali tribes all
stem from four primary lineages, the sons of Zirak. The most senior of
these tribes, by right of primogeniture, is the Popalzai, of which the royal
house of Saddozai is a sept. The other three lineages are Barakzai, Alakozai
and Musazai. Each of these four main tribes are subdivided into dozens of
clans similar to the Scottish Highlanders or Maori iwi.19
Tribal tradition states that in or around 1558, Akko, an itinerant darwish,
paid an unexpected visit to a certain Salih, an impoverished member of
the Habibzai branch of the Popalzais. Salih managed to scrape together
enough food to provide for his guests and as Akko was about to leave he
told his host that he had dreamed that a lion had entered his house. The
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darwish then predicted that Salih would have a son who would be as brave
as a lion and earn fame for himself and his family.20 Furthermore, the birth
of this child would be a turning point in the family’s financial fortunes. In
due time a baby boy was born and Saleh named him ’Asad Allah (Lion of
God), but his family called him Saddu, from which the Saddozai lineage
derives its name. Sometime after Saddu’s birth the governor of Kandahar
appointed Salih as malik of the ‘Abdali tribal confederacy and, since one
of his duties was to collect the tribe’s taxes and tribute, Salih soon became
a very wealthy man.
Salih’s rise to power was the result of a major shift in the geopolitical
scene of the Indian–Persian frontier. From the early sixteenth century
Kandahar, which was an important frontier town and trade emporium,
was fought over by three major regional powers: Safavid Persia, Mughal
India and the Shaibanid Uzbeks north of the Hindu Kush. In 1501 the
head of the Shi‘a Safaviyya Sufi Order in Ardabil, Azerbaijan, proclaimed
himself king of Persia and took the regnal name of Shah Isma‘il i. Within
a decade Shah Isma‘il had brought all of Persia under his authority and
imposed the Shi‘a rite of Islam as the state cult. The Safavid army consisted
mostly of members of the Safaviyya Order and many of them were of
Turco-Mongolian ethnicity: Turkman, Kurds and Chaghatais. They became
known as Qizilbash, literally ‘red heads’, from the distinctive red cap worn
by members of the Order.
North of the Hindu Kush and beyond the Amu Darya the Shaibanid
Uzbeks, a tribal confederacy formed from the remnants of the armies of
the Mongol conqueror Chinggis Khan, took Samarkand and sacked Balkh,
Herat and Mashhad, sweeping away another Turco-Mongolian dynasty, the
Timurids. Two brothers, Mukim Khan and Shah Beg Khan, whose father
had been the Timurid governor of Kandahar, then established their own
independent kingdom in Kandahar and Kabul. Following Zahir al-Din
Babur’s conquest of Kabul in 1504, Mukim fled to Kandahar and when,
three years later, Babur marched against Kandahar, Shah Beg turned to
the Uzbeks for military assistance. Since Babur was already fighting the
Shaibanids north of the Hindu Kush, he decided he could not risk opening
a second front and withdrew.
Six years later, in December 1510, Shah Isma‘il routed the Uzbeks
outside Merv and their leader, Uzbek Khan, was killed. Shah Isma‘il then
occupied Herat, while Babur spent the next decade trying to regain his
father’s kingdom beyond the Amu Darya. Babur eventually abandoned
this quest and decided to carve out a kingdom in northern India instead.
In 1520, as the first stage of this campaign, Babur besieged Kandahar. After
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holding out for nearly two years, Shah Beg surrendered the city in return
for safe passage to Sind. Kandahar thus passed under Mughal sovereignty.
Babur pushed on into India where he eventually defeated the Lodhi Sultan
and established his seat of power in Delhi.
After Babur’s death his son Humayun passed through Kandahar on
his way to Persia following the loss of Delhi to Sher Shah Suri. Humayun
was given refuge by the then Safavid ruler, Shah Tahmasp i, and in return
for adopting the Shi‘a rite and military assistance, Humayun agreed to
cede Kandahar in perpetuity to Persia. In 1545, after fifteen years of
exile, Humayun regained control of Kandahar with the aid of a Persian
army, but once he was in control of the citadel Humayun reneged on
his promise and threw out the Safavid garrison. Thirteen years later, in
1558, following the death of Humayun, Shah Tahmasp sent an army to
attack Kandahar and demanded that the new Mughal emperor, Akbar
the Great, fulfil his father’s promise and cede sovereignty over the city.
Since Akbar was facing a series of challenges to his power further east, he
reluctantly agreed and Kandahar was incorporated as part of the Persian
province of Khurasan.
’Asad Allah, or Saddu, was born around the time that Kandahar
passed from Mughal to Safavid sovereignty. The appointment of his father
Salih as malik of the ‘Abdalis was undoubtedly due to this shift in the
balance of power. The Safavids, while they appointed a Persian governor
in Kandahar, perpetuated the malik system established by the Mughals
as the best method of controlling the local Afghan tribes and ensuring
security on the royal highways. It is more than likely Salih Habibzai was
nominated as malik by an ‘Abdali jirga and their choice was confirmed by
the Safavid military governor of Kandahar.21 The fact that the jirga chose
a poor man with little influence or prestige was nothing unusual: both the
Safavid governor and the ‘Abdali elders had a vested interest in appoint-
ing someone with little power, since he was that much easier to control
and manipulate. What is remarkable is that the ‘Abdalis, who were Sunni,
were not required to convert to Shi‘ism, even though the Safavids always
required this for the Muslim population of their empire.
Salih’s appointment was confirmed by a firman, or royal patent, with
the title of malik and mir-i Afghan or mir-i Afghaniha.22 His office and
its titles were hereditary, and when Salih’s son Saddu succeeded him the
family adopted the clan name of Saddozai. The ‘Abdalis were also permitted
to retain their right to autonomy and Saddu later became kalantar too, a
position similar to that of a magistrate and one that gave him the right to
adjudicate on internal disputes and punish criminals.
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Such rights and privileges could only have been secured in return
for substantial services to the Safavids and, given the Saddozais’ subse-
quent history, it is likely they were a reward for ‘Abdali military support
against the Mughals. As we have seen, the Mughals had adopted an increas-
ingly harsh policy towards the Afghan tribes of the Indian borderland
and they, in turn, resented Mughal domination. The revolt of Sher Shah
Suri, Afghan support for Khan Khanan and Akbar’s rebellious brother, as
well as the Roshaniyya movement, all led to further repressions until the
tribes ‘preferred a Shia overlord to a fellow-Hanafi who subjected them to
such degradation’.23 From the Safavid point of view the ‘Abdalis of Herat
and Kandahar were natural allies, for their leading men were already

