Shah Shuja’s ‘Hidden History’

[Haris]

From the South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal by Shah Mahmoud Hanifi.



Shah Shuja’s ‘Hidden History’ and its
Implications for the Historiography of
Afghanistan



Abstract

The essay uses colonial archival materials from the Archives of the Punjab
Province in Lahore to address the thirty-year period between the two
reigns of the Durrani Afghan Monarch Shah Shuja (r. 1803-1809 and
1839-1842). Focusing on the 1809-1839 period, the first part of the essay
deals with Mountstuart Elphinstone’s 1809 diplomatic mission and Shuja’s
flight from Peshawar. The second part of the article considers the
communication between Shah Shuja’s primary wife and colonial officials
that culminated in Shuja’s receipt of housing and a monthly British pension
in Ludhiana in 1816. The third part of the essay treats Shuja’s aborted
attempt to recapture Kabul without British support in 1832-1833 and its
consequences for him in Ludhiana. Shuja’s lack of Pashto credentials, his
dependency on British capital, and his circular migration pattern are viewed
as normative rather than exceptional for Afghan rulers, and as such this
essay contributes to a revision of the traditional historiography of
Afghanistan that views the country through the incompatible lenses of
Pashtun ethnic domination of the Afghan state structure and Pashtun tribal
resistance to Afghan state formation.


Index terms

Keywords : Afghanistan , British Colonialism, First Anglo-Afghan War, Historiography,Ludhiana, Mountstuart Elphinstone, Shah Shuja

Outline

Introduction: Locating Shuja in the first Anglo-Afghan war and in the context of the Pashtun domination hypothesis

Elphinstone’s mission and Shuja’s flight from Peshawar, 1809

Activities of Shuja’s wife Wafa Begum culminating in the permanent pension for Shuja and his household, 1809-1816

Shuja’s failed attempt to recapture Kabul, household defections and education, 1832-1836

Conclusion: unlearning and relearning Afghanistan through Shah Shuja







Rather than copy & pasting the essay and then formatting it so it is
readable, I will just copy & paste the link to read online. A PDF version is
also available through the link below.

http://samaj.revues.org/3384#bodyftn64

[Pokhton]

in afghanistan is a story about a king that safed a woman from a british soldiers,a afghan king saw that a british soldiers tried to hit a afghan woman, when the afghan king saw that this british soldier also try to kill here, he run to the soldier and tried to stop him the british soldier shot him dead for this action, shah shaheed was his name, some people say it was shah shuja,there is a place in afghanistan called shah shaheed. at this time a rebellion started against the british occupation. sry for my bad english maybe someone knows this story and can tell it better.