nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47old Kabul–Jalalabad road, Shah Shuja‘ was comprehensively defeated and
fled. As for Wazir Akram Khan, he was killed leading a forlorn charge
against the enemy ranks. Over the course of the next year Shah Shuja‘
made a number of attempts to regain the throne, but he eventually admit-
ted defeat and set out for British-controlled India, only to be imprisoned
by Ranjit Singh, who forced him to surrender the Koh-i Nur diamond.
Shah Shuja‘ finally managed to escape from the Sikhs’ clutches and made
his way to Ludhiana, where the Governor General gave him a house and
a state pension.
Shah Shuja‘ al-Mulk’s subsequent reinstatement under British tutel-
age in 1839 and the disasters that followed have meant that his reputation
has suffered, with European authors repeating uncritically the claim that
Afghans believed he had been born under an unlucky star. Yet Shah Shuja‘
was far from the cowardly, ineffective quisling of imperial or subsequent
Afghan nationalist discourse. Elphinstone ‘found [Shah Shuja‘] to possess
all the good qualities ascribed to him without any one of the bad’, and
blamed his loss of power on the weakness of his government, the avarice
of Wazir Akram Khan, and the factionalism and sectarianism at court. 37
Ferrier records of Shah Shuja‘ that he:
had the reputation, and with reason, of being the most talented
of the sons of Timur Shah. With great firmness of character and
tried courage, it was plainly to be seen by more than one circum-
stance that he was not a man to support intrigues, or serve as an
instrument to a party. 38Furthermore, Shah Shuja‘ appears to have realized that trying to regain
control of the Punjab was a lost cause and, rather than pursuing a futile and
costly war with the Sikhs, he tried to consolidate what was left of Ahmad
Shah’s kingdom and create a semblance of unity in a kingdom torn by
dynastic, clan and sectarian feuds.
In pursuit of this objective, Shah Shuja‘ showed remarkable restraint
when it came to dealing with rebels and personal enemies, a policy that,
rather than being a symptom of weakness, should be seen more as an
attempt at conciliation. He pardoned Qaisar Mirza despite him rebelling
again and again, and when the king was eventually forced to remove him
from the governorship of Kandahar he was imprisoned, but not executed
or blinded. Shah Shuja‘ also declined to put out the eyes of Shah Mahmud
in retaliation for the blinding of his brother, Shah Zaman. He even forgave
Fateh Khan for his frequent intrigues and married one of his sisters. Yet