Amán-ul-Mulk, the late ruler of Chitrál, was, indeed, a terrible man, who to extraordinary courage joined the arts of the diplomatist. He succeeded his elder brother, surnamed Adam-Khôr or “man-eater.” His younger brother, Mir Afzul, is said to have been killed by him or to have committed a convenient suicide; another brother, Sher Afzul, who is now in possession of Chitrál, was long a fugitive in Badakhshan whence he has just returned with a few Afghans (such as any pretender can ever collect) and a hundred of the Chitráli slaves that used to be given in tribute to the Mir of Badakhshan, which itself never paid a tribute to Kabul before the late Sher Ali of Afghanistan installed Mahmud Shah, who expelled his predecessor Jehandar Shah, the friend of Abdur-Rahman, the present Amir of Afghanistan. Another brother of Aman-ul-Mulk was Kokhan Beg, whose daughter married the celebrated Mullah Shahu Baba, a man of considerable influence in Bajaur, who is feared by the Badshah of Kunar (a feudatory of Kabul and a friend of the British) and is an enemy of the Kamôji Kafirs, that infest one of the roads to Chitrál. This Kokhan Beg, who was a maternal uncle of Afzul-ul-Mulk, was killed the other day by his brother Sher Afzul coming from Badakhshan. I mention all this, as in the troubles that are preparing, the ramifications of the interests of the various pretenders are a matter of importance. Other brothers of Aman-ul-Mulk are: Muhammad Ali (Moriki), Yádgar Beg, Shádman Beg and Bahádur Khán (all by a mother of lower degree), and another Bahádur Khán, who was on the Council of Nizám-ul-Mulk. Nizám-ul-Mulk has therefore to contend with one or more of his uncles, and by to-day’s telegram[112] is on his way to the Chitrál Fort in order to expel Sher Afzul with the aid of the very troops that Sher Afzul had sent to turn out Afzul-ul-Mulk’s Governor from Yasin. I believe that Nizám-ul-Mulk has or had two elder half-brothers, Gholam of Oyôn and Majid Dastagir of Drôshp; but, in any case, he was the eldest legitimate son and, according to Chitrál custom, was invested with the title of Badshah of Turikoh, the rule of which valley compelled his absence from Chitrál and not “his wicked and intriguing disposition” as alleged by certain Anglo-Indian journals. Of other brothers of Nizám-ul-Mulk was Shah Mulk (of lower birth), who was Governor of Daraung and was killed by Afzul-ul-Mulk. He used to live at Dros (near Pathan in Shashi). Afzul-ul-Mulk of Drasun, whom we have already mentioned as a wholesale fratricide, was killed in his flight to one of the towers of the Chitrál Fort from the invading force of his uncle, Sher Afzul of Badakhshan. A younger half-brother is also Behram-ul-Mulk (by a lower mother), called “Viláyeti,” of Moroi in Andarti. Other brothers are: Amin-ul-Mulk, a brother of good birth of Oyôn (Shoghôt), who was reared by a woman of the Zondré or highest class; Wazir-ul-Mulk (of low birth) of Brôz; Abdur-Rahman (low-born) at Owir (Barpèsh), and Badshah-i-Mulk, also of Owir, who was reared by the wife of Fath-Ali Shah. There are no doubt other brothers also whose names I do not know. Murid, who was killed by Sher Afzul, is also an illegitimate brother.
