During this period the Mohmands failed, by any concerted action, to avail themselves of an unusually favourable opportunity of increasing their annoyance, but raids and outrages did not cease, while there were no troops available on the frontier to move out against them. From the beginning of September 1857 to March 1860, thirty-nine serious outrages were committed by members of this tribe. Within five years eighty-five raids had been conducted by parties of an average strength of seventy-five men, in which fourteen British subjects had been killed, twenty-seven wounded, and fifty-five carried off, while over 1200 head of cattle had been plundered. This was exclusive of forty minor raids in which thirty-five British subjects had been killed or wounded and 267 head of cattle driven away, but though an expedition was urged by the local authorities, the Government still refused to sanction one. At last, about the end of March 1860, Nauroz Khan, an adopted son of Saadat Khan of Lalpura, sent in seeking for peace, and finally it was agreed that bygones should be bygones, that the Chief of Lalpura should be responsible for the future peace of the frontier, that there should be something of a general amnesty, and that the blockade of the country should be raised.
Unrest in 1863
Soon after this the Khans of Lalpura and Pandiali came into Peshawar in person and made their submission to the Commissioner. For three years there was peace on the border, the Mohmands desisting from troubling until the Ambela expedition in 1863, described in Chapter IV., when the emissaries of the Akhund of Swat were sent all over the hills bordering the Peshawar Valley, but were successful in exciting disturbances among the Mohmands only. Sultan Muhammad Khan, another son of Saadat Khan, Chief of Lalpura, owned the Akhund’s religious supremacy, and was, moreover, ill-disposed towards the British. Collecting a body of Mohmands, joined by a miscellaneous rabble of Safis, Bajauris and the like, he came down to our frontier on the 5th December, 1863, at the head of some 500 men. The officer commanding Fort Shabkadar at once turned out with fifty-five sabres and ninety-six bayonets, and drove the enemy back beyond our frontier, inflicting some loss. The Shabkadar garrison was reinforced from Peshawar, and the Mohmands again advancing on the 7th from the shelter of the hills, were again forced to retire. Nauroz Khan now, however, joined his brother, and, supported by the priesthood, the two managed, by the beginning of the new year, to collect a miscellaneous assemblage of close upon 6000 armed men—mostly Mohmands and mainly represented by men from the Halimzai and Khwaezai clans—and with these it was now proposed to meet the British troops stationed at Shabkadar.
This force had recently been very considerably strengthened, and now numbered some 1800 of all ranks, with three Horse Artillery guns, under Colonel Macdonnell, C.B.
On the morning of the 2nd January, 1864, the enemy made their appearance, debouching from a gorge north-west of Shabkadar, and formed up in something of the appearance of a crescent. The action which resulted was on our side almost entirely confined to the cavalry and guns. The British commander succeeded to some extent in drawing the enemy into the plain, where they were repeatedly charged by the cavalry and finally driven beyond the border, having sustained about eighty casualties.
The effects of this check were felt throughout the Mohmand country, at least 1000 men departing next morning to their homes, while in a few days the gathering completely dispersed.
The Amir Sher Ali Khan now took the Mohmands in hand, ejecting and imprisoning Saadat Khan and his son, Nauroz Khan, and replacing the former in the chieftainship by a son of his ancient rival, Turabaz Khan. Eventually, however, Nauroz Khan came to his own again, returning from Afghanistan in 1870 and assuming the Khan-ship.
During the years immediately following the operations near Shabkadar in 1864, the Mohmand border was not disturbed by anything more than isolated outrages—sufficiently serious though these were; and it was not until the invasion of Afghanistan in 1878 that the independent Mohmands began again to be really troublesome. At this time a grandson of Saadat Khan was Chief of Lalpura, and he sent a Mohmand contingent to co-operate with the Amir’s troops at Ali Musjid. These, however, fled without firing a shot, and the Khan then came in and tendered his submission to Sir S. Browne at Dakka. The Khan of Goshta refused to come in, and it was believed to be at his instigation that a raid was made by hill Mohmands on the village of Sarai, on the left bank of the Kabul River, in the Kama district. A small column was sent out from Jalalabad, and some of the ringleaders were captured.
On the 6th February a mixed force of 12,000 Mohmands and Bajauris made an attack upon the village of a friendly chief, one Azim Khan, who had been placed by us in charge of the two districts of Goshta and Chardeh. On the next day General Macpherson, V.C., C.B., took out a small force of some 900 cavalry and infantry from Jalalabad, intending to act in combination with another body moving from Basawal by Chardeh upon Goshta, and which was to intercept the Mohmands in their retirement; but the enemy having received notice of the proposed operations, retreated hurriedly to the hills, and the two columns returned to their respective stations.
Affair at Kam Dakka