The Gates of India: Being an Historical Narrative

by Sir Thomas Hungerford Holdich

Masson was in the field before Burnes. In the month of September 1830 the Resident in the Persian Gulf writes to the Chief Secretary to the Government of India[10] that "an American gentleman of the name of Masson" arrived at Bushire from Bassadore on the "13th June last," and that he described himself as belonging to the state of Kentucky, having been absent for ten years from his country, "which he must consequently have left when he was young, as he is now only about two-and-thirty years of age." The same letter says that previous to the breaking out of the war between Russia and Persia in 1826 Masson "appears to have visited Khorasan from Tiflis by way of Mashed and Herat, making no effort to conceal his European origin," and that from Herat he went to Kandahar, Shikarpur, and Sind.

Masson appears to have furnished some valuable information to the Indian Government regarding the Durani occupation of Herat and the political situation in Kabul and Kandahar, which, according to his own account, he subsequently regretted, as he obviously regarded the British attitude towards Afghanistan at that time in much the same light as certain continental nations regarded the British attitude towards the Transvaal previous to the last Boer war. "About the same time," says the same letter from the Resident at Bushire, Masson was much in the Bahawalpur country (Sind), after which he proceeded to Peshawar, Kabul, Ghazni, etc. Extracts from his reports of his journeys are forwarded with other information. In his book (Travels in Afghanistan, Baluchistan, the Punjab, and Kalat, published in 1842) Masson opens his story with the autumn of 1826, when he was in Bahawalpur and Sind, which he had approached through Rajputana, and not from Afghanistan. He has much to say about Bahawalpur which, however interesting and valuable as first-hand information about a foreign state in 1826, no longer concerns this story. From Bahawalpur he passed on to Peshawar and Kabul, from Kabul to Kandahar, and thence to Shikarpur. As the incidents of his remarkable journey between Kandahar and Shikarpur, described in the letter of the Bushire Resident, are obviously the same as those in his book, the inference is strong that the journey from Tiflis to Herat and Kandahar (which is not mentioned in the book) has been somehow misplaced in the Resident's record.

When Masson entered Afghanistan from Peshawar there is certain indirect evidence that this was the first time that he crossed the Afghan border. He knew nothing of the Pashto language, which would be remarkable in the case of a man like Masson, who always lived with the people and not with the chiefs, and there is not the remotest reference to any previous visit to Herat in his subsequent history. We will at any rate follow the text of his own narrative, and surely no narrative of adventure that has ever appeared before or since in connection with Afghan exploration can rival it for interest. Peshawar was at that time held by four Pathan Sirdars, brothers, who were hardly independent, as they held their country (a small space extending to about 25 miles round Peshawar, and which included Kohat and Hangu) entirely at the pleasure of Ranjit Singh, the Sikh Chief of the Punjab. Some show of making a strike for independence had been made in connection with the Yusufzai rising led by Saiad Ahmad Shah, but it had been suppressed, and during the temporary occupation of Peshawar by the Sikhs the city had been despoiled and devastated. Masson estimated that there were about fifty or sixty thousand inhabitants in Peshawar, where he was exceedingly well treated. "People of all classes were most civil and desirous to oblige." He was an honoured guest at all entertainments.

How long Masson remained at Peshawar it is difficult to say, for there is a most lamentable absence of dates from his records, and Peshawar appears to have been the base from which he started on a good many excursions. Finally he made acquaintance with a Pathan who offered to accompany him to Kabul, and he left Peshawar for Afghanistan by the Khaibar route. He mentions two other routes as being popular in those days, i.e. those of Abkhana and Karapa, and he asserts that they were far more secure for traders than the Khaibar, but not so level nor so direct. Masson started with his companion, dressed as a Pathan, but taking nothing but a few pais (copper coins) and a book. His companion, however, possessed a knife tied up in a corner of his pyjamas. After cautiously crossing the plains and some intervening hills, they struck the high road of the Khaibar apparently not far from Ali Masjid, and here they fell in with the first people they had met en route—about twenty men sitting in the shade of a rock, "elderly, respectable, and venerable." They were hospitably received and entertained, and news of the arrival of a European quickly spread. Every European was expected to be a doctor in those days, and Masson had to assume the rôle and make the most of his limited medical knowledge. He either prescribed local remedies, or healed the sick on Christian Science principles with a certain amount of success—enough to ensure him a welcome wherever he went. It is a curious story for any one who has traversed the Khaibar in these later days to read. A European with a most limited knowledge of Pushto tramping the road in company with a Pathan, living the simple life of the people, picking up information every yard of the way, keenly interested in his rough surroundings, taking count of the ragged groups of stone-built huts clinging to the hill-sides or massed around a central citadel in the open plain, with here and there a disintegrating monument crowning the hill-top with a cupola or dome, the like of which he had never seen before.