A few words regarding the places mentioned in recent telegrams may be interesting: Shogôth is the name of a village, of a fort, and of a district which is the north-western part of Chitrál, and it also comprises the Ludkho and tributary valleys. Through the district is the road leading to the Dara and Nuqsán passes, to the right and left respectively, at the bottom of which is a lake on which official toadyism has inflicted the name of Dufferin in supersession of the local name. Darushp (Drôshp) is another big village in this district and in the Ludkho valley, and Andarti is a Fort in it within a mile of the Kafir frontier. The inhabitants of Shogôth are descendants of Munjanis, whose dialect (Yidgah) I refer to elsewhere, and chiefly profess to be Shiahs, in consequence of which they have been largely exported as slaves by their Sunni rulers. Baidam Khan, a natural son of Aman-ul-Mulk, was the ruler of it. The Ludkho valley is traversed by the Arkari river which falls into that of Chitrál. At the head of the Arkari valley are three passes over the Hindukhush, including the evil-omened “Nuqsán,” which leads to Zeibak, the home of the heretical Maulais (co-religionists of the Assassins of the Crusades) in Badakhshán. It is shorter, more direct, and freer from Kafir raids than the longer and easier Dora pass. Owir is a village of 100 houses on the Arkari river, and is about 36 miles from Zeibak. Drasan is both the name of a large village and of a fort which commands the Turikoh valley, a subdivision of the Drasan District, which is the seat of the heir-apparent to the Chitrál throne (Nizám-ul-Mulk). Yet the Pioneer, in its issue of the 5th October last, considers that Lord Lansdowne had settled the question of succession in favour of Afzul-ul-Mulk, that Nizám-ul-Mulk would thus be driven to seek Russian aid, but that any such aid would be an infringement of the rights of Abdur-Rahman. Now that Abdur-Rahman is suspected, on the flimsiest possible evidence, to have connived at Sher Afzul’s invasion of Chitrál, we seek to pick a quarrel with him for what a few weeks ago was considered an assertion of his rights. Let it be repeated once for always that if ever Abdur-Rahman or Nizám-ul-Mulk, or the Chief of Hunza or Kashmir or Upper India fall into the arms of Russia, it will be maxima nostra culpa. I know the Amir Abdur-Rahman, as I knew the Amir Sher Ali, as I know Nizám-ul-Mulk, and of all I can assert that no truer friends to England existed in Asia than these Chiefs. Should Abdur-Rahman be alienated, as Sher Ali was, or Nizám-ul-Mulk might be, it will be entirely in consequence of our meddlesomeness and our provocations. Russia has merely to start a will-o’-the-wisp conversation between Grombcheffsky and the Chief of Hunza, when there is internal evidence that Grombcheffsky was never in Hunza at all, and certainly never went there by the Muztagh Pass, that we, ignoring the right of China and of the treaty with Kashmir in 1846, forgetful of the danger in our rear and the undesirability of paving for an invader the road in front, fasten a quarrel on Hunza-Nagyr, and slaughter its inhabitants. No abuse or misrepresentation was spared in order to inflame the British public even against friendly and inoffensive Nagyr. What wonder that a Deputation was sent from Hunza to seek Russian aid and that it returned contented with presents, and public expressions of sympathy which explained away the Russian official refusal as softened by private assurances of friendship? Whatever may be the disaster to civilization in the ascendancy of Russian rule, the personal behaviour of Russian agents in Central Asia is, generally, pleasant. As in Hunza, so in Afghanistan, some strange suspicion of the disloyalty of its Chief, suggested by Russia, may involve us in a senseless war and inordinate expense, with the eventual result that Afghanistan must be divided between England and Russia, and their frontiers in Asia become conterminous. Then will it be impossible for England ever to oppose Russia in Europe, because fear of complications in Asia will paralyze her. Then the tenure of India will depend on concessions, for which that country is not yet ripe, or on a reign of terror, either course ending in the withdrawal of British administration from, at any rate, Northern India. Yet it is “Fas ab hosti doceri,” and when Prince Gortschakoff urged the establishment of a neutral zone with autonomous states, including Badakhshan, he advocated a policy that would have conducted to centuries of peace and to the preservation of various ancient forms of indigenous Oriental civilization by interposing the mysterious blanks of the Pamirs and the inaccessible countries of the Hindukush between Russian and British aggression.
Instead of this consummation so devoutly to be wished, and possible even now, though late, if action be taken under good advice and in the fulness of knowledge, either Power—
“Thus with his stealthy pace
With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost.”
If ever the pot called the kettle black, it is the story of Anglo-Russian recriminations. Russian intrigues are ever met by British manœuvres and Muscovite earth-hunger can only be paralleled by English annexations. Here a tribe is instigated to revolt, so that its extermination may “rectify a boundary,” there an illusory scientific frontier is gradually created by encroachments on the territories of feudatories accused of disloyalty, if not of attempts to poison our agents. By setting son against father, brother against brother and, in the general tumult, destroying intervening republics and monarchies, Anglo-Russian dominions are becoming conterminous. Above all
“There’s not a one of them but in his house
I keep a servant fee’d.”