afghanistanThis excuse did not satisfy Afzal Khan, who ordered his envoys to abduct
the Mirza and bring him to Herat, where he was installed as the new ruler.
Meanwhile a British diplomatic mission to the court of Fath ‘Ali Shah,
led by Captain (later Sir) John Malcolm, indirectly affected the situation in
Herat. Malcolm’s terms of reference included encouraging another Persian
assault on Herat in order to neutralize Shah Zaman’s threat to the Punjab,
as well as to prevent a possible French invasion. By the time Malcolm
reached Tehran, however, the French threat had diminished after Napoleon
left Egypt. As for Shah Zaman, he was fully occupied with the civil war
and maintaining his fragile hold on the throne, while Fath ‘Ali Shah was
more concerned about acquiring British cash and arms to combat Russian
encroachments in the Caucasus. An Anglo-Persian Treaty was finally
signed in January 1801 which included a pledge by Britain to provide cash
and military aid to Persia ‘to lay waste and desolate the Afghan dominions’
and ‘to ruin and humble the [Afghan] nation’, in the event Shah Zaman
invaded the Punjab.
Having received such encouragement, in the summer of 1803 a Persian
army occupied Mashhad and ended the token Durrani control over the
region. News of the loss of Mashhad precipitated a backlash from Sunni
religious leaders in Kabul who incited attacks on the Qizilbash and Shi‘a
communities, though the fall of Mashhad was merely an excuse. The riots
were more directed at curtailing the power of the Qizilbash, who by now
were a major force in the kingdom. Since being instrumental in placing
Shah Mahmud on the throne, the Jawanshir saw themselves as kingmakers,
a power enhanced by marriage alliances with the descendants of Hajji Jamal
Khan Barakzai. Wazir Payinda Khan himself had married a daughter of
Musa‘ Khan Jawanshir, who numbered among her sons Dost Muhammad
Khan, the future Amir of Afghanistan; two of Payinda Khan’s sons, Nawab
‘Abd al-Jabbar Khan and Muhammad ‘Azim Khan, also married Jawanshir
women, as did several of Payinda Khan’s grandsons.
By the first decade of the nineteenth century the Jawanshir were a law
unto themselves, but their involvement in the struggle for the succession
fuelled sectarian and racial xenophobia. Members of the king’s Durrani
council had never accepted the Qizilbash as natives of their country, refer-
ring to them as Persians, although ethnically they were Turkic. All but a
handful of the Qizilbash were Shi‘a in a kingdom whose rulers and religious
elites increasingly emphasized their Sunni credentials. Their enemies, and
the enemies of Fateh Khan, claimed that if the Shah of Persia attacked
Herat and Kandahar, the Qizilbash could not be trusted and would instead
support the invasion.