chapter 7-9._

ALSO IN _C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapter 63-66._

{11}

AFGHANISTAN: B. C. 330. Conquest by Alexander the Great. Founding of Herat and Candahar.

See MACEDONIA, &c.: B. C. 330-323; and INDIA: B. C. 327-312.

AFGHANISTAN: B. C. 301-246. In the Syrian Empire.

See SELEUCIDÆ; and MACEDONIA, &c.: 310-301 and after.

AFGHANISTAN: A. D. 999-1183. The Ghaznevide Empire.

See TURKS: A. D. 999-1183; and INDIA: A. D. 977-1290.

AFGHANISTAN: A. D. 13th Century. Conquests of Jinghis-Khan.

See MONGOLS: A. D. 1153-1227; and INDIA: A. D. 977-1290.

AFGHANISTAN: A. D. 1380-1386. Conquest by Timour.

See Timour.

AFGHANISTAN: A. D. 1504. Conquest by Babar.

See INDIA: A. D. 1399-1605.

AFGHANISTAN: A. D. 1722. Mahmoud's conquest of Persia.

See PERSIA: A. D. 1499-1887.

AFGHANISTAN: A. D. 1737-1738. Conquest by Nadir Shah.

See INDIA: A. D. 1662-1748.

AFGHANISTAN: A. D. 1747-1761. The Empire of the Dooranie, Ahmed Abdallee. His Conquests in India.

See INDIA; A. D. 1747-1761.

AFGHANISTAN: A. D. 1803-1838. Shah Soojah and Dost Mahomed. English interference.

