AHMAD SHAH DURRANI

born 1722?, Multan, Punjab died Oct. 16, 23?, 1772, Toba Ma'ruf, Afg. founder of the state of Afghanistan and ruler of an empire that extended from the Amu Darya to the Indian Ocean and from Khorasan into Kashmir, the Punjab, and Sind. Head of the central government, with full control of all departments of state in domestic and foreign affairs, both civil and military, the shah was assisted by a prime minister and a council of nine life-term advisers that he selected from the chiefs of the leading Afghan tribes. A member of the noble Sadozai clan and the second son of Mohammad Zaman Khan, a hereditary chief of the Abdali tribe of Afghans, Ahmad rose to command an Abdali cavalry group under Nader Shah of Persia, and, on Nader Shah's assassination, the Afghan chiefs elected Ahmad as shah. He was crowned in 1747 near Qandahar, where coins were struck in his name and where he set up his capital. Embarking on the conquest of regions held by ineffectual rulers, he invaded India nine times between 1747 and 1769, supposedly with no intention of founding an empire there. After an unopposed march to Delhi in 1757, he plundered that city, Agra, Mathura, and Vrndavana. Before an outbreak of cholera among his troops forced his return to Afghanistan, Ahmad married Hazrat Baygam, daughter of the Indian Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah. His son Timur remained behind as viceroy of the Punjab and married the daughter of India's puppet emperor 'Alamgir II. Timur was driven out in 1758 by a force of Sikhs, Mughals, and Marathas, but in 175961 Ahmad Shah swept the Marathas from the Punjab and destroyed their large army at Panipat, north of Delhi. In the 1760s he attempted four times to crush the Sikhs, but his empire was restive with serious revolts nearer home, and he lost control of the Punjab to them. He is buried in a mausoleum in Ahmad Shahi, the new capital he built.