Amir Dost Muhammad ( the relevance of the past with today)

[Midnight_Sun]

For some reason I cannot find the reference from my books about the ethnicity of Dost Mohammed Khan's mother. I'm not sure if I am not looking in the right place, but I am sure it's mentioned in Abdur Rahman Khan's memoirs. However, there is a reference to it in the Encyclopedia Iranica:

"He was the eleventh son of Sardār Pāyenda Khan (Sarfarāz Khan), chief of the Bārakzay clan, who was put to death by Shah Zamān Sadōzī (1208-15/1793-1800) in 1214/1799. Dōst Moḥammad Khan was raised by his Qezelbāš mother, from the Persian tribe of Sīāh Manṣūr and reportedly Pāyenda Khan’s favorite wife, though not of noble stock."

Source: Encyclopædia Iranica | Articles

[kakargirl]

^Midnight sun thanks for trying i put those question as a test, the truth is you will never find any info on his mother unless some lies have been written some where only as his family, i know who she was, theres a reason in our familys the women are rarely discussed in public why, its all to do with pashtuness and haya, parda .

[gadoonwal]

kakargirl,first of all if you are ,,kakar,,then you should know who they are?
kakars are not barakzais or duranis.
Kakar belong to the ,,,gharghasht,, group of tribe and duranis are ,,sarbanis,,.
I respect amir dost mamad khan.He did fight for his country but dear like many royals he was,nt pashtu speaking.
I do,nt blame him for that, the durani royals adopted farsi language long before the birth of amir dost mamad khan.

graveyarda,pls find me which king of afghanistan was pashtu speaking?(except ahmad shah baba).
is it lie too?
was zahir khan pashtu speaking?
is it lie too?
you can,nt change the history of people on net.accept the reality and do,nt mislead others.
You should know that persain is the name of civilization and not ethnicity.
People speaking farsi are dari called farsiwans no matter what their background is.
For all other members pls do some research on the history of ,,kazalbash,,before posting here.
The kazalbash in persain dominated areas speak farsi and they are in fact the most nationalist type of parsiwans.
Now pls d,nt trace their roots back to azerbainjan.They are living in your country and speak farsi.
They serve in the darbar of durani kings and court.
Many royals were born to persain mothers including timur shah (ahmad shah baba ,s son).Before someone like graveyard start using fool language i challenge everyone here to bring a proof was timor shah not born to persain mum?was dost mamad khan not born to persain/kazalbash mum and many more.

[gadoonwal]

