nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47internal dispute. Innately most Afghan tribes oppose any form of central-
ized government and fiercely protect their autonomy, as the Amirs of
Afghanistan have found out to their costs again and again. Notice of a
tribal jirga is always promulgated well before time and the meeting is
traditionally held in the open air in order to prevent deals being struck in
secret. Every male above the age of eighteen has the right to attend and
to speak his mind, while outsiders have no right of participation unless
they are invited.
None of the Persian sources cited above refer to the council’s deliber-
ations as a jirga. Al-Husaini, for example, uses the generic Persian term
majlis, ‘meeting’ or ‘assembly’, a usage that was perpetuated well into the
nineteenth century, as Elphinstone noted sixty years later. The modern
concept of Loya Jirga was established in successive constitutions from the
1920s onwards and has little in common with indigenous Pushtu trad-
ition, but is rather the creation of Afghan monarchist-nationalists. Rather
than harking back to some ancient Pushtu egalitarian tradition, the Loya
Jirga is actually derived from Turkish parliamentary models and its only
link with Pushtun identity is the word loya in the title, for even jirga is a
Persian, not a Pushtu, term. 34
The nine-man military council that ‘elected’ Ahmad Shah as king was
the antithesis of a traditional Pushtun jirga. The issue had been more or
less settled prior to Ahmad Shah’s arrival in Kandahar and the council
met in secret without any representation of the ‘Abdali aristocracy present.
Apart from a single Tokhi Ghilzai, no other Afghan tribes were invited or,
indeed, welcome. Nor were there any representatives of the religious estab-
lishment, the ‘ulama’, present, despite their endorsement being essential to
legitimize Ahmad Shah’s claim to the throne according to the shari‘a. Sabir
Shah was not qualified to fulfil this role since he had no formal Islamic
credentials. Put in modern terms, Ahmad Shah’s assumption of kingship
in 1747 was a military coup by a small clique and followed a long-standing
precedent in which the commander of a ghulam force, taking advantage
of central government weakness, would break away and set up his own
independent kingdom.
Finally, the claims that when Ahmad Shah became king he adopted
the regnal title of Dur-i Durran, Pearl of Pearls, and that he ordered the
‘Abdali tribe to be known henceforth as Durrani are also unfounded, as
is the belief that this change of name came about as a result of a dream by
Sabir Shah. The title Dur-i Durran, and the change of tribal name, came
many months later and was conferred on Ahmad Shah by Hazrat Mian
‘Omar Baba, pir of Chamkani near Attock. 35