nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47for his refusal to invade India, Nasr Allah Khan was powerless to assist
Qataghan, for he had his own problems with rebellions nearer to home.
In the spring of 1859 Afzal Khan marched into southwestern Qataghan,
where the predominantly Tajik population greeted him as a liberator, for
Murad Beg had seized their lands and forced them to live in the dasht,
or wastelands, and mosquito-infested marshes. When the stronghold of
Dahan-i Ghuri fell after a protracted siege, the Mir Ataliq fled across the
Amu Darya and by June 1859 Qunduz was in Afghan hands. Meanwhile a
second column occupied Rustaq and the Mir of Badakhshan too accepted
Afghan suzerainty. A year later Afzal Khan occupied Sar-i Pul, deposed
Mahmud Khan and installed a Muhammadzai governor backed by a gar -
rison. By the end of 1860 Maimana was the last independent Uzbek amirate
left in the wilayat of Balkh.
In early 1862 Dost Muhammad Khan, by now in his seventieth year, set
out to conquer Herat, arguably the greatest prize of all. Once again Britain
viewed his campaign favourably because Persian and, more importantly,
Russian ambitions would be more easily contained with Herat under direct
rule from Kabul. Prior to his campaign, Dost Muhammad Khan wrote to
Lord Canning, the Viceroy, reassuring him that his aim was to ‘reunify’
Afghanistan and that he had no intention of pushing Afghanistan’s fron-
tier further west than Ghuriyan. He then justified the Herat campaign by
reminding the Viceroy that its ruler, Sultan Ahmad Khan, was implicated
in a war crime, for he had been present at the murder of Macnaghten and
The tomb of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan in Guzargah, Herat. The Amir died a matter
of days after he finally conquered Herat.