table 4: The Muslim Dynasties of Northern India, 975–1558

Dynasty Ethnicity Ruled Remarks
Ghaznavid Turk 977–1186 Sunni Muslim: descended from a ghulam
general of the Persian Samanid dynasty
Ghurid Iranian 1186–1206 From Ghur in the central highlands of
Afghanistan. Converted to Sunni Islam
under the Ghaznavids
Mamluk Turk 1206–90 Successor dynasties from Ghurids to
(‘slave’) Mughal, usually referred to as the Delhi
­Sultanates
Khalji/Khilji Afghan (originally 1290–1320 Formerly ghulams in the Ghaznavid and
Turkic?) Ghurid army
Tughlaq Turco-Mongolian 1320–1414 1398, Timur Lang (Tamurlaine), of Central
Asian Turco-Mongolian stock, sacks Delhi
Sayyid Arab (claimed) 1414–51 Founded by Timur Lang’s governor of the
Punjab. The dynasty claimed descent from
Muhammad
Lodhi Afghan (Khalji) 1451–1526 Founder of this dynasty was originally
­governor of Lahore
Mughal Turco-Mongolian 1526–40 Zahir al-Din Babur, its founder, originally
from Ferghana. A descendant of Chinggis
Khan and Timur Lang.
Babur’s son, Humayun, forced to flee to
Persia after rebellion of his brothers and
defeat by Sher Shah Suri
Suri Afghan (Kakar) 1540–55 Farid al-Din Khan, whose regnal name
was Sher Shah Suri; ruled N. India after his
defeat of Humayun.
Humayun’s brothers continued to rule
Kabul, Ghazni, Kandahar and Peshawar
Mughal Turco-Mongolian 1555–1858 Humayun defeats Islam Shah Suri, son of
Sher Shah, and reasserts Mughal power in
Delhi.
Mughal rule continued until it was replaced
by Britain ­following the Sepoy Mutiny

