Ahmad Shah Durrani and the Founding of Afghanistan (1747)

Ahmad Shah Durrani was a young Afghan cavalry commander who, in October 1747, was chosen as king by a council of tribal leaders near Kandahar. Within a few years he had built the Durrani Empire, which stretched from eastern Iran to Kashmir and the Punjab. His state is generally regarded as the beginning of modern Afghanistan, and his repeated invasions of India helped reshape the balance of power on the subcontinent.

Background: Nader Shah and the Abdali Afghans

Ahmad Khan was born around 1722, probably in Multan or Herat; the sources disagree. He belonged to the Sadozai clan of the Popalzai, part of the Abdali confederation of Pashtun tribes centred on Herat and Kandahar. In the early 18th century the Afghans had shaken off Persian rule, and the Ghilzai Afghans had even captured the Safavid capital in the fall of Isfahan in 1722.

The Persian revival came under Nader Shah, who defeated the Afghans, took Kandahar in 1738 and invaded Mughal India. Nader recruited the Abdalis into his army, and the young Ahmad rose to command a contingent of Abdali horsemen. He took part in campaigns that included the march on Delhi after the Battle of Karnal in 1739, and he gained first-hand knowledge of the wealth and weakness of the Mughal state.

The election at Kandahar, 1747

On the night of 19–20 June 1747 Nader Shah was murdered by his own officers near Quchan in Khorasan. In the confusion Ahmad led his Abdali troops back towards Kandahar. According to most accounts he seized a convoy of treasure from India on the way, which gave him the money to pay soldiers and reward allies.

In October 1747 a jirga, or tribal assembly, met near Kandahar to choose a leader. Ahmad was only about 25 and came from a smaller clan than some rivals, which may have made him acceptable to the stronger chiefs. Tradition says that a respected holy man, Sabir Shah, placed a sheaf of wheat or grass on his head as a sign of kingship. Ahmad took the title Durr-i Durran, “pearl of pearls”, and his tribe became known as the Durrani.

Building an empire

Ahmad Shah’s power rested on a bargain with the Pashtun tribes. Leading Durrani chiefs received land, offices and a share of plunder, while the king commanded a large cavalry army that needed regular campaigns to keep it loyal and paid. Expansion was therefore both an ambition and a necessity.

He moved quickly. Ghazni and Kabul fell in 1747–48, and Herat was taken around 1750. In Khorasan he besieged Mashhad but left Nader’s blind grandson Shah Rukh on the throne as his dependent. To the south, the khan of Kalat in Baluchistan and the rulers of Sindh accepted his overlordship, and Kashmir was annexed in 1752.

A treaty with the emir of Bukhara in the 1760s recognised the Amu Darya river roughly as the northern frontier. Ahmad Shah rebuilt Kandahar as his capital and brought to it a cloak traditionally believed to have belonged to the Prophet Muhammad, which is still kept there. His chief minister was Shah Wali Khan, and Jahan Khan was among his leading generals.

The invasions of India

The richest prize lay to the east. Historians usually count eight or nine invasions of northern India between 1747 and 1767. The first ended in defeat at Manupur near Sirhind in March 1748, where a Mughal army under the crown prince held him off. Later campaigns forced the Mughals to cede the revenues of the Punjab, Lahore and Multan.

In January 1757 Ahmad Shah entered Delhi and plundered the city for several weeks, while his troops massacred pilgrims and residents at Mathura and Vrindavan. He returned home with enormous booty and left his son Timur Shah to govern the Punjab. The expanding Maratha Confederacy soon drove Timur out, which set the stage for a direct clash.

That clash came at the Third Battle of Panipat on 14 January 1761, where Ahmad Shah and his Indian allies defeated the Marathas with very heavy losses on both sides. He did not try to rule Delhi himself. Instead he recognised the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II and returned to Afghanistan.

Conflict with the Sikhs

In the Punjab, Ahmad Shah faced growing resistance from the Sikh misls, or armed confederacies. In February 1762 his army caught a large Sikh column near Kup, close to Malerkotla, and killed many thousands, including women and children. Sikhs remember the event as the Vadda Ghallughara, the Great Massacre.

In the same year his troops blew up the Harmandir Sahib, the Golden Temple at Amritsar. These acts did not end Sikh resistance. By the late 1760s Afghan control of the Punjab had largely collapsed, and the region passed to Sikh chiefs.

Key people

• Ahmad Shah Durrani (c. 1722–1772): founder and first king of the Durrani Empire.
• Nader Shah (1688–1747): ruler of Persia, in whose army Ahmad rose to command.
• Shah Wali Khan: Ahmad Shah’s chief minister and a leading commander at Panipat.
• Jahan Khan: one of his most important generals in the Indian and Punjab campaigns.
• Timur Shah Durrani (c. 1746–1793): his son, governor of the Punjab in 1757–1758 and his successor as king.

Death and succession

From the 1760s Ahmad Shah suffered from a disfiguring illness of the face, often described as a cancer or ulcer. He died in 1772 in the hills near Kandahar and was buried in a domed mausoleum in the city. His son Timur Shah succeeded him and in 1776 moved the capital to Kabul.

Under Timur and his sons the empire shrank as provinces broke away and royal princes fought one another. By the early 19th century Kashmir, the Punjab and Peshawar had been lost to the Sikh Empire, and power in Kabul later passed to the Barakzai family. Yet the core state around Kandahar and Kabul survived.

Legacy and myths

Afghans honour Ahmad Shah as Ahmad Shah Baba, “the father”, and see 1747 as the birth of their state. He was also a poet in Pashto, and verses praising his homeland are attributed to him. In India and in Sikh tradition he is remembered above all as an invader responsible for great destruction.

A common simplification is that Ahmad Shah created Afghanistan as a modern nation-state. In fact, earlier Afghan rulers such as the Hotaki dynasty had held Kandahar before him, and his realm was a tribal empire whose borders bore little resemblance to modern ones. The name Afghanistan for the state became standard only later, in the 19th century.

Timeline

• c. 1722: Ahmad Khan is born into the Sadozai clan of the Abdali Afghans.
• 1738: Nader Shah takes Kandahar; Abdali horsemen join his army.
• 1747, June: Nader Shah is assassinated near Quchan in Khorasan.
• 1747, October: A tribal jirga near Kandahar chooses Ahmad as king.
• 1748, March: Ahmad Shah is defeated by the Mughals at Manupur near Sirhind.
• 1752: Kashmir is annexed to the Durrani Empire.
• 1757, January: Ahmad Shah’s army sacks Delhi.
• 1761, 14 January: Victory over the Marathas at the Third Battle of Panipat.
• 1762, February: The Vadda Ghallughara massacre of Sikhs near Kup.
• 1772: Ahmad Shah dies near Kandahar; Timur Shah succeeds him.

Why it matters

Ahmad Shah Durrani turned the collapse of Nader Shah’s empire into an opportunity to unite the Pashtun tribes under one crown. The state he founded became the basis of modern Afghanistan, and his campaigns weakened both the Mughals and the Marathas at a decisive moment in Indian history.