nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47round Bulkh’. 32 Elphinstone also admits that the only Uzbek amir north
of the Hindu Kush who accorded Shah Shuja‘ even token sovereignty was
Qilij ‘Ali Beg, the Mir Wali of Khulm, and even he only read the khutba
in the king’s name and ‘did nothing else’. Elphinstone gives no reason for
why he altered Macartney’s map so drastically, but his decision virtually
doubled the area under Durrani sovereignty between the Murghab and
the Amu Darya. Possibly Elphinstone was influenced in part by his clas-
sical background and the idea that the ‘Oxus’ was the ‘natural’ frontier of
Afghanistan, as it had been when Bactria was a satrapy of the Achaemenid
Empire. Whatever the reason, Elphinstone’s published map and its north-
ern frontier was another element of his episteme that became embedded
in imperial perceptions of the state of Afghanistan.
The mission provided an important insight into the inner workings
of the Durrani court as well as biographies of influential individuals.
Elphinstone also found their curiosity was reciprocated and mission
members were quizzed at length on subjects ranging from Christianity to
European education and astronomy. The overall impression is of an active
intellectual life, with officials eager to learn more about the manners and
customs of these foreigners, who were the new power in northern India.
Elphinstone pompously noted the Afghans’ ‘extraordinary ignorance’ of
Britain, the British and Indian geography, a feeling no doubt reciprocated
by the Afghans who were doubtless equally amazed at the foreigners’ lack
of knowledge of their country, customs and religion. Elphinstone’s assump-
tion about Afghan ‘ignorance’, though, had its comeuppance. During a
discussion of the civil war that was tearing the Durrani kingdom apart,
Elphinstone disingenuously asserted that ‘there had not been a rebellion
in our nation [that is, Britain] since 1745’. 33 Later the king’s chief secre-
tary drew Elphinstone aside and politely pointed out that he had failed to
mention the revolt of the American colonies. 34
The mission visited a number of influential religious figures includ-
ing Shaikh Ewaz, a pir whom the king regularly consulted. When they
arrived the shaikh, dressed in peasants’ clothes, was planting flowers
and fruit trees, and Elphinstone and his entourage mistook him for the
gardener. After this embarrassing start, the pir sat the ambassador and his
smartly dressed entourage down on the newly turned clods of damp soil
and quizzed them on every subject under the sun, except religion. The
mission also met several conservative Sunni mullahs, a sign of the influ-
ence of Mukhtar al-Daula, Khwaja Khanji and others, but there were also
pr ogressive and Rationalist schools of thought at court. Elphinstone was
particularly impressed with Mullah ‘Behramund’, a regular visitor to the