afghanistanarmy left. Shah Fath Jang joined the exodus, but his younger brother,
Shah Shahpur, decided to stay behind, only for him to flee to Peshawar
a few months later, barely escaping with his life. Other individuals who
left for permanent exile included ‘Osman Khan Saddozai, Nawab Zaman
Khan, Saleh Muhammad Khan and Sayyid Muhammad Khan, also known
as Jan Fishan Khan, the great-great-grandfather of Idris Shah, the well-
known author and exponent of Westernized neo-Sufism. Most of these
exiles ended up in Ludhiana, where Shah Shuja‘ al-Mulk’s heirs and a
few other prominent officials were given small pensions and jagirs. Most
of the refugees, though, had to fend for themselves. Many lived in great
poverty and were forced to do menial work or relied on the charity of
American Presbyterian missionaries. In 1858 two of Shahzada Timur’s sons,
grandsons of Shah Shuja‘, were rewarded for having saved the lives of the
missionaries during the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny.
The political and military fallout of the Afghan WarThe political and military failures of the First Anglo-Afghan War had
widespread repercussions in both India and Britain. First and foremost,
Britain’s imperial and military prestige suffered a major blow for even the
most ardent imperial propagandists could not deny the campaign had
been a disaster. Britain had been humiliated and its army had suffered its
worst defeat since the American War of Independence. The fact that this
defeat had come at the hands of poorly armed, factionalized, ‘wild’ and
‘uncivilized’ tribesmen rubbed even more salt into the wound. The heavy
loss of life and the deaths of many senior officers also caused a crisis in
India, and there were concerns that there were insufficient forces left to
maintain security. To add to the woes, the cost of the war had plunged the
East India Company into debt and a serious budget deficit.
Politically the occupation was equally disastrous, for its outcome was
exactly the opposite of what British officials had intended. Saddozai power,
already in terminal decline, was broken and never again would a Saddozai
challenge the descendants of Payinda Khan for control of Afghanistan.
Dost Muhammad Khan, who Britain had damned as an unfriendly
and treacherous ruler, was allowed to return to Afghanistan where he
quickly regained the throne and established a dynasty that would last for
the next 85 years. Dost Muhammad Khan, Akbar Khan and Mir Masjidi
became ‘national’ heroes, and by the end of Dost Muhammad Khan’s
reign Afghan historians were referring to him as Amir-i Kabir, the Great
Amir. One near-contemporary Afghan even composed a turgid history of