When the Viceroy of India was satisfied that these measures were destined to reap their complement of success he supplemented his experiments in frontier management by their concluding phase. On August 27, 1900, after eighteen months’ patient inquiry and constant observation, he drew up a Minute advocating the separation of the administration of the north-west frontier from the control of the Punjab Government. These proposals were supported by the signatures of his colleagues in a covering despatch on September 13. Following the lines of Lord Lytton’s celebrated Minute upon the creation of a distinct Trans-Indus District, April 22, 1877, Lord Curzon embodied in one of the most brilliant pieces of analysis ever placed before the Imperial Government a temperate and lucid exposition of the existing order of frontier administration. The acceptance of the views enunciated in this Minute was notified by the Secretary of State for India, Lord George Hamilton, on December 20, 1900, but it was not until November 9, 1901, that the establishment of the new territory under the name of the North-West Frontier Province was proclaimed.
While Lord Curzon during the first three years of his régime—January 1899 to November 1901—was occupied with repairing the fabric of Indian frontier administration, Afghanistan, in the early spring of 1900, became the cause of an exchange of diplomatic notes between the late Lord Salisbury as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and the late Russian Ambassador to Great Britain, M. de Staal, acting under the orders of the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Count Mouravieff. In a communication dated February 6, 1900, M. de Staal informed the Foreign Office that the Russian Government were proposing that direct relations should be established between Russia and Afghanistan with regard to frontier matters; but that such relations should have no political character as the Russian Government intended to maintain their former engagements and would continue to consider Afghanistan outside the sphere of Russian influence. An immediate reply to this request was vouchsafed in which it was stated that, having regard to the understanding by which Afghanistan is outside the sphere of Russian influence,
... it would be impossible for the British Government to take into consideration any change in existing arrangements or to frame proposals to be brought before the Amir without more precise explanation in regard to the method which the Russian Government would desire to see adopted for the exchange of such communications between the frontier officials, the limitations to be placed on them and the means of ensuring that those limitations would be observed.
To this intimation no reply at the moment was preferred by the Russian authorities, and the study of Anglo-Afghan relations shifts once more to the dominions of the Amir. Throughout the period in which Lord Curzon was so engrossed with the machinery of frontier and administrative reforms Abdur Rahman had not been in any way an idle ruler. In spite of his failing powers, with great energy and determination, he had concentrated his efforts upon the completion of his life’s work. With that accomplished, assured of the good-will of the Government of India shortly after Lord Curzon’s arrival in 1899 by the release of the munitions of war which had been detained through the outbreak of the Tirah troubles, he turned his hand to matters of more domestic concern. Satisfied with the improvements in his military establishment, content with the reforms which he had introduced in the administrative economy of his state, and having established its independence by elaborate artifices, he again sought the preservation of his line. In an effort to prepare his people for the acceptance and accession of Habib Ullah Khan at his demise he had, in 1891, delegated to this son authority to hold the public Durbars in Kabul. At the same time he had reserved to himself the control of foreign affairs, manifesting in this direction a keen appreciation of the value to the position of India which underlay the situation of Afghanistan. Menaced by growing physical infirmity and with strange premonition of his approaching end, at a special Durbar in the autumn of 1900 he informed the assembled nobles and high officials of his inability to cope with the increasing volume of affairs. Thereupon, amid a scene of singular pathos, the old Amir indicated that his son, Habib Ullah, would be given a still larger measure of authority.
A few months later, in May of 1901, a more emphatic warning of the grave state of the Amir’s health was received. Intelligence came through from Kabul to Peshawar that Abdur Rahman was no longer able to walk, and that he was not expected to live through the approaching winter. Incapacitated by a combination of Bright’s disease and gout as he was, the mental faculties of the ruler of Afghanistan were nevertheless unimpaired, and throughout the closing year of his life he applied them constantly to the improvement of his country. Interested in the South African War and grasping the salient lessons of our unreadiness, the Amir laid out much money in 1900-1901 upon a scheme of mobilisation; while in May 1901 he secured permission to import from Germany some thirty howitzers and field guns. At the same time, and without informing the Government of India, he ordered a large number of castings for big guns, an order which was subsequently repudiated by Habib Ullah. In August 1901 he personally directed the preparations for the suppression of the threatened disaffection in Khost, besides attending to the rising of the Tagis of Hariob on the Peiwar in September. These events were the last affairs of a prominent description to which Abdur Rahman was able to apply himself. Even while engaged in the business attending the Tagis operations his Highness began to show signs of decline and, on September 20, he was seized with a stroke of paralysis which disabled his right side.
His native physicians had prepared a compound of rare medicines costing several thousand rupees; but, as the paralytic seizure was kept strictly secret in the palace, this concoction was not in readiness and, when offered to the Amir, he could not take it. On September 28 his Highness, feeling his end approaching, summoned his sons, the nobles, the principal civil and military officers and the chief raises of Kabul, Hindu and Mahommedan. One son only, Mahommed Afzul Khan, a boy of thirteen, was absent. He was with his mother at Balkh, that lady belonging to the Saids of Balkh. When all had assembled the Amir by look acknowledged their homage and then addressed them in a feeble, but distinct voice, saying:
You know when a king becomes old and infirm and near his end he always desires to nominate a successor. I wish to have my successor settled now. Consider among yourselves whom you believe fit to succeed me.
The listeners were affected to tears by this speech. They declared that the Shahzada Habib Ullah, who had managed the state affairs so well for eight years, was the ruler whom they desired. On this the dying Amir indicated that a sword with a belt set with precious stones should be handed to Habib Ullah, together with a big volume containing his will and instructions for the future management of the state. He then ordered Nasr Ullah Khan to gird his brother with the sword, and dismissed the audience. Abdur Rahman had always the presentiment that he would die in the same year as our lamented sovereign Queen Victoria; and, after this assemblage, his condition became rapidly worse and he died on October 1. The news was kept secret until the morning of the 3rd, when, his precautions against disturbance having been completed, Habib Ullah himself made it public. Later in the day, on October 3, at a special Durbar Habib Ullah was formally accepted as Amir, whereupon he issued the following proclamation to the high officers of state:
His Excellency is informed of the demise of my august father, the light of religion and the kingdom (may his abode be in Paradise) who (as the verse runs “Death is the end of all and not a moment’s delay is possible when it draws nigh”) welcomed the invitation of God, and took his way to Paradise.
His Excellency is now given a detailed account of what happened. His late Highness had been frequently unwell; but notwithstanding his chequered health he was not for a moment found lacking in the conduct of his kingly duties, until the light of his life was put down. He breathed his last on Thursday night dated 19th Jamadi-ul-Sani at Kala Bagh, his summer residence. He gave his soul to the Creator of the Universe (truly all things tend towards God). On Friday 19th rumours got abroad and the news was communicated to the capital for the information of officials. The people of the country, subjects as well as military, came together to convey condolence, one and all. Beyond the possibility of doubt they considered the monarch was their kind father and their gracious ruler. The people of the territories of Herat, Kandahar and Turkestan, etc., who were present in the metropolis, attended the exalted Court and My Presence (who am the slave of God) and praised the Almighty. Great was the concourse and so large the number of those who witnessed the Fateha[44] that it is known to God and to God alone. All of them followed the service with sincerity of heart and purity of mind. Then they took the oath of allegiance with praises to Omnipotent God. They said as follows: “We desire to make your Highness our king so that we may not live in an uncivilised state. We wish you to acknowledge our oath of allegiance; and we beg your Highness to take the management of all the affairs of state and that of our nation; and we ask you to discharge your duties night and day like his Highness the deceased ruler of ours and to give us rest and repose.”