Ahmad Shah Durrani (c.1723-1773) (
Persian ???? ??? ?????), also known as
Ahmad Shah Abdali (
Pashto ???? ??? ??????) and born as
Ahmad Khan Abdali, was the founder of the
Durrani Empire and is regarded by many to be the founder of modern
Afghanistan.
[2][3] After the assassination of
Nader Shah Afshar, he became the
Amir of
Khorasan[4][5] and later became the founder and ruler of his own Empire. The
Pashtuns of Afghanistan often call him
Baba (
"father").
Ahmad Khan (later Ahmad Shah) was born in Multan, Punjab, Pakistan.[1] He was from the Sadozai section of the Popalzai clan of the Abdali Pashtuns, and he was the second son of Mohammed Zaman Khan, chief of the Abdalis. In his youth, Ahmad Shah and his elder brother, Zulfikar Khan, were imprisoned inside a fortress by Hussein Khan, the Ghilzai governor of Kandahar. Hussein Khan commanded a powerful tribe of Pashtuns, having conquered the eastern part of Persia a few years previously and trodden the throne of the Safavids.
In around 1731, Nader Shah Afshar, the new ruler of Persia, began enlisting the Abdalis in his army. After conquering Kandahar in 1737, Ahmad Khan and his brother were freed by the new Persian ruler. The Ghilzai were expelled from Kandahar and the Abdalis were allowed to settle there instead.[6]
Nader Shah favored Abdali due to his young and handsome features. Abdali was then given the title of “Dur-i-Durran” (Pear of Pearls) by Nader Shah and thus Ahmad Khan changed the Abdali tribe's name to the Durrani tribe. Ahmad Khan proved himself in Nader Shah's service and was promoted from a personal attendant (yasawal) to command a cavalry of Abdali tribesmen. Ahmad quickly rose to command a cavalry contingent estimated at four thousand strong[7], composed chiefly of Abdalis, in the service of the Shah on his invasion of India.
