Dost Mohammad Khan

Who is Dost Mohammad Khan?

Dost Mohammad Khan Barakzai was an ethnic Pashtun ruler who founded the Barakzai dynasty and served as Emir of Afghanistan for most of the period between 1826 and his death in 1863. He was the eleventh son of Payandah Khan, chief of the Barakzai tribe, and rose to power amid the decline of the earlier Durrani dynasty, taking control of Kabul in 1826 and gradually unifying the rival city-states of Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat under one Afghan state. His reign was interrupted when the British invaded Afghanistan in the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842) and briefly installed a rival ruler, but Dost Mohammad returned to the throne in 1843 after the disastrous British retreat from Kabul. In his later years he worked to reunify the country, capturing the western city of Herat in 1863 after a long siege just before his death. Regarded by historians as one of the ablest rulers in nineteenth-century Afghan history, he stabilized the country during a turbulent period of regional rivalry between the British and Russian empires, a period later termed the Great Game.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Dost Mohammad Khan" · Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Dost Mohammad Khan" · Wikipedia, "Dost Mohammad Khan" (cross-checked against Britannica)