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Persianized and spoke an ‘uncouth Persian’.24 Many ‘Abdalis were also

urbanized and were engaged in the overland trade with India, which was
vital to the Safavid economy.
The rise of the ‘Abdalis to political prominence as clients of a Persian,
Shi‘a monarchy has been largely airbrushed out of modern Afghan
historiography and ignored by Western historians. For many Afghans,
especially monarchists, it is an embarrassment, for from the early twentieth
century successive governments deliberately promoted a national iden-
tity constructed on three foundations: the Durrani dynasty’s adherence to
Hanafi Sunnism, which was on occasion accompanied by anti-Shi‘a and
anti-Persian sentiment; Pushtunness and the Pushtu language; and Afghan
resistance to, and independence from, the dominant imperial powers of
the region, including Persia. To one degree or another all these pillars are
based on fallacies and required a significant rewriting of Afghanistan’s early
history from school textbooks to historiography. One reason for Afghan
historians favouring 1747 as the foundation of modern Afghanistan is that
it avoids referring back to the previous two-and-a-half centuries of the
Saddozai–Safavid alliance. It also avoids the uncomfortable fact that prior
to 1747 Kandahar, which Afghan monarchists would later promote as the
dynastic and spiritual capital of Afghanistan, was for many decades an
integral part of the Persian province of Khurasan and that the ‘Abdalis were
a Persianate tribe. As one modern Afghan historian notes: ‘in reality, little
about the Afghan monarchy was tribal or Paxtun.’25

The Saddozai–Safavid alliance

When the Safavids took possession of Kandahar they inherited a prosper-
ous region and an important urban centre that straddled a major trade
and military route to northern India. As well as being an emporium for
Indian cloth, spices and gemstones, Kandahar was a vital link in Persia’s
‘silk for silver’ trade and profited substantially from foreign currency
exchange and the striking of silver coinage.26 When Zahir al-Din Babur
took the city, he was amazed at the vast quantities of coins and ‘white
gold’ – cloth and other portable goods – found in the storehouses and
treasury. The French traveller François Bernier, writing in the 1650s and
’60s, describes Kandahar as ‘the stronghold of a rich and fine kingdom’.27
Another European traveller of the same era noted that Kandahar was
home to a large number of Hindu bankers, or banyans, who financed
the overland trade through loans and money transfers.28 Elphinstone,
writing in the early nineteenth century, noted that ‘almost all the great
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During the Mughal and Safavid era, Kandahar was a prosperous commercial centre.
The trading tradition is still strong, as shown in this 1970s image of Kandahar’s bazaar.

Dooraunees’ had houses in Kandahar ‘and some of them are said to be

large and elegant’.29 Outside of the urban centre of Kandahar lay large
tracts of fertile agricultural land irrigated by the Arghandab, Tarnak
and Helmand rivers, while thousands of semi-nomadic Afghan, Kakar
and Baluch tribes provided the region with meat, skins, wool and pack
animals. As protectors of these military and commercial routes as well
as traders in their own right, the ‘Abdalis in general and Saddozais in
particular became extremely wealthy.
From an early age Saddu Khan is said to have exhibited a warrior
spirit. On one occasion he won an archery contest, beating the cream of
Safavid marksmen in the process. Later Saddu took the oath of disciple-
ship, or ba‘it, swearing allegiance to Sayyid Najib al-Din Gailani, pir of the
Qadiriyya Order, who is said to have presented Saddu with a kha‘lat, or
robe of honour, and the sword of ‘Abd al-Qadir Gailani, pir-i piran, the
founder of the Qadiriyya Order. These precious relics were passed down
through the Saddozai line and used as symbols of their spiritual and tem­­
poral leadership of the ‘Abdalis. Pir-i Piran’s sword was eventually lost
during the Sikh sack of the Saddozai stronghold of Multan in 1818, but the
‘Abdalis’ spiritual affiliation to the Qadiriyya Order has been perpetuated
to this day. During the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, ‘Abdali and other
royalist tribes fought under the banner of the Mahaz-i Milli-yi Islami,
whose leader, Sayyid Ahmad Gailani, was at the time pir of the Order.
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The Safavids ruled Kandahar until 1595, when Akbar the Great, taking
advantage of a war of succession that followed the death of Shah Tahmasp i,
regained control of the region. The conquest was relatively peaceful, for the
Safavid prince governor agreed to surrender the province to the Mughals
in order to pursue his own claim to the throne of Persia. Once in charge,
the Mughals stripped the pro-Safavid Saddu Khan of his privileges and
appointed Hajji Jala and Malik Kalu of the rival Barakzai clan as joint mir-i
Afghanihas. Eventually, the struggle for the Safavid throne was resolved and
the new king, Shah ‘Abbas i (r. 1587–1629), set out to reassert Persian power
over northeastern Khurasan, which had been overrun by the Uzbeks. In
1598 Shah ‘Abbas retook Mashhad and a few months later he defeated
the Shaibanid Uzbek ruler, Din Muhammad Khan, and took Herat. The
following year Balkh too fell to the Safavids.
We know little about how the ‘Abdalis in Herat fared under Uzbek rule
but shortly after the Safavids regained control of the city. Malik Salih called
a jirga in Herat and announced that since he was now in his eighties, he
was abdicating in favour of his eldest son, Saddu. Afghan tribal assemblies
dislike acting as a rubber stamp for ambitious leaders and the assembly
mooted several other possible successors. One key issue was who had the
right to succeed Malik Salih, for primogeniture was not traditional among
the ‘Abdalis. Instead the tribe followed the Turco-Mongolian model of
agnatic, or patrilineal, seniority; that is, the headship passed to the next most
senior male member of the clan, usually an uncle or the next oldest brother.
Despite several days of debate the jirga was unable to agree so Malik
Salih decided to put an end to the argument by girding a kamarband – a
sash that probably held the sword of Pir-i Piran – around his son’s waist
and declared Saddu as the new mir-i Afghaniha, whereupon the majority of
the assembly reluctantly accepted this fait accompli. Saddu then made an
unprecedented demand, requiring each khan to swear an oath of allegiance
to him on the Qur’an, an action that indicates Saddu’s ambitions to rule his
tribe more like a prince than a malik. Needless to say, Hajji Jala and Malik
Kalu Barakzai in Kandahar refused to accept their rival’s appointment and
armed clashes ensued between Barakzais and Saddozais.
Following the death of Akbar the Great in 1605, Shah ‘Abbas i sent
an army to regain control of Kandahar, but the Mughal garrison held out
and the region remained under Mughal sovereignty until 1622, when it
came to an abrupt end. In this year the then Mughal emperor, Jahangir,
received a highly flattering letter from Shah ‘Abbas i requesting the return
of Kandahar, ‘that petty country’.30 Jahangir was not impressed, for at the
end of the letter the Safavid king informed the emperor that he had already
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taken possession of Kandahar and expelled its Mughal garrison. Jahangir

