nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47devoted to the support of religious institutions. When they came to Kabul
to discuss the issue with Shah Shuja‘, he denied them permission to return
home. Then, shortly after Dennie’s victory at Saighan, the king imprisoned
Hafizji and other religious leaders, accusing them of plotting to assas sinate
him. The king then ‘suggested’ to Hafizji that it would be good for his
health if he undertook the pilgrimage to Mecca, a hint that he was more
than happy to take.
Following the arrest and effective banishment of his elder brother
Hafizji, Mir Hajji, who was still mir w a’ i s of the Pul-i Kheshti mosque,
issued a fatwa denouncing Shah Shuja‘ as a kafir and legitimized a jihad
against the king and the British. By the end of September 1840 all of the
Kohistan, Tagab and Nijrab regions were in revolt and posed a serious chal-
lenge to Kabul, for this populous area could raise around 50,000 men. Since
there were only two Indian regiments left to defend the Afghan capital,
and with the king’s forces deemed unfit for purpose, Dennie was recalled
from Bamiyan and the most northern outpost of Shah Shuja‘ al-Mulk’s
kingdom from this point forward was Old Charikar in the Koh Daman.
News of the uprising in Kohistan and the Koh Daman created panic in
the capital as merchants barricaded their shops, buried their treasure and
sent their women and children to the safety of the surrounding country-
side. General Cotton, realizing that decisive action had to be taken, ordered
Lieutenant Colonel Sir Robert Sale, a veteran of the First Burmese War,
to march into the region and suppress the rebellion. He was accompanied
by Timur Mirza, one of Shah Shuja‘ al-Mulk’s sons, Alexander Burnes,
Mohan Lal and Ghulam Khan Popalzai, who were tasked with negotiating
with rebel leaders and disbursing largesse in the form of Company rupees.
Sale encountered fierce resistance from the outset and the cost in
terms of casualties was high. In his first battle at Tutam Darra, Lieutenant
Edward Conolly, Arthur Conolly’s younger brother, was shot through the
heart, though the fort was eventually taken, burnt and levelled. Sale’s next
objective, Jalgah, the stronghold of Mir Masjidi, a renowned scholar of
Islamic jurisprudence, was an even harder nut to crack. When Sale’s men
attempted to storm the walls they were repulsed with heavy loss of life,
for the scaling ladders Sale had brought from Kabul were too short to
surmount the q a l ‘a’s walls. Even more extraordinary, Sale had not brought
any siege guns with him. Fortunately for Sale, Mir Masjidi had been badly
wounded in the fighting and during the night he abandoned the qal‘a. The
following morning Sale marched into an empty qal‘a and ordered that it
and the settlement of Jalgah, along with its crops, orchards and vineyards,
be destroyed and burnt.