Sir William Hay Macnaghten, 1st Baronet, was a British civil servant in India, who played a major part in the First Anglo-Afghan War.
Dost Mohammad Khan Barakzai, nicknamed the Amir-i Kabir, was the founder of the Barakzai dynasty and one of the prominent rulers of Afghanistan during the First Anglo-Afghan War. With the decline of the Durrani dynasty, he became the Emir of Afghanistan in 1826. An ethnic Pashtun, he belonged to the Barakzai tribe. He was the 11th son of Payinda Khan, chief of the Barakzai Pashtuns, who was killed in 1799 by King Zaman Shah Durrani.
The First Anglo-Afghan War was fought between the British Empire and the Emirate of Kabul from 1838 to 1842. The British initially successfully invaded the country taking sides in a succession dispute between emir Dost Mohammad Khan (Barakzai) and former King Shah Shujah (Durrani), whom they reinstalled upon occupying Kabul in August 1839. The main British Indian force occupied Kabul and endured harsh winters. The force and its camp followers were almost completely massacred during the 1842 retreat from Kabul.
William Benedict Hamilton-Dalrymple is an India-based Scottish historian and art historian, as well as a curator, broadcaster and critic. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the world's largest writers' festival, the annual Jaipur Literature Festival. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.
Wazīr Akbar Khān, born Mohammad Akbar Khān and also known as Amīr Akbar Khān, was a Barakzai prince, general, emir for a year, and finally wazir/heir apparent to Dost Mohammad Khan until his death in 1847. His fame began with the 1837 Battle of Jamrud, while attempting to regain Afghanistan's second capital Peshawar from the Sikh Empire.
Major-General William George Keith Elphinstone CB was an officer of the British Army during the 19th century.
The Kabul Expedition was a punitive campaign undertaken by the British against the Afghans following the disastrous retreat from Kabul. Two British and East India Company armies forced through the Khyber Pass and advanced on the Afghan capital from Kandahar and Jalalabad to avenge the complete annihilation of the British-Indian military-civilian column in January 1842.
The Battle of Jalalabad in 1842 was an Afghan siege of the isolated British outpost at Jalalabad, about 90 miles (140 km) east of Kabul during the First Anglo-Afghan War. The siege was lifted after five months when a British counterattack routed the Afghans, driving them back to Kabul.
Istālif is a mostly Tajik village 29 kilometres (18 mi) northwest of Kabul, Afghanistan, situated at an elevation of 1,693 metres (5,554 ft) in the Shomali Plains, west of Kalakan and south-west of Bagram. It is the center of Istalif District, Kabul Province, Afghanistan.
William Brydon was a British doctor who was assistant surgeon in the British East India Company Army during the First Anglo-Afghan War, famous for reportedly being the only member of an army of 4,500 men, plus 12,000 accompanying civilians, to reach safety in Jalalabad at the end of the 1842 retreat from Kabul.
The 1842 retreat from Kabul was the retreat of the British and East India Company forces from Kabul during the First Anglo-Afghan War. An uprising in Kabul forced the then-commander, Major-General William Elphinstone, to fall back to the British garrison at Jalalabad. As the army and its numerous dependants and camp followers began their march, it came under attack from Afghan tribesmen. Many in the column died of exposure, frostbite or starvation, or were killed during the fighting.
Mir Masjidi Khan is one of many celebrated Afghan resistance leaders from Shamali Plain who opposed the installation of Shuja Shah Durrani as Emir of Afghanistan by the Government of British India during the First Anglo-Afghan War. He kept up a fierce struggle against the occupation forces in and around Kabul and Northern Afghanistan, until his death.
Jan Prosper Witkiewicz was a Lithuanian orientalist, explorer and diplomat serving the Russian Empire. He was a Russian agent in Kabul just before the First Anglo-Afghan War.
Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, written by the Scottish historian William Dalrymple and published in 2013, is an account of the First Anglo-Afghan War from 1839 to 1842.
The remnants of an army, Jellalabad (sic), January 13, 1842, better known as Remnants of an Army, is an 1879 oil-on-canvas painting by Elizabeth Thompson, Lady Butler. It depicts William Brydon, assistant surgeon in the Bengal Army, arriving at the gates of Jalalabad in January 1842. The walls of Jalalabad loom over a desolate plain and riders from the garrison gallop from the gate to reach the solitary figure bringing the first word of the fate of the "Army of Afghanistan".
Colonel John Shelton was an officer of the British Army who commanded the 44th Regiment of Foot during the First Anglo-Afghan War and was second-in-command to Major General Sir William Elphinstone. He was one of only a small number of British soldiers to survive the disastrous 1842 retreat from Kabul, in which a British army column of 4,500 men and 12,000 civilians was massacred by Afghan tribesmen as it attempted to march to Jalalabad. He was widely disliked as a tyrannical and ineffective commander whose failures led to the annihilation of his regiment and whose accidental death was cheered by his men, but he also had a deserved reputation for great physical bravery.
Shah Shujah Durrani was ruler of the Durrani Empire from 1803 to 1809. He then ruled from 1839 until his death in 1842. Son of Timur Shah Durrani, Shujah was of the Sadduzai line of the Abdali group of ethnic Pashtuns. He became the fifth King of the Durrani Empire.
The Battle of Nimla took place between June–July 1809, due to a conflict between Mahmud Shah Durrani and Shah Shuja Durrani over the succession for the Durrani throne. The battle resulted in a victory for Mahmud Shah and allowed him to secure the throne, where he reigned from 1809 to 1818. This was his second reign before he was deposed.
The Parwan Campaign took place from October–November 1840, as a result of Dost Mohammad Khan's rebellion against Shah Shuja and the British backed regime. The Parwan campaign had over 13 battles, with each and every one of them ending in an Afghan victory, including a final confrontation at Parwan Darra, with Robert Sale forced to abandon the campaign and return to Kabul.
Beginning in January 1833, Shah Shujah Durrani, the deposed Afghan emperor, led an expedition to re-claim his throne. Raising a force while in exile in the Sikh Empire, he marched through Sindh to Kandahar, besieging it from 10 May 1834 until 1 July 1834. Shah Shujah would be defeated by the Barakzai rulers of Kandahar and Kabul.