ordered an army to march against the city, but just as it was about to set
out his son, Shah Jahan, rebelled and ‘struck with an axe at the foot of his
own dominion’. The Kandahar campaign was abandoned and the army
redirected to bring the rebel prince to heel. A furious Jahangir decreed that
Shah Jahan, whose regnal name meant King of the World, should hence-
forth only be referred to in his presence as Shah Bi-Daulat, the Stateless
or Vagabond King.31
Saddu Khan and the ‘Abdalis once again provided military support for
the Safavid reconquest of Kandahar and as a reward Shah ‘Abbas i heaped
favours on Saddu and his tribe. The ‘Abdalis were restored to their custom-
ary privileges and exempted from paying tribute, their autonomous status
was consolidated and Mir Saddu was given the exalted title of sultan, prince.
Saddu was also gifted the substantial jagir of Safa on the Tarrnak river, land
which had probably been seized from the Tokhi Ghilzais, whose fortress of
Qalat-i Ghilzai was a few kilometres away. Saddu Khan then constructed
a substantial fortified palace known as Qal‘a-i Safa in the hill country of
Shahr-i Safa, which henceforth was the stronghold of Saddozai power.
Shortly before his death in 1627, Sultan Saddu appointed as his succes-
sor his second son, Khizr, a Sufi who spent most of his time in spiritual
contemplation. He then tried to convince the jirga to endorse his choice
by claiming he had received visions and prophesies supporting his deci-
sion. The jirga, though, rejected Khizr and appointed Saddu’s eldest son,
Maudud Khan, a battle-hardened warrior and a bully. The decision not
only split the ‘Abdali tribe but divided Saddu’s family into two hostile
factions, leading to a feud that would be perpetuated down the ­generations
(see Chart 1).
A few months after Sultan Maudud Khan became mir-i Afghaniha,
Khizr died from a ‘mysterious illness’.32 His family accused Maudud Khan
of poisoning his brother and Khizr’s wife refused to hand over the sword
and kha’lat of Pir-i Piran, and so denied Maudud’s succession any legit­
imacy. In response Maudud persecuted her and Khizr’s family until she was
eventually ‘persuaded’ to hand over the relics. As for Khizr, the Popalzai
tribe regarded him as a shahid, or martyr, and referred to him as Khwaja
Khizr. On occasions of great importance, the Popalzais even made o­ fferings
and prayers in his name.
Maudud’s reign as mir-i Afghaniha was both arbitrary and repressive.
One story related how one of Maudud Khan’s nephews had been betrothed
to an aristocratic ‘Abdali woman, but when the time came for the marriage
to be formalized the woman’s father told Maudud’s servants that he had
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changed his mind as he had no wish to have his daughter marry into a
family of such low social status. An angry Maudud Khan sent his retainers
to attack the Khan’s camp and kidnap the girl, who was taken to Shahr-i
Safa, where the marriage rites were performed without any member of
her family being present.
The same year that Saddu Khan died the Mughal emperor, Jahangir,
also passed away, followed two years later by Shah ‘Abbas i. Shah ‘Abbas
had been so paranoid about assassination that he had had his sons blinded,
so disqualifying them from the succession. A series of bloody purges
followed and eventually Shah Safi i, a grandson of Shah ‘Abbas, seized the
throne. Shah Safi then recalled ‘Ali Mardan Khan, the Kurdish governor of
Kandahar, but ‘Ali Mardan, realizing that this summons was tantamount to
a death sentence, refused to obey the order and opened negotiations with
the Mughal governor of Kabul. In 1638 ‘Ali Mardan surrendered the city
to the Mughals and its garrison held out despite several attempts by the
Persian governor of Herat to reassert Safavid authority over the region. Five
years later, when the Mughal governor of Kabul rebelled, Sultan Maudud
Khan marched out with the Mughal garrison in Kandahar to bring the
rebel to heel, only to be killed while storming the walls of the Bala Hisar.
‘Ali Mardan Khan later became the Mughal governor of Kabul and
afterwards wazir of the Punjab. He later married a Portuguese Catholic
woman, Maria de Ataides, who appears to have set aside a building in
Kabul’s Bala Hisar as a church, which was first used by the Jesuit mission-
aries attached to the Mughal court and subsequently inherited by Kabul’s
Armenian community. During ‘Ali Mardan’s era as governor of the Punjab
he commissioned many major public works in Kabul and Nangahar,
including the gardens at Nimla on the old Kabul–Jalalabad road and
Kabul’s famous Chahar Chatta bazaar.
Following Sultan Maudud Khan’s unexpected death, a hastily convened
jirga appointed Khudakka Khan, or Khudadad Khan, Khizr’s eldest son, as
mir-i Afghaniha, only for the Mughal governor of Kandahar to reject his
candidacy, probably because he was deemed to be pro-Safavid. Instead the
governor appointed Maudud Khan’s eldest son, Shah Husain Khan. The
‘Abdalis, unhappy about this interference in their internal affairs, informed
the governor that: ‘if any one of us sought the help of the ruler for the settle-
ment of our mutual disputes, he no longer remained a true Afghan and
was considered to be . . . an outcast’.33 Despite this veiled threat of rebel-
lion, the governor refused to listen and ordered Khudakka Khan to quit
Shahr-i Safa. When he refused, the governor, supported by Shah Husain
Khan, stormed the Saddozai stronghold and Khudakka Khan fled to Persia.
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Kabul’s former royal citadel, the Bala Hisar citadel, looking westwards
over the Hashmat Khan lake.