The Rise of Dost Mohammad and the Beginning of the Great Game
(1826 -1839; 1843 - 1863)
It was not until 1826 that the energetic Dost Mohammad was able to exert sufficient control over his own brothers to take over the throne in Kabul, where he proclaimed himself amir, not shah. Although the British had begun to show interest in Afghanistan as early as 1809 with their agreement with Shuja, it was not until the reign of Dost Mohammad, the first of the Muhammadzai rulers, that the opening gambits were played in what came to be known as the Great Game. The Great Game involved not only the confrontation of two great empires whose spheres of influence moved steadily closer to one another until they met in Afghanistan, but also the repeated attempts by a foreign power to impose a puppet government in Kabul. The remainder of the nineteenth century was a time of European involvement in Afghanistan and the adjacent areas and of conflicting ambitions among the various local rulers.
Dost Mohammad achieved predominance among his ambitious brothers through clever use of the support of his mother’s Qizilbash tribesmen and his own youthful apprenticeship under his brother, Fateh Khan. He was, by all accounts, a shrewd and charming leader. Many problems demanded his attention: consolidating his power in the areas under his command, controlling his half-brothers who ruled the southern areas of Afghanistan, defeating Mahmud in Herat, and repulsing the encroachment of the Sikhs on the Pashtun areas east of the Khyber Pass. After working assiduously to establish control and stability in his domains around Kabul, the amir next chose to confront the Sikhs.
In 1834 Dost Mohammad defeated an invasion by ex-shah Shuja, but his absence from Kabul gave the Sikhs the opportunity to expand westward. The forces of Ranjit Singh occupied Peshawar and moved from there into territory ruled directly by Kabul. In 1836 Dost Mohammad’s forces, under the command of his son, defeated the Sikhs at Jamrud, a post some 15 kilometers west of Peshawar. The Afghan leader, however, did not follow up this triumph by retaking Peshawar. Instead, Dost Mohammad decided to contact the British directly for help in dealing with the Sikhs. In the spring of 1836 he wrote the new governor general of India, Lord Auckland, a letter of congratulations and asked his advice on dealing with the Sikhs. Just as Dost Mohammad’s letter formally set the stage for British intervention in Afghanistan, so also did Lord Auckland’s reply foreshadow the duplicitous policy of the British in dealing with the Afghans. Auckland responded that he would send a commercial mission to Kabul and stated that “it is not the practice of the British Government to interfere with the affairs of other independent states.” In fact, at the heart of the Great Game lay the willingness of Britain and Russia to subdue, subvert, or subjugate the small independent states that lay between them.
The British-through the East India Company-had first become involved in the subcontinent of India in 1612 during
the heyday of the Mughal Empire. British influence spread until, by the end of the eighteenth century, their interests in northern India impinged on Central Asia. Although by that time the empire of Ahmad Shah Durrani was already disintegrating, the British were well aware of his exploits in northern India only four decades before, and they feared what they thought was a formidable Afghan force. By the end of the eighteenth century the British had approached the Iranians, asking that they keep the Afghans in check. By the last years of the eighteenth century, a new worry motivated the British in the region-fear of French involvement. Napoleon was, in the British view, capable of overrunning areas of Central Asia and northern India, just as he had defeated much of Europe. In 1801 the British signed an agreement with Iran not only to halt any possible Afghan moves into India by attacking their western flank but also to prevent the French from doing the same thing. In 1807 Napoleon signed with the tsar of Russia the Treaty of Tilsit, which envisaged a joint invasion of India
though Iran. The British hastened to cement their relationship with the Iranians and signed an agreement with Shuja in 1809, only a few weeks before he was deposed.
The debacle of the Afghan civil war left a vacuum in the Hindu Kush area that concerned the British, who were well
aware of the many times this area had been the invasion route to India. In the first decades of the nineteenth century it became clear to the British that the major threat to their interests in India would not come from the fragmented Afghan empire, the vitiated Persians, or from the French, but from the Russians, who had begun a steady advance southward from the Caucasus. As in earlier times, two great empires confronted each other, with Central Asia lying between them. The Russians
feared permanent British encroachment into Central Asia as the British moved northward, taking control of the Punjab,
Sind, and Kashmir. Equally suspicious, the British viewed Russian absorption of the Caucasus and Georgia, Kirghiz and Turkmen lands, and Khiva and Bukhara as a threat to British interest in the Indian subcontinent.

[gadoonwal]

amir dost muhmmad khan,s family and ancesters
His father was barakzai pashtun mother kazalbash/farsiwan.
http://www.nps.edu/programs/ccs/Docs...ad%20Tribe.pdf,
kakargirl,khor,i admire amir dost mamad khan for his brave stand against invaders but we can ,not change someone ,s family bakground by what we want.
I study enough books about pashtun history and still learning and why would i change the history of amir dost mamad khan ?
He was,nt ,,shah shuja,,,or karzai.He fought for his land and people.

[gadoonwal]

a book on the life of ameer dost mamad khan

click here,
http://www.archive.org/stream/lifeof...ge/n5/mode/2up

[gadoonwal]

ameer dost muhmmad khan,,,

[ghundal]

click here,
http://www.archive.org/stream/lifeof...ge/n5/mode/2up

what difference does it make that he knew dari as a second language. Amir Dost Muhammad had had the loyalty of both Durrani and Ghiljay federations. How do you think he spoke with them, in pashto or dari?

This topic is pointless. Im sure he even knew Arabic too. Many of the great leaders of Afghanistan knew many languages so that they could converse with other heads of states. He probably also spoke English and maybe a little Russian.

