afghanistanhad done nothing to prevent his death. Vengeance, it seems, was at least
one reason why Britain did not oppose Dost Muhammad Khan’s annex-
ation of Herat. 9 The fact that it had been the Amir’s son who fired the
shots that mortally wounded the British Envoy was conveniently forgot-
ten. When a Russian envoy arrived in Herat and Sultan Ahmad Khan
announced he planned to sign a treaty with Russia, Britain was even more
willing to support the Amir’s invasion.
In the late summer of 1862 the Amir occupied Farah and, after beat-
ing off a feeble attempt by Sultan Ahmad Khan to prevent his advance,
his army surrounded Herat. On 27 May 1863, after an eight-month siege,
Dost Muhammad Khan’s troops stormed the walls, plundered the city and
slaughtered its population. Sultan Ahmad Khan, though, did not live to see
the fall of his city for he had died a few weeks before the final assault. Two
weeks after this victory Dost Muhammad Khan too passed away and was
buried in Guzargah, near the tomb of Khwaja ‘Abd Allah Ansari.
The reigns of Dost Muhammad Khan: an appraisalDost Muhammad Khan must be reckoned as Afghanistan’s luckiest ruler.
Not only did he survive a series of assassination attempts and other chal-
lenges from within his extended family, he suffered heavy military defeats
at the hands of both the Sikhs and the British, lost control of the Durrani
winter capital of Peshawar, and was exiled to India. Yet after Britain’s
attempt to restore the Saddozai monarchy failed, he was freed and allowed
to return to Kabul, while at the same time the empire of his old enemy,
Ranjit Singh, was imploding. Britain’s annexation of the Punjab in the
wake of the Second Sikh War meant that Afghanistan became far more
strategic as far as Britain’s Defence of India policy was concerned. The
outcome was two Anglo-Afghan treaties that, as well as providing the
Amir with substantial military and financial assistance, gave his dynasty
international legitimacy and legalized his conquests of Balkh, Kandahar
and Herat. Against all odds, Dost Muhammad Khan had bounced back
from one misfortune after another. By the end of his life he had pushed the
frontiers of his kingdom up to the Amu Darya in the north and Ghuriyan
in the west.
Internally, Dost Muhammad revolutionized local government. Instead
of ruling through proxies – autonomous, hereditary rulers who paid the
king a fixed amount of revenue or an annual nazrana in return for remain-
ing in power – the Amir appointed his favourite sons as ministers and
provincial governors, and while he had a council of advisers, all but token