Masson had hardly realized in these early days that he was on one of the routes most sacred to pilgrimage of all those known to the disciples of Buddha, and it was not till later years that he set about a systematic exploration of the extraordinary wealth of Buddhist relics which lie about Jalalabad and the valleys adjoining the Khaibar route to Kabul. On his journey he made his way with the varied incidents of adventure common to the time—robbed at one place, treated with hospitality at another; sitting under the mulberry trees discussing politics with all the energy of the true Afghan (who is never deficient in the power of expressing his political sentiments), and, taking it altogether, enjoying a close, if not an absolutely friendly, intimacy with the half-savage people of those wholly savage hills. An intimacy, such as no other educated European has ever attained, and which tells a tale of a totally different attitude on the part of the Afghan towards the European then, to that which has existed since. The fact that Masson was American and not English counted for nothing. The difference was not recognized by the Afghans, although it was explained by him sometimes with careful elaboration. It was the time when Dost Mahomed ruled in Kabul, but with the claims of Shah Sujah (possibly backed by both Sikh and British) on the political horizon. It was a time of political intrigue amongst Afghan Sirdars and chiefs so complicated and so widespread as to be almost unintelligible at this distance of time, and not even Masson, with all his advantages of intimate association and great powers of intuition, seems to have fathomed the position satisfactorily. Consequently it was to the interests of the Afghan Government to stand well with the British, even if it were equally their aim to keep on good terms with Russia—in short, to play the same game that has lasted during the rest of the century, and which threatens to last for many another decade yet. But this was before the mission of Burnes, and before the events of the subsequent Afghan war had taught the Afghan that British arms were not necessarily invincible, nor British promises always trustworthy.

Apart from the ordinary chances of disaster on the roads arising from the lack of law and order, any European would have met with a hospitable reception at that time, and Masson himself relates how, in Kabul, during some of the friendly gatherings which he attended, the respective probabilities of British or Russian intervention in Kabul affairs was a common subject of discussion. It is easy for one who knows the country to picture him sitting under the shade of the mulberry trees, with the soft lush of the Afghan summer in grass and flowers about him, the scent of the willow in the air, and, across the sliding blue of the Kabul River, a dim haze shadowing the rounded outlines of some ancient stupa, whilst trying to unriddle the tangle of Afghan politics or taking notes of weird stories and ancient legends. Nothing seems to have come amiss to his inquiring mind. Archæology, numismatics, botany, geology, and history—it was all new to him, and an inexhaustible opportunity lay before him. He certainly made good use of it. He busied himself, amongst other things, with an inquiry into the origin of the Siahposh Kafirs, and, although his speculations regarding them have long been discounted by the results of subsequent investigation from nearer points of view, it is interesting to note how these savages were then regarded by the nearest Mahomedan communities. Masson admits that the history of a Greek origin is supported by all natural and historical indications, but he declines to accept "so bold and welcome an inference." Why he should call it "bold and welcome" and then reject it, is not explained, but it is probable that he accepted the claim to a Greek origin on the part of the Kafirs as indicating that they claimed to be Greek and nothing but Greek. When we consider the number and extent of the Greek colonies which once existed beyond the Hindu Kush it would indeed be surprising if there were no survival of Greek blood in the veins of the people who, in the last stronghold of a conquered and hunted race, represent the debris of the once powerful Baktrian kingdom. Incidentally he discussed the interesting episode of Timur's invasion of Kafiristan, a subject on which no recent investigations have thrown any further light. The story, as told by Timur's historian, Sharifudin, says that in A.D. 1399, when Timur was at Andarab, complaints were made to him of outrage and oppression by the exaction of tribute, or "Karaj," against the idolaters of Katawar and the Siahposh. It appears that Katawar was then the general name for the northern regions of Kafiristan, although no reference to that name had been recorded lately.

