Dost Mohammad
In the 1820s the Durrani kingdom broke up, and the Barakzai brothers took control of its parts. Dost Mohammad Khan made himself ruler of Kabul and took the title of amir in 1835. He tried to recover Peshawar from Ranjit Singh's Sikh empire, and his contacts with a Russian envoy alarmed the British. In 1839 the British invaded to restore the deposed Shah Shuja, beginning the First Anglo-Afghan War. Dost Mohammad surrendered and was exiled to India, but in November 1841 Kabul rose against the British occupation, and in January 1842 the retreating British army and its camp followers were destroyed in the snowbound passes. The British returned briefly to take revenge, then withdrew, and Dost Mohammad regained his throne, ruling until 1863 and reuniting Herat and Kandahar with Kabul.
The Second War and the Iron Amir
In 1878, after the amir Sher Ali received a Russian mission and refused a British one, Britain invaded again. By the treaty of Gandamak in 1879 the new amir, Yaqub Khan, accepted British control of Afghan foreign relations. The killing of the British envoy at Kabul led to renewed fighting, and in 1880 the British recognised Abdur Rahman Khan, who ruled until 1901. Known as the Iron Amir, he crushed revolts, subdued the Hazaras with great brutality, forcibly converted the people of Kafiristan, renamed Nuristan, and built a centralised state with British subsidies.
The Durand Line
In 1893 Abdur Rahman and the British foreign secretary of India, Mortimer Durand, agreed a boundary between Afghanistan and British India, the Durand Line, which divided the Pashtun tribal areas. Afghan governments later disputed it, and it remains the contested border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 1907 the Anglo-Russian Convention recognised Afghanistan as within the British sphere of influence, ending the rivalry known as the Great Game in that region.
Independence and kingdom
In 1919 the new amir, Amanullah Khan, declared full independence and attacked British India in the brief Third Anglo-Afghan War. The treaty of Rawalpindi recognised Afghanistan's control of its foreign affairs. Amanullah took the title of king in 1926 and launched rapid modernising reforms, including in women's education and dress, which provoked a rebellion that overthrew him in 1929. Mohammad Nadir Shah restored order and became king, and his son Zahir Shah reigned from 1933 until he was deposed in 1973.
Further reading
- Metcalf, Barbara D. A Concise History of Modern India. Cambridge University Press, 2012
- Keay, John. India: A History. HarperCollins, 2000
- Dalrymple, William. The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company. Bloomsbury, 2019
See also
- Durrani Empire — The Durrani empire was the Afghan state founded by Ahmad Shah Durrani at Kandahar in 1747, which at its height ruled from Khurasan to Kashmir and the Punjab, defeated the Marathas at Panipat in 1761, and lost its Indian provinces to the Sikhs by the 1830s.
- Sikh Empire — The Sikh Empire ruled the Punjab and the northwest from Lahore between 1799 and 1849, the last major Indian state to fall to the British and the only one to take Peshawar from the Afghans.
- Ranjit Singh — Ranjit Singh was the founder and ruler of the Sikh Empire, who unified the Punjab from the misls, took Lahore in 1799, and held the north-west against both Afghan power and British expansion until his death in 1839.
- Anglo-Sikh Wars — The Anglo-Sikh Wars were two conflicts between the East India Company and the Sikh Empire, fought in 1845-46 and 1848-49, which ended in the annexation of the Punjab.
- Ghazni — Ghazni is a city in eastern Afghanistan that was the capital of the Ghaznavid sultans from the late tenth century, enriched by Mahmud's campaigns in India, a centre of Persian letters, and burned by the Ghurids in 1150.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.