Dost Muhammad
(1793–1863), founder of the Pashtun Barakzai dynasty in Afghanistan. Dost Muhammad, the twentieth son of the chief of the Pashtun Barakzai clan, spent his early years living with his mother's relatives, part of a Turkish nomadic tribe. After 1810, thanks to the favor of his powerful eldest brother, Fath Khan, he held important political and military offices in Kuhistan, Kashmir, and Herat, at that time part of the Afghan kingdom. Dost Muhammad demonstrated his military skills by capturing the Afghan cities of Kabul, Ghazna, and Jalalabad in 1818, after the king of Afghanistan, Mahmud Shah, had blinded his eldest brother. In 1826 Dost Muhammad became the effective ruler of Afghanistan, although he formally took the title of emir (king) only in 1834.
During the first years of his reign Dost Muhammad tried to secure the position of his ethnic confederation , the Durrani, against the rival Pashtun group of the Ghilzay, and to recover lost Afghan territories. However, he was hindered by a Persian attack against the city of Herat in 1837 and the British invasion of Afghanistan in 1839. Dost Muhammad escaped toward Central Asia, where he was arrested and deported to India with part of his family.
The British crowned Shah Shuja (d. 1842) as the new puppet emir of Afghanistan. Ethnic outbreaks, however, continually challenged the British army, which was forced to retreat in the winter of 1841–1842 and was almost entirely slaughtered by Ghilzay tribes. Dost Muhammad returned to Kabul in 1843 and was restored as emir by the new British governor-general of India, Lord Ellenborough, who had decided to quit the country. Dost Muhammad dedicated the last twenty years of his life to consolidating Durrani authority, recovering the northern territories and the cities of Qandahar, Balkh, and Herat.
Further Reading
Noelle, Christine. (1997) State and Tribe in Nineteenth- Century Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan (1826–1863). Richmond, U.K.: Curzon Press.
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