478 



OBITUARIES, FOREIGN. (ABDURRAHMAN KHAN.) 



Age of Athens (1891): and Life and Letters of 

 Benjamin Jowett, with L. Campbell (1897). 



Abdurrahman Khan, Ameer of Afghanistan, 

 born in Cabul in 1844; died there, Oct. 3, 1901. 

 He was the eldest son of Afzul Khan, who was 

 the eldest but not the noblest born of the sons 

 of Dost Mohammed, whom the British restored 

 in 1842, after having deposed him in 1840. When 

 Dost Mohammed died, in 1863, he nominated as 

 his successor Shere Ali, a younger son, who con- 

 firmed Abdurrahman in a post to which his 

 grandfather had appointed him in Afghan Tur- 

 kestan, he having married a daughter of the Khan 

 of Badakshan and possessing much influence 

 among the Uzbegs. Hence he was able to supply 

 his father and Uncle Azim with the major part 

 of the fighting force with which they drove out 

 Shere Ali, compelling him to flee to his son Yakub 

 at Herat. Afzul mounted the throne at Cabul, 

 and when he died Azim was proclaimed his suc- 

 cessor, in which step Abdurrahman acquiesced, 

 but not his followers. Shere Ali returned from 

 Herat with an army which Yakub Khan led to 

 victory, driving Azim out to perish in the desert 

 and Abdurrahman to take refuge in Bokhara and 

 afterward with the Russians in Samarcand. He 

 was an active, ambitious, energetic prince, who 

 had neglected books in his youth for sport, but 

 was interested in arms and warlike exercises and 

 learned to be a shrewd and bold but cautious 

 politician. While Shere Ali lived Abdurrahman 

 remained quiet and unobserved, a Russian pen- 

 sioner in Samarcand. His time came after his 

 uncle and rival died, in 1879, at Balkh, where he 

 was waiting for aid promised by the Russians. 

 Abdurrahman was a poor general, and had little 

 chance against the organized forces of Yakub 

 Khan, who had thoroughly outmaneuvered him 

 in the campaign of 1867. The murder of Sir 

 Louis Cavagnari, the English envoy at Cabul, in 

 the fall of 1879, resulted in the occupation of the 

 capital by a British army and the flight of the 

 Ameer Yakub Khan. Abdurrahman then raised 

 a little army with Russian assistance and crossed 

 the Oxus in the beginning of 1880. The Beacons- 

 field Government in England wished to retain 

 Candahar as a British post and to control Afghan- 

 istan after the evacuation of Cabul by dividing 

 the country among the chiefs. The defeat of the 

 ministry 'was the defeat of the forward policy, 

 and the object of the Liberal Administration that 

 succeeded was to end the costly and perilous oc- 

 cupation of Afghanistan and the crisis in the 

 relations w T ith Russia by scuttling as rapidly as 

 possible back to the Himalayan passes, retaining 

 Baluchistan, but no part of the Afghan territory. 

 Lord Lytton, the Viceroy of India, had already 

 opened negotiations with Abdurrahman with the 

 view of making him lord in the north, where the 

 population seemed favorably disposed toward 

 him. Sir Lepel Griffin, who was political agent 

 with the British forces, was now instructed to 

 negotiate on the basis of his being recognized as 

 Ameer of Cabul. He accordingly crossed the Hin- 

 du Kush and established his camp within a short 

 distance of Cabul, and when disaster overtook the 

 British force at Maiwand, in July, he rendered 

 assistance to Lord Roberts in facilitating the 

 withdrawal of the British detachments to Can- 

 dahar. Before Sir Donald Stewart retired with 

 the main body Sir Lepel Griffin formally recog- 

 nized Abdurrahman as Ameer of the whole of 

 Afghanistan, and the Indian Government fur- 

 nished him with money, arms, and ammunition 

 to enable him to assert and maintain his author- 

 ity. Ayub Khan, his most formidable rival, had 

 already been crushed by Lord Roberts at Canda- 



har. At Cabul and Ghuzni the powerful Yakub- 

 zai faction, led by Mohammed Jan, contested the 

 throne on behalf of Yakub Khan's son, Mussa 

 Khan. The great Ghilzai tribes were strongly 

 opposed to him. There was indeed no section of 

 the Afghan nation well affected toward the pro- 

 tege of the British. He had a long and a hard 

 contest before he was established in authority, 

 and he used every treacherous and cruel means to 

 get his enemies into his power and strike terror 

 into the restless and turbulent Afghan tribes. 

 Gen. Mohammed Jan was perfidiously seized and 

 thrown into a dungeon, from which he never 

 emerged, and one after the other all the leaders, 

 of hostile factions and even friends who grew too 

 powerful were in similar fashion put out of the 

 way. He had to defend himself aga'inst the Ghil- 

 zai tribes, and did not succeed in reducing them 

 to subjection until ten years had passed. Ayub 

 Khan attempted in 1881 to recapture Candahar, 

 but his weak force was easily beaten by Abdurrah- 

 man, who subsequently captured Herat, and waa 

 then the nominal ruler of all the Afghan prov- 

 inces, but he had to subjugate some of them 

 again and again and crush out opposition with 

 ruthless severity before his rule was undisputed. 

 In the end he organized and governed his king- 

 dom with more authority than any of his prede- 

 cessors possessed in recent times. The instrument 

 of his power was the trained and disciplined army 

 using modern weapons which the gifts of arms 

 from the Indian Government and the subsidy of 

 120,000 a year allowed from 1883, and increased 

 later to 180,000, enabled him to create and 

 maintain. After the occupation of Merv by the 

 Russians, in 1884, he allowed the British Govern- 

 ment to arrange with Russia a delimitation of 

 his northern borders, which on the upper Oxus 

 were finally demarcated after a long dispute over 

 the treaty in 1895. In the south he had no power- 

 ful ally to guard his interests, and was engaged 

 in constant disputes with the British, who, when- 

 ever Russia displayed any military or railroad 

 activity in Turkestan, pressed forward to some 

 supposed point of vantage for the defense of the 

 numerous little passes in the mountains. This 

 obliged him to develop considerable military 

 power in these regions among the tribes, but he 

 never came into open conflict with the British. 

 Ishak Khan, who had joined him in his original 

 invasion of Afghanistan and was rewarded with 

 the governorship of the province of Afghan Tur- 

 kestan, laid plans to oust his cousin. Abdurrah- 

 man, in his usual way, when he heard of this 

 intrigue, invited Ishak to pay him a visit in Cabul. 

 Ishak preferred an open fight to being poisoned 

 at table or stabbed in prison, and hastened his 

 preparations for defense while Abdurrahman with 

 his army marched with the utmost speed through 

 the passes of the Hindu Kush. Notwithstanding 

 the enormous superiority of his force in number 

 and quality, the Ameer, through faulty tactics, 

 almost lost the battle when the two bodies met. 

 The victory, though narrowly won, was complete, 

 however; but he deemed it necessary to remain 

 two years in Turkestan, leaving his son Habi- 

 bullah to rule in his stead at Cabul. Returning 

 in 1890, he sent his troops into the south to coun- 

 teract British encroachments. This involved him 

 in a serious dispute with England, and when it 

 was proposed that he should go to India or that 

 Lord Roberts should go to Cabul to talk about 

 a settlement, he declined both propositions. Sir 

 Mortimer Durand finally arranged and carried out 

 a compromise which gave Kafiristan to the Ameer 

 and Chitral and the passes of the Kunar valley 

 to Great Britain. On receiving the order of the 



