Hurlingham Fine Arts

Description

A rare life portrait of Ghulam Haidar Khan (1816-1858), son and heir-apparent of Dost Mohammad Khan, Emir of Afghanistan, drawn at Peshawar by then brevet Major Harry Burnett Lumsden on 30th March 1855.

The life of Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Burnett Lumsden K.C.S.I,C.B. in India and Afghanistan is well documented in the biography, Lumsden of the Guides, by General Sir Peter S.Lumsden, G.C.B., C.S.I and George R. Elsmie C.S.I, first published 1899.
As a soldier in the army of the British East India Company he was part of the Anglo-Indian army that occupied Kabul in the First Afghan War 1839-42. Afterwards he was stationed at Peshawar, forming his own cavalry corps known as the Guides who