nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47the friends, and the enemy of the enemies’ of the British, but there was no
reciprocal commitment that Britain would be the enemies of his enemies.
Given Sher ‘Ali Khan’s precarious military situation, he gambled that
it was worth the risk of visiting India, but at the same time he was careful
that he did not appear to cede too much to Britain, for the memories of
the Burnes Mission and the First Anglo-Afghan War were still raw. There
were also powerful voices within the Muhammadzais and government
circles who opposed too close a friendship with the old enemy. Indeed,
one of the leading opponents of the Anglo-Afghan detente was the Amir’s
prime minister, Sayyid Nur Muhammad Khan, who was also the Amir’s
chief treaty negotiator and an authority on Islamic law. Another influ-
ential individual of the conservative Islamic party was Din Muhammad,
known as Akhund Mishkin or Mushk-i ‘Alam (Perfume of the World). Din
Muhammad’s grandfather was an Indian Sufi who moved to Afghanistan,
probably during the reign of Timur Shah, and was gifted a jagir in Andar
Ghilzai near Ghazni, where he founded a langar khana and was adopted
as the pir of the local Sulaiman Khel tribes. 16
Another voice raised against the Anglo-Afghan alliance was Sayyid
Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, who, despite his name, was born in Asadabad in
Iran. 17 Jamal al-Din was educated in the Shi‘a tradition but had also dabbled
in heterodox millenarian movements, including Babism and Shaikhism.
Later he came under the influence of French Rationalists, leading some
conservative Sunni theologians to condemn his approach to Islamic
doctrine as heretical. Later in the century al-Afghani became the leading
apologist for the pan-Islamic movement and he was stridently opposed to
European domination of Muslim lands in general and British rule in India
in particular. Politically, his aim was to revive the Caliphate and bring about
the political unification of all Islamic countries as independent, sovereign
states free from domination by European, ‘Christian’ nations.
Jamal al-Din arrived in Afghanistan at the end of the reign of Dost
Muhammad Khan, using the pseudonym of Hajji Sayyid Rumi or Sayyid
Istanbuli, and it was only after he was expelled from Afghanistan that he
adopted the title of al-Afghani. Following the death of Dost Muhammad
Khan, ‘Sayyid Istanbuli’ threw in his lot with Afzal Khan, since he shared
his anti-British sentiments, and was a guest of Ghulam Muhammad Tarzi,
a descendant of the Kandahar sardars and the father of Mahmud Tarzi
who, in the early twentieth century, became one of Afghanistan’s most
influential nationalists.
After Amir Afzal Khan’s death, al-Afghani was appointed to Amir
‘Azam Khan’s advisory council and was described by the Kabul wakil as