nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47Timur Shah’s relations with Persia and BalkhOn the western frontier Timur Shah had to deal with a resurgent Persia,
which was increasingly challenging the power of Shah Rukh Mirza, the
Durrani’s ally in Mashhad. On three separate occasions Timur Shah had to
send troops to prevent Shah Rukh from being deposed. North of the Hindu
Kush the situation was even more challenging. The change of cap ital meant
that Timur Shah’s strategic interest in the Chingissid wilayat of Balkh
shifted from Maimana and the Chahar Wilayat to the amirs of Khulm
and Qataghan, for Kabul’s prosperity depended on the overland trade
between Bukhara and India. The main caravan route north ran from Kabul
through Koh Daman and up the Ghurband valley to Bamiyan. The road
then followed the course of the Surkhab river down to Doshi and Khulm.
A shorter, but more difficult, southern route ran via the modern town of
Maidan Shah to Jalrez, Behsud and across the Hajigak and Unai passes,
and met the northern route to the east of Bamiyan under the shadow of
the ruined Kushan fortress of Shahr-i Zohak. These two routes were also
the main invasion routes. The Salang Pass, which today is the main road
north, did not exist in this era and it was only after the Soviet Union drove
a tunnel through the mountains in the middle of the twentieth century that
the ancient trade route to the Amu Darya shifted further east.
To protect the commerce with Bukhara and possible invasion from the
north, Timur Shah forged alliances with amirs that controlled the Kabul–
Bamiyan–Balkh road, tribes that until this time had been independent and
peripheral to the Durrani monarch’s strategic interests. Timur Shah also
sought to secure the loyalty of the peoples of Kohistan and Tagab, for they
controlled the back-door route from Nangahar to the Koh Daman. To bind
these groups to the monarchy’s interests, Timur Shah made a number of
key marriage alliances with their leaders and appointed influential religious
figures from these regions to high office.
The Shaikh ‘Ali Hazaras, whose territory straddled the Shibar Pass
between Bamiyan and the Ghurband and the upper reaches of the Surkhab,
were one of Afghanistan’s largest Isma‘ili communities and posed a some-
what different problem. Like the tribes of the Khyber Pass, the Shaikh ‘Ali
Hazaras made a great deal of money from charging qafilas and armies for
safe passage and had no compunction raiding any convoy that refused
to pay. Beyond Bamiyan another important qafila route to the northern
plains ran via the Ajar, Saighan and Kahmard valleys, which were under
the control of autonomous Tajik and Uzbek amirs aligned to Qilij ‘Ali
Beg, the Uzbek mir of Khulm. Further north lay Qataghan and its capital,