afghanistanexcuse-making by a craven and devious ruler. Ya‘qub Khan’s account of
Cavagnari’s death is still ignored or not taken seriously, despite the fact
that the Amir had nothing to gain from the envoy’s death and everything
to lose. Wali Muhammad Khan, on the other hand, penned his version
of events in the hope that British would depose Ya‘qub Khan and appoint
him as Amir in his place.
Ya‘qub, rightly, claimed he was unable to send a relief force to the
Residency for he and his senior officers were besieged by the same muti-
nous regiments and equally feared for their lives. The troops, anyway,
refused to obey any orders issued by either the Amir or his generals, but
despite this Ya‘qub Khan did what he could to end the siege. General Da’ud
Shah was sent to attempt to restore order, only to be attacked and badly
wounded. The Amir then sent one of his sons along with other sardars,
Qur’an in hand, to appeal to the mutineers to negotiate, only for their pleas
to be ignored. Finally Ya‘qub Khan sent ‘well-known Syuds and Mullahs of
each clan’, but they too failed to persuade the mutineers to end their attack.
In the end, Ya‘qub was lucky to escape with his own life.
Imperial histories depict the attack as both sudden and spontaneous,
but here too Afghan accounts differ. According to Katib the mutiny was a
premeditated attempt to overthrow Amir Ya‘qub Khan by the anti -British,
pro-Afzalid party, ‘masterminded’ by ‘Aisha Begum, Sher ‘Ali Khan’s
favourite wife and the mother of ‘Abd Allah Jan, the recently deceased
heir apparent. 10 ‘Aisha Begum was the daughter of Muhammad Shah
Khan Babakr Khel of Laghman, the father-in-law of Wazir Akbar Khan.
Muhammad Shah had not only been responsible for keeping the British
hostages following the British withdrawal in 1842, but he had played a major
part in the siege of Jalalabad and in securing Kabul for Dost Muhammad
Khan’s party. As well as her father’s history of opposition to British inter-
vention, there was a long-standing rivalry between her and Ya‘qub Khan’s
mother over which of their sons would become Amir. When ‘Abd Allah
Jan, the heir apparent and ‘Aisha’s only son, died unexpectedly, she lost
her paramount position in the zanana to Ya‘qub’s mother. In an attempt
to regain her power ‘Aisha plotted to have Ya‘qub deposed or killed in the
hope that her son-in-law, Muhammad Ishaq Khan, who was in exile in
Samarkand, would succeed to the throne.
‘Aisha began to sell her jewellery in order to buy army loyalties, but
when Amir Ya‘qub heard what she was doing, he forbade her from selling
any of her property. Not daunted, ‘Aisha wrote secretly to British officials
offering to poison Ya‘qub and used what cash she had to hand to bribe senior
military officers and the mutinous troops to join the plot. The two recently