nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47in early 1893, Muhammad Husain Hazara, sick of being the Amir’s
instrument of killing his own people, led a third rebellion, it too was
crushed with similar ruthlessness. On the back of each victory, the Amir
unleashed an even more fearful reign of terror, which many Hazaras
claim was tantamount to genocide. According to some estimates more
than 50 per cent of the male Hazara population died as a direct or
indir ect result of the wars. Thousands of women were forcibly married
to Pushtuns in a deliberate attempt to destroy Hazara social and reli-
gious hierarchies. The Hazara populations of southern Uruzgan, Zawar,
Ghazni and Maidan Shah were expelled and their land distributed to
Muhammadzais, Ghilzai maldar and government loyalists. Many of them
were exiled to Quetta, where Hazaras are still a major element of the city’s
population. All provincial, district and village leaders in the Hazarajat
were appointed solely by the Amir and answerable to him alone. To add
to their humiliation, Shi‘as and Isma‘ilis were required to pay the jizya,
the religious capitation tax, which under Islamic law is only imposed on
non-Muslims. Public celebration of Muharram, ‘Ashura’ and the Ta’z iy a’
Passion Play, which commemorates the death of Husain, son of ‘Ali b.
Abi Talib, were banned, a prohibition which remained in force until the
fall of the Durrani dynasty in 1978.
Hazaras gather to celebrate Nauroz at the shrine of Sakhi Jan in Kabul’s Jamal Mina quarter,
March 1976. The shrine is constructed on the site where the Khirqa-yi Sharif was housed
during its ‘translation’ from Bukhara to Kandahar.