"Shah Soojah-ool Moolk, a grandson of the illustrious Ahmed Shah, reigned in Afghanistan from 1803 till 1809. His youth had been full of trouble and vicissitude. He had been a wanderer, on the verge of starvation, a pedlar, and a bandit, who raised money by plundering caravans. His courage was lightly reputed, and it was as a mere creature of circumstance that he reached the throne. His reign was perturbed, and in 1809 he was a fugitive and an exile. Runjeet Singh, the Sikh ruler of the Punjaub, defrauded him of the famous Koh-i-noor, which is now the most precious of the crown jewels of England, and plundered and imprisoned the fallen man. Shah Soojah at length escaped from Lahore. After further misfortunes he at length reached the British frontier station of Loodianah, and in 1816 became a pensioner of the East India Company. After the downfall of Shah Soojah, Afghanistan for many years was a prey to anarchy. At length in 1826, Dost Mahomed succeeded in making himself supreme at Cabul, and this masterful man thenceforward held sway until his death in 1863, uninterruptedly save during the three years of the British occupation. Dost Mahomed was neither kith nor kin to the legitimate dynasty which he displaced. His father Poyndah Khan was an able statesman and gallant soldier. He left twenty-one sons, of whom Futteh Khan was the eldest, and Dost Mahomed one of the youngest. … Throughout his long reign Dost Mahomed was a strong and wise ruler. His youth had been neglected and dissolute. His education was defective, and he had been addicted to wine. Once seated on the throne, the reformation of our Henry V. was not more thorough than was that of Dost Mahomed. He taught himself to read and write, studied the Koran, became scrupulously abstemious, assiduous in affairs, no longer truculent, but courteous. … There was a fine rugged honesty in his nature, and a streak of genuine chivalry; notwithstanding the despite he suffered at our hands, he had a real regard for the English, and his loyalty to us was broken only by his armed support of the Sikhs in the second Punjaub war. The fallen Shah Soojah, from his asylum in Loodianah, was continually intriguing for his restoration. His schemes were long inoperative, and it was not until 1832 that certain arrangements were entered into between him and the Maharaja Runjeet Singh. To an application on Shah Soojah's part for countenance and pecuniary aid, the Anglo-Indian Government replied that to afford him assistance would be inconsistent with the policy of neutrality which the Government had imposed on itself; but it unwisely contributed financially toward his undertaking by granting him four months' pension in advance. Sixteen thousand rupees formed a scant war fund with which to attempt the recovery of a throne, but the Shah started on his errand in February, 1833. After a successful contest with the Ameers of Scinde, he marched on Candahar, and besieged that fortress. Candahar was in extremity when Dost Mahomed, hurrying from Cabul, relieved it, and joining forces with its defenders, he defeated and routed Shah Soojah, who fled precipitately, leaving behind him his artillery and camp equipage. During the Dost's absence in the south, Runjeet Singh's troops crossed the Attock, occupied the Afghan province of Peshawur, and drove the Afghans into the Khyber Pass. No subsequent efforts on Dost Mahomed's part availed to expel the Sikhs from Peshawur, and suspicious of British connivance with Runjeet Singh's successful aggression, he took into consideration the policy of fortifying himself by a counter alliance with Persia. As for Shah Soojah, he had crept back to his refuge at Loodianah. Lord Auckland succeeded Lord William Bentinck as Governor-General of India in March, 1836. In reply to Dost Mahomed's letter of congratulation, his lordship wrote: 'You are aware that it is not the practice of the British Government to interfere with the affairs of other independent States;' an abstention which Lord Auckland was soon to violate. He had brought from England the feeling of disquietude in regard to the designs of Persia and Russia which the communications of our envoy in Persia had fostered in the Home Government, but it would appear that he was wholly undecided what line of action to pursue. 'Swayed,' says Durand, 'by the vague apprehensions of a remote danger entertained by others rather than himself, he despatched to Afghanistan Captain Burnes on a nominally commercial mission, which, in fact, was one of political discovery, but without definite instructions. Burnes, an able but rash and ambitious man, reached Cabul in September, 1837, two months before the Persian army began the siege of Herat. … The Dost made no concealment to Burnes of his approaches to Persia and Russia, in despair of British good offices, and being hungry for assistance from any source to meet the encroachments of the Sikhs, he professed himself ready to abandon his negotiations with the western powers if he were given reason to expect countenance and assistance at the hands of the Anglo-Indian Government. … The situation of Burnes in relation to the Dost was presently complicated by the arrival at Cabul of a Russian officer claiming to be an envoy from the Czar, whose credentials, however, were regarded as dubious, and who, if that circumstance has the least weight, was on his return to Russia utterly repudiated by Count Nesselrode. The Dost took small account of this emissary, continuing to assure Burnes that he cared for no connection except with the English, and Burnes professed to his Government his fullest confidence in the sincerity of those declarations. {12} But the tone of Lord Auckland's reply, addressed to the Dost, was so dictatorial and supercilious as to indicate the writer's intention that it should give offence. It had that effect, and Burnes' mission at once became hopeless. … The Russian envoy, who was profuse in his promises of everything which the Dost was most anxious to obtain, was received into favour and treated with distinction, and on his return journey he effected a treaty with the Candahar chiefs which was presently ratified by the Russian minister at the Persian Court. Burnes, fallen into discredit at Cabul, quitted that place in August 1838. He had not been discreet, but it was not his indiscretion that brought about the failure of his mission. A nefarious transaction, which Kaye denounces with the passion of a just indignation, connects itself with Burnes' negotiations with the Dost; his official correspondence was unscrupulously mutilated and garbled in the published Blue Book with deliberate purpose to deceive the British public. Burnes had failed because, since he had quitted India for Cabul, Lord Auckland's policy had gradually altered. Lord Auckland had landed in India in the character of a man of peace. That, so late as April 1837, he had no design of obstructing the existing situation in Afghanistan is proved by his written statement of that date, that 'the British Government had resolved decidedly to discourage the prosecution by the ex-king Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk, so long as he may remain under our protection, of further schemes of hostility against the chiefs now in power in Cabul and Candahar.' Yet, in the following June, he concluded a treaty which sent Shah Soojah to Cabul, escorted by British bayonets. Of this inconsistency no explanation presents itself. It was a far cry from our frontier on the Sutlej to Herat in the confines of Central Asia—a distance of more than 1,200 miles, over some of the most arduous marching ground in the known world. … Lord William Bentinck, Lord Auckland's predecessor, denounced the project as an act of incredible folly. Marquis Wellesley regarded 'this wild expedition into a distant region of rocks and deserts, of sands and ice and snow,' as an act of infatuation. The Duke of Wellington pronounced with prophetic sagacity, that the consequence of once crossing the Indus to settle a government in Afghanistan would be a perennial march into that country."

_A. Forbes, The Afghan Wars,

ALSO IN; _J. P. Ferrier, History of the Afghans,