nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47force of 1,600 cavalry, known as the Janbaz, was commanded and trained
by British officers but equipped at the king’s expense. The Janbaz were
professional soldiers who were paid a regular wage and received rewards
for bravery and good conduct as well as grants of land for long service.
A second corps, the Hazarbashis, commanded by Afghans, was roughly
equivalent to Britain’s Household Cavalry, for their primary function was
to protect the king’s person and defend the capital. Though it was not
stated, the Hazarbashis replaced the ghulam khana, a fact that did not go
unnoticed by the Qizilbash.
Burnes’s military reforms, like his fiscal ones, struck at the heart of
Afghanistan’s feudal system and met with bitter resistance from vested
interests whose power, wealth and status were threatened. Shah Shuja‘
too opposed the changes since they undermined royal patronage and
reduced his ability to control and reward refractory barons. The resent-
ment was deepened when it emerged that the Janbaz and Hazarbashis rank
and file were to be recruited mainly from the Tajiks of Kohistan and the
Koh Daman and the Pushtun tribes of Nangahar and the Kunar, rather
than from the Durranis and Qizilbash. The officer corps too was reduced
in size, and all serving military commanders were required to apply for
commissions in the Janbaz and Hazarbashis. In effect, Burnes sacked every
officer in the king’s service. If this was not humiliating enough, these high-
born nobles had to present themselves for interview to Lieutenant Trevor,
Burnes’s underling, and a man who held the lowest officer rank in the
British army. Aristocrats, veterans of the civil war and the Sikh jihad who
had commanded regiments of their own tribal levies now found them-
selves reduced to the level of petitioners who were expected to command
outsiders with no loyalty to them or their tribe. To add insult to injury,
Trevor was the sole arbitrator of who received a commission, since those
he rejected had no right of appeal, not even to the king.
Trevor was a bad choice for a task that required the wisdom of Solomon
and the patience of Job, for he had a violent temper and an evident dislike
of the Durrani nobility, making no attempt to placate their anger at their
loss of face. He was even stupid enough to tell the nobles that within a
year or two all their kind would be unemployed and any handouts they
received after then would be an act of pure charity. The greatest insult of all,
though, was that the Hazarbashi officers were required to swear and sign
an oath of allegiance to the king on pain of exile. Since they had already
pledged their allegiance to the king when he first took Kabul, the nobles
interpreted the requirement to renew their fealty as proof that both the
British and the king doubted their loyalty.