Sher Ali Khan
Sher Ali Khan was emir of Afghanistan from 1863 to 1866 and from 1868 to 1879, the son Dost Mohammad had chosen. He spent five years winning the throne from his brothers and ten trying to keep the British and the Russians from fighting over it. He died in Mazar-i-Sharif in February 1879 on his way to ask the Russians for the help they had promised, while the British army he had refused to receive sat in Kabul. The civil war was the brothers'. Afzal and Azam took Kabul in 1866, Afzal died, and Azam was beaten. Sher Ali was back in Kabul in September 1868 with the British subsidy of Lord Mayo, who received him at Ambala in March 1869 with honour and without the treaty he wanted. The ten years were the modernisation that his grandson Abdur Rahman's biographers forget. There were the regular army of fifty thousand, paid in cash, and the council of ministers. There were the postal service, the first newspaper, Shams-un-Nahar, the coinage, the provinces reorganised, and a younger son proclaimed heir over the elder Yaqub, who rebelled and was jailed. The end was the Great Game. Lytton came to India in 1876 wanting British agents in Herat and Kabul, Sher Ali refused them. The Russians, in the summer of 1878 with a war with Britain in prospect over the Turks, sent a general's mission to Kabul, which he received because he could not stop it. When Lytton sent Neville Chamberlain's mission to the Khyber in September and the Afghan commandant at Ali Masjid turned it back, the second Anglo-Afghan war was declared in November. Three British columns came through the passes, Roberts through the Kurram and over the Peiwar Kotal in December. The emir, whose heir had just died, released Yaqub, left him Kabul, and went north in December to Russian Turkestan. The Russians, who had made peace with Britain at Berlin, told him to go home. He died at Mazar-i-Sharif on 21 February 1879 and was buried by the shrine. Yaqub signed at Gandamak in May the treaty that gave the British the Khyber and a resident in Kabul, who was murdered in September. That brought Roberts back. He was born in Kabul. The reign is the one that ended with the country a British protectorate in all but the name. His nephew Abdur Rahman accepted that and made it pay.
- Lived: 1825 CE – 1879 CE
- Nationality: Afghan
- Roles: emir, monarch