Despite this success, Mughal control over Kandahar was weak and
was further undermined by Shah Jahan’s decision to go to war with Nazr
Muhammad Khan, the Tuqay-Timurid Khan of Balkh. Though the inva-
sion initially went well and Nazr Muhammad Khan was defeated, the
Mughal lines of communication were overextended and the population
refused to feed the army or pay taxes. In October 1647, faced with the
prospect of a second winter of hardship, the Mughals handed Balkh back
to Nazr Muhammad Khan and abandoned the province for good.
Nazr Muhammad had fled to Persia, where Shah ‘Abbas ii agreed
to provide military support so he could regain control of Balkh. When
he set out to reclaim his kingdom, he was accompanied by a substantial
Persian army. While Nazr Muhammad Khan and the main army set out
for Maimana, another column, supported by Khudakka Khan Saddozai,
headed south and besieged Kandahar. The city finally fell in February 1649
and despite three subsequent attempts by the Mughals to regain control
of the city, Kandahar and Herat remained under Safavid sovereignty. As
for Shah Husain Saddozai, he made his home in Multan, ‘the doorway
to the kingdom of Kandahar’,34 where he was appointed as nawab of the
province and founded a dynasty that ruled the area until 1818. Multan
thus became a haven for Saddozais fleeing the increasingly bloody power
struggle between rival clan members in Herat and Kandahar. Among the
prominent Saddozais born in Multan was Ahmad Shah Durrani.
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