[kakargirl]

kakargirl,first of all if you are ,,kakar,,then you should know who they are?
kakars are not barakzais or duranis.
Kakar belong to the ,,,gharghasht,, group of tribe and duranis are ,,sarbanis,,.
I respect amir dost mamad khan.He did fight for his country but dear like many royals he was,nt pashtu speaking.
I do,nt blame him for that, the durani royals adopted farsi language long before the birth of amir dost mamad khan.

graveyarda,pls find me which king of afghanistan was pashtu speaking?(except ahmad shah baba).
is it lie too?
was zahir khan pashtu speaking?
is it lie too?
you can,nt change the history of people on net.accept the reality and do,nt mislead others.
You should know that persain is the name of civilization and not ethnicity.
People speaking farsi are dari called farsiwans no matter what their background is.
For all other members pls do some research on the history of ,,kazalbash,,before posting here.
The kazalbash in persain dominated areas speak farsi and they are in fact the most nationalist type of parsiwans.
Now pls d,nt trace their roots back to azerbainjan.They are living in your country and speak farsi.
They serve in the darbar of durani kings and court.
Many royals were born to persain mothers including timur shah (ahmad shah baba ,s son).Before someone like graveyard start using fool language i challenge everyone here to bring a proof was timor shah not born to persain mum?was dost mamad khan not born to persain/kazalbash mum and many more.

LOL if you read my posts ever you would have known what i am that my user name is just a username to hide me from my family back home its not a very respectable thing a royal barakzai girl to be online its ok for men but not for the females, so lol i do know my history and i know history of kakars too my father is very good at history and barakzais marry kakars.

[Midnight_Sun]

I can't believe we are actually questioning whether Dost Mohammed Khan was a Pashtun or not. What a shame.

[kakargirl]

I can't believe we are actually questioning whether Dost Mohammed Khan was a Pashtun or not. What a shame.

Best post ever thank you, i know my great great grandfather was a full pashtun and a very good one too, allah bless you for such a strong post ,put a smile on my face.thank you

[Albani_Rahmat_Kabulzada]

His mother was persain .Even he himself was persain speaking.His ancestors were of afghan origin but they dopted the iranian language.
The duranis are of persain-pashtun origin.Many of them speak only farsi and mixed with frasiwans/tajiks.Many of the royal duranis are of pashtun-kazulbash origin.
Like Timur shah durani (son of ahmad shah abdali) etc are of persain -pashtun origin.
Dost Mohd khan was a close friend of iran.Some say he even asked iraians to make afghanistan part of iran,,,,who knows,

D. Mohammad´s mother was a Kurd of Qazalbash origine, not a Persian. They just spoke with non-Kurds in Persian. The area of ''Chicken Street'' in Kabul is the former Kurd district. Timur Shah was not Persian or Tajik. His father was a Pashtun and his mother an Indian woman, former slave of one of Ahmad Shah´s Iranian Qazalbash administrators. Dost Muhammad was neither anti-british nor anti-Iranian. He thought a unification or an alliance with Iran could be better to fight the Russians in the north. I don´t know how to call him. He even gave his own cousine to marry a british officier. But your right. The dynasty was Iranized or Tajikized. Don´t know how to call it. Ahmad Shah Durani self spoke primerly in Persian. Raised and educated in Iran by Nadir Shah Afshar, he spoke in Tehrani dialect. And if we go for identity, no matter to which ethnicity one belong to, one´s identity is formed by the cultural and national environment. That´s why the Muhammadzai and Durani Pashtuns can´t considered as a representants of Pashtuns or Pashtun nation. They were detribalized and dropped off Pashtu in favour of Dari. One good point I like on Pashtun culture that it clearly give orders. Do Pashtu and think Pashtu. If you are a non-Pashtun but speak and live in Pashtu/n than you are a Pashtun but if you are a Pashtun and you can´t or don´t do and think in Pashtu/n you ain´t a Pashtun. The identity of a person is based on his culture and language.

[ghundal]

your are wrong. Amir Dost Muhammad was a drana Pashtun. His mother was a Pashtun. Their whole family was Pashtun. They usually married with other noble Pashtun families.

[Albani_Rahmat_Kabulzada]

Go to Kabul museum and ask for the original family´s biography. There is no doubt that he had some steph-mothers but his real mother was an Alevit Shia Qizilbash of Kurdish origine. That´s why he was not teached and raised up in the traditional Pashtun way. He could not even speak one word Pashtu. His mother alone raised him up. That was also a reason why he had a strong sense for the non-Pashtuns and the Qajjar of Iran.

[ghundal]

The family members of Amir Dost Muhammad are on this forum, I think they know their own family tree. He knew many languages. lol, how do you suppose he spoke/coordinated with the Ghiljay pashtuns to rise up against the ferangi, in pashto or farsi?

His family were strictly drana pashtuns, according to their own family trees.