Timur is said to have taken a third part of the army of the Andarab against the infidels, and to have reached Perjan (probably Parwan), from whence he detached a part of his force to act to the north of that place, whilst he himself proceeded to Kawak, which is certainly Khawak at the head of the Panjshir valley. If Perjan is Parwan (which I think most probable) this distribution of his force would indicate that he held the Panjshir valley at both ends, and thus secured his flank whilst operating in Kafiristan. From Khawak he "made the ascent" of the mountains of "Ketnev" (i.e. he crossed the intervening snow-covered divide between the Panjshir and the head of the Alishang) and descended upon the fortress of Najil. This was abandoned by the Siahposh Kafirs, who held a high hill on the left bank of the river. After an obstinate fight the hill was carried, and the male infidels, "whose souls were blacker than their garments," were killed, and their women and children carried away. Timur set up a marble pillar with an inscription recording the event, and it would be exceedingly interesting if that pillar could be identified. Masson thinks that a structure which he ascertained to have been in existence in his time a little to the north of Najil, known as the Timur Hissar (Timur's Fort), may be the fort which Timur destroyed after it had been abandoned by the Kafirs, and that the record of his victory would be found near by. The chief of Najil in Masson's time claimed descent from Timur, and there was (and is still) so much of Tartar tradition enveloping the valley of Najil (or the upper Alishang) as to make it fairly certain that Tartar, or Mongol, troops did actually invade that valley from the Panjshir, and that there is consequently a practicable pass from the Panjshir into the upper Alishang.

If we are correct in our assumption of the position of Farajghan and Najil in the modern maps of Afghanistan, as determined from native sources of information (for no surveyor has ever laid down the course of the upper affluents of the Alishang) this Mongol force must have crossed from about the centre of the Panjshir valley. It is a matter of interest to observe that, historically, between Afghan Turkistan and the Kabul plain the fashionable pass over the Hindu Kush until quite recently was the Parwan, and this, no doubt, was due to the fact that its altitude (12,300 feet) is less by quite 2000 feet than that of the Kaoshan which closely adjoins it, although the Kaoshan is in some other important respects the easier pass of the two. The Khawak, at the head of the Panjshir, is lower still (11,650 feet), but it offers a more circuitous route; whilst the Chahardar, the pass selected by the Amir Abdurrahmon for the construction of a high-road into Afghan Turkistan from the Kabul plain, is as high as the Kaoshan. All these routes converge on the important strategical position of Charikar, adjoining the junction of the Ghorband and Panjshir rivers; and they all lead from that ancient strategical centre of Baktria, the Andarab basin. Undoubtedly through all time the passage over the Khawak (now a well-trodden khafila route, said to be open to traffic all the year round) must have been the most attractive to the freebooters and adventurers of the north; but there appears to have been a reputation for ferocity and strength attached to the inhabitants of the Panjshir valley, which was remarkable even in the days when the only recognized right was might, and half Asia was peopled by barbarians. They were spoken of with the respect due to a condition of savage independence by the Arab writers who detail the geography of these regions, and it is probable that they shared the historical lawlessness of their Kafir neighbours (the Siahposh), even if in those days they did not share a race affinity. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Emperor Babar notes that the Panjshir people paid tribute to their neighbours the Kafirs.

Masson's observations on this troublous corner of Asiatic geography are shrewd and interesting, and as much to the purpose to-day as they were when they were written. The explorations of McNair and Robertson over the Kafiristan border from Chitral, and the march of Lockhart's party through the Arnawai valley, added much to the geographical knowledge of the eastern fringe of Kafiristan, whilst the identification of the Koh-i-Mor with the classic Meros, and of certain sections of the eastern Kafirs as representative of the ancient Nysæans, clearly establishes the Greek connection about which Masson was so sceptical. But the Kafirs of Central and Western Kafiristan, the inhabitants of the upper basins of the Alishang and Alingar about the centre of the Hindu Kush and of the Badakshan rivers to the north, are just as unknown to us as they were to him. The only certain inference that we can draw from the total absence of history about these valleys of the Hindu Kush is that between the Khawak Pass at the head of the Panjshir valley on the west, and the Minjan Pass leading to Chitral on the east, there is not, and never has been, a practicable route connecting the Kabul basin with Badakshan. No Arab khafilas ever passed that way; no hordes of raiding robbers from Central Asian fields ever forced a passage southward through those Kafir defiles; they are still dark and impenetrable, the home of distinct and separate valley communities, differing as widely in form of speech as in superstitious ritual, the very flotsam and jetsam of High Asia, as wild as the eagles above them or the markhor on their craggy hill-sides.

We will not follow Masson into the mazes of Afghan political history. It is all a story of the past, but a story with a moral to it. Had the Government of India in those days but troubled itself to obtain information from existing practical sources within its reach, instead of improvising a most imperfect political intelligence system, the subsequent war with Afghanistan would have been conducted on very different lines to those which were adopted, if it ever took place at all.