Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan (80 page)

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Authors: William Dalrymple

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5
Prinsep,
History of the Sikhs
, vol. II, pp. 14–15.
 
6
Waqi’at-i-Shah Shuja
, The Twenty-Sixth Event.
 
7
Turk Ali Shah Turk Qalandar,
Tadhkira-i Sukhunwaran-Chashm-Didah
, n.d.
 
8
Waqi’at-i-Shah Shuja
, The Twenty-Sixth Event.
 
9
Fayz Mohammad,
Siraj ul-Tawarikh
, vol. I, p. 135.
10
Waqi’at-i-Shah Shuja
, The Twenty-Seventh Event.
11
Private Collection, Fraser Papers, Inverness, vol. 30, pp. 171–2, WF to his father, 9 May 1809.
12
Fayz Mohammad,
Siraj ul-Tawarikh
, vol. I, p. 136.
13
Waqi’at-i-Shah Shuja
, The Twenty-Eighth Event; Fayz Mohammad,
Siraj ul-Tawarikh
, vol. I, pp. 136–7; Prinsep,
History of the Sikhs
, vol. II, p. 22.
14
Arthur Conolly,
Journey to the North of India, 1829–31
,
London, 1838, vol. II, pp. 272, 301.
15
Waqi’at-i-Shah Shuja
, The Twenty-Ninth Event.
16
Eruch Rustom Kapadia, ‘The Diplomatic Career of Sir Claude Wade: A Study of British Relations with the Sikhs and Afghans, July 1823–March 1840’, unpublished PhD thesis, SOAS, c.1930,
p. 18. Wade did his best to stamp out the trade: Sir C.M. Wade,
A Narrative of the Services, Military and Political, of Lt.-Col. Sir C.M. Wade
, Ryde, 1847, p. 33.
17
Jean-Marie Lafont,
La présence française dans le royaume sikh du Penjab
1822–1849
, Paris, 1992, p. 107.
18
Ibid., p. 110.
19
Punjab Archives, Lahore, from Metcalfe, Resident in Delhi, to Ochterlony in Ludhiana, 6 January 1813, book 8, no. 2, pp. 5–8.
20
Sadly this much repeated and thoroughly delightful story may well be apocryphal: certainly I have been unable to trace it back further than Edward Thompson’s
The Life of Charles Lord Metcalfe
, London, 1937, p. 101, where it is described as ‘local tradition . . . this sounds like folklore’. It may well have been inspired by the famous miniature of Ochterlony in the India Office Library. In his will, BL, OIOC L/AG/34/29/37, Ochterlony only mentions one bibi [an Indian consort, either a legal wife or a mistress], ‘Mahruttun, entitled Moobaruck ul Nissa Begum and often called Begum Ochterlony’, who was the mother of his two daughters, although his son Roderick Peregrine Ochterlony was clearly born of a different bibi. Nevertheless it is quite possible that the story could be true: I frequently found Old Delhi traditions about such matters confirmed by research, and several Company servants of the period kept harems of this size. Judging by Bishop Heber’s wonderful description of him, Ochterlony was clearly Indianised enough to have done so.
21
Punjab Archives, Lahore, from Ochterlony in Ludhiana to John Adam, Calcutta, 9 July 1815, book 14, no. 226, pp. 5–8.
22
Punjab Archives, Lahore, Captain Birch to Adam, Ludhiana, 2 December 1814, book 15, no. 6.
23
Punjab Archives, Lahore, vol. 18, part II, Letters 117 and 118, p. 535. In Urdu the address reads: Banam-i Farang Akhtar Looni Sahib. Ochterlony’s name – or rather its Urduised rendering, Akhtar Looni – translates as Crazy Star.
24
Punjab Archives, Lahore, Fraser, Ramgurh to Ochterlony, Ludhiana, 3 September 1816, vol. 18, part II, Case 118, pp. 538–9.
25
Punjab Archives, Lahore, Captain Murray to Sir D. Ochterlony Bart. K.C.B., vol 18, part II, Case 150, pp. 653–8.
26
Mirza ‘Ata,
Naway Ma’arek
, p. 39;
Waqi’at-i-Shah Shuja
, Introduction.
27
Punjab Archives, Lahore, Adam to Ochterlony, 5 October 1816, book 9, no. 98, pp. 637–9.
28
Punjab Archives, Lahore, Ludhiana Agency, Murray to Ochterlony, 20 January 1817, book 92, Case 17.
29
Punjab Archives, Lahore, Adam to Ochterlony, 5 October 1816, book 9, no. 98, pp. 637–9.
30
Mohan Lal Kashmiri,
Life of Amir Dost Mohammad of Kabul
, London, 1846, vol. I, pp. 104–5. This was presumably a euphemism for rape.
31
Mirza ‘Ata,
Naway Ma’arek
, pp. 29–39.
32
Patrick Macrory,
Signal Catastrophe: The Retreat from Kabul 1842
, London, 1966, p. 35.
33
Fayz Mohammad,
Siraj ul-Tawarikh
, vol. I, p. 140.
34
Punjab Archives, Lahore, R. Ross, Subhatu to Sir D. Ochterlony, Kurnal, 2 September 1816, book 18, Serial no. 116. Ross reported: ‘I am writing to you in Goorkhalee libas [dress/disguise] a most perfect image in which after closing this I shall slip out of my house by a by-path into the beds of the Ganges whence I shall proceed with a Subadar and a Sipahi (
Nusseeree
), out of uniform and like myself in Goorkhalee dress to look at the royal party’.
35
Charles Masson,
Narrative of Various Journeys in Baluchistan, Afghanistan and the Panjab, 1826 to 1838
, London, 1842, vol. III, p. 51.
36
Waqi’at-i-Shah Shuja
, The Thirtieth Event.
37
Mirza ‘Ata,
Naway Ma’arek
, pp. 39–56.
38
Josiah Harlan, ‘Oriental Sketches’, insert at p. 42a, mss in Chester Country Archives, Pennsylvania, quoted in Ben Macintyre,
Josiah the Great: The True Story of the Man Who Would be King
, London, 2004, p. 18.
39
Harlan’s ‘Sketches’,
p. 37a, quoted in Macintyre,
Josiah the Great
, pp. 22–3.
40
Godfrey Vigne,
A Personal Narrative of a Visit to Ghuzni, Kabul and Afghanistan and a Residence at the Court of Dost Mohamed with Notices of Runjit Singh, Khiva, and the Russian Expedition
, London, 1840, p. 4.
41
Punjab Archives, Lahore, Ludhiana Agency papers, Wade to Macnaghten, Press List VI, Book 142, serial no. 44, 9 July 1836. Shah Mahmood Hanifi, ‘Shah Shuja’s “Hidden History” and its Implications for the Historiography of Afghanistan’,
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal
[online], Free-Standing Articles, online since 14 May 2012, connection on 21 June 2012, http://samaj.revues.org/3384.
42
See, for example, Punjab Archives, Lahore, Captain C. M. Wade, Pol. Assistant, Loudhianuh to J. E. Colebrooke, Bart., Resident, Delhi, 1 June 1828, Ludhiana Agency Records, book 96, Case 67, pp. 92–4, for one round of the slave-girl saga. See also Kapadia, ‘The Diplomatic Career of Sir Claude Wade’, p. 6.
43
Victor Jacquemont,
Letters from India (1829–1832)
,
London, 1936, p. 162.
44
Jean-Marie Lafont,
Indika: Essays in Indo-French Relations 1630–1976
, New Delhi, 2000, p. 343.
45
Ibid.
46
Public Records Office (now The National Archives, Kew), PRO 30/12, Ellenborough, Political Diary, 3 September 1829.
47
M. E. Yapp,
Strategies of British India: Britain, Iran and Afghanistan, 1798–1850
,
Oxford, 1980, pp. 247, 111–12; Mark Bence-Jones,
The Viceroys of India
,
London, 1982, p. 15.
48
Macrory,
Signal Catastrophe
,
p. 39.
49
Norris,
The First Afghan War 1838–1842
, p. 15.
50
Laurence Kelly,
Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran: Alexander Griboyedov and Imperial Russia’s Mission to the Shah of Persia
, London, 2002, ch. XIX, pp. 153–61.
51
Edward Ingram,
The Beginning of the Great Game in Asia, 1828–1834
, Oxford, 1979, p. 49; Wellington to Aberdeen, 11 October 1829, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington,
Supplementary
Despatches and Memoranda of Field Marshall Arthur Duke of Wellington
, ed. by his son, the 2
nd
Duke of Wellington, London, 1858–72,
vol. VI, pp. 212–19.
52
Kelly,
Diplomacy and Murder
, p. 54.
53
Orlando Figes,
Crimea: The Last Crusade
, London, 2010, p. 5.
54
Peter Hopkirk,
The Great Game
, London, 1990, p. 117.
55
Ibid., p. 117; PRO, Ellenborough, Political Diary, II, 122–3, 29 October 1829.
56
BL, OIOC, Secret Committee to Governor General, 12 January 1830, IOR/L/PS/5/543.
57
Hopkirk,
The Great Game
, p. 119.
58
Cobden, quoted by Norris in
First Afghan War
,
p. 38.
59
National Archives of India (NAI), Foreign, Political, 5 September 1836, nos 9–19, Minute of Charles Trevelyan.
60
Ingram,
Beginning of the Great Game
, p. 169.

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