Yakoub Khan
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
Ameer of Afghanistan; born in 1849; son of Shere Ali; was nominated heir to the throne of Kabul in 1864. Appointed governor of Herat, he became extremely popular, and succeeded in maintaining his father's authority in that province when the rest of Afghanistan passed under the rule of the rival ameers, Afzul and Azim. It was owing to his admirable generalship that Shere Ali regained his throne in 1868, and when the latter visited India in the following year, Yakoub Khan was appointed governor of the capital. In 1870 he was made governor of Kandahar, and afterward was sent a second time to Herat, where, however, his great influence excited the fears and suspicions of Shere Ali, who now declared his youngson, Abdullah Jan, to be his heir, and est sought to prejudice the British Government against Yakoub Khan, by falsely representing him as hostile to British interests. Capta Captain Marsh, who visited him at Herat in 1872, found him exactly the reverse. In 1873 Shere Ali recalled him from Herat, but he declined to return, and for a year was practically in revolt. At length, under the most sacred pledges of safety, he proceeded to Kabul, but was treacherously imprisoned, and was only released when the flight of his father before the victorious advance of the British arms in the war of 1878 made his presence indispensable to prevent anarchy in the capital and the state. On the death of Shere Ali he succeeded to the throne, and on May 30, 1879, concluded a treaty of peace with the British. Shortly after the murder of Cavagnari in the following September, in which he was suspected of complicity, he fled to the army that General Roberts hurried forward to punish the Kabul assassins, was detained a prisoner by the Indian Government; and was deposed in 1880.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921 Yakub Khan was still alive, a pensioned exile of the Indian government; he died at Dehra Dun in 1923, never having returned to Afghanistan. The throne he lost in 1880 passed to his cousin Abdur Rahman Khan, whose dynasty held Kabul until the monarchy was abolished in 1973. On the charge Collier's leaves hanging — that he was "suspected of complicity" in the murder of the British envoy Cavagnari in September 1879 — modern historians generally find no evidence he ordered the attack, and treat him as a ruler overwhelmed by his own mutinous troops. His peace treaty with the British, signed at Gandamak, is also better understood now as the arrangement that made Afghanistan's foreign relations a British concern until Kabul recovered full independence in 1919.
Written for this edition, 2026.