‘GAZETTEER OF PERSIA VOL. I Comprising the Provinces of ASTARÁBÁD, SHÁHRUD-BÚSTAN, KHÚRÁSÁN, AND SÍSTÁN’ [‎298v] (603/722)

which city be would himself have captured two years previously, had -lie
not been recalled by the death of his father, Abbas Mirza. The national
sentiment was in strict accordance with this ambitious line of policy.
r j he imagination of the people of Persia, always sufficiently pretentious and
arrogant^ had been more inflated than ever by the successes which had
attended the last campaigns of Abbas Mirza in Khurasan; and it was
considered not only right, but feasible, that Persia should recover possession
of Herat and incorporate it in her own territory, with the view of
prosecuting vast and ill-defined designs of conquest to the eastward. This
assumed right, however, was utterly without foundation. According to
international law, with which Persia is sufficiently familiar, and to which
she has never failed to appeal when dealing with representatives of foreign
powers, a dormant claim to territory cannot be legally allowed after the
la? sr of sixty years. For nearly a century, however, the territory of Herat
had formed an integral portion of Afghanistan ; and although during the
struggles between the Barakzais and the Sadozais the ruler of Herat had
occasionally acknowledged the suzerainty of Persia rather than that of
Kabul, vet'Persia had not, and could not, exercise any sovereign or territorial
rights in a province held by a relra tory vassal of the Afghanistan
o*?vernment. But, besides Herat, Persia put forward an arbhrary claim to
Afo-han territory as far to the eastward as Ghazni—a claim which was
altogether out of the question. If Persia could base any right upon the
evanescent conquests of Nadir Shah, or the by-gone empire of the old
Safavian sovereigns, it must have extended over the whole of Afghan
istan, and not be confined to an arbitrary p rtiun of that territory.
There was another specific claim, which Persia- put forward as regards
the little territory of Sistan, which also requires some explanation. Sistan,
like Afghanistan, had formed a part of the Persian empire of Nadir Shah;
but from 1749 to 1794 it bad formed a part of the Afghan empire under
Ahmad Shah and his successor Taimur Shah. From 1794 Sistan was
entirely independent. In IbOO there were three chmfs m Sistan, vtz. f
Bahrain Khan, Amir Khan, and Khan Jahan Khan. Of these, Bahrain
Khan was the most powerful, and the other two paid him homage, but no
tribute ; and he assumed the title of king and t he state and forms of royalty.
Neither of the chiefs paid revenue or tribute either to Persia or Afghan
istan. In 1844 Jalal-ud-din, son of Bahrain Khan, succeeded his father,
but was expelled from Sislan ; but Yar Muhammad Khan, the Herat- wazii,
restored him to the throne, and established the suzerainty of Herat over
Sistan. At this step the Persian government considered itself aggrieved ;
hut in reality the Shah had no claim to dominion in Sistan, beyond what
was implied in a promise given by a rival chieftain, that if the Shah would
assist him in obtaining- Sistan, he would acknowledge tiie sovereignty
of Persia.
Having thus indicated the nature and extent of the pretensions of the
Shah/s government to the eastward, it becomes necessary to point
out the measures undertaken by Muhammad Shah for carrying out his
aggressive policy. Having prepared an army for active service in Khurasan,
Muhammad Shah took the held i n 1846, ostensibly for the purpose of reducing
the Turkuman tribes, who had long been independent of all constraint, ami
had carried on their slave-hunting expeditions against Khurasan without
much check or hindrance. A division of the Persian army was accordingly
detached under prince Faridun to attack the fortified town of Kurakina.