nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47was defeated and fled to Persia. The following spring he reoccupied Herat
and wrote to his father demanding official recognition as its governor.
Instead Sher ‘Ali Khan sent an army against him, but a feud broke out
between the various sardars and the force broke up before it reached Herat.
Sher ‘Ali Khan decided it was better to concede to his son’s demand and
a few months later Ya‘qub Khan came to Kabul, where he received a royal
pardon but failed to supplant ‘Abd Allah Jan.
While this struggle between the Amir and his two sons was taking
place, another battle was raging beyond the Hindu Kush precipitated by
the oppressive rule of Muhammad ‘Alam Khan, governor of Balkh. After
the defeat of Ishaq Khan, Muhammad Khan purged the region of Afzalid
sympathizers, executing, imprisoning and exiling hundreds of individuals,
confiscating their lands and property and imposing heavy fines on districts
that had supported the rebellion. The amirs of the Chahar Wilayat were
required to attend the governor in Mazar-i Sharif every year at Nauroz and
then travel to Kabul to renew their oath of alliance to the Amir in person.
‘Alam Khan also bled the province dry in order to pay for the escalat-
ing costs of Sherpur and new military bases in the province, conscripting
thousands of labourers to work on these projects without pay. The fact that
‘Alam Khan was a Shi‘a, the son of a Qizilbash mother, merely added to
his unpopularity. Thousands of people fled across into Russian Turkistan
in order to avoid arrest or conscription, while the Uzbek amirs began to
correspond with Ishaq Khan and ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan, offering to assist
them to depose Muhammad ‘Alam Khan.
Matters came to a head in 1875 when Husain Khan, wali of Maimana,
refused to attend the annual oath-swearing ceremony, executed several
government well-wishers and ordered the name of Muzaffar Khan of
Bukhara to be read in the khutba. Soon the whole of the western marches
of the wilayat, from the Murghab to Aqcha, had followed suit. ‘Alam Khan
tried to negotiate, but when the governor sent officials to Maimana to
demand payment of back taxes, Husain Khan expelled them, along with
all the government officials in the region. In the autumn of 1875 two armies
were set against the wali, one from Balkh and the other from Herat, only
to meet with fierce resistance from Maimana’s defenders. Eventually in
March 1876, after a siege lasting more than five months, the attackers broke
through the defences, plundered and burnt the town and bazaars, and
slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children.
Mir Husain Khan and other rebel leaders of the Chahar Wilayat were
sent in chains to Kabul but Sher ‘Ali Khan, in honour of the oath he had
made in 1868, refused to put them to death. Indeed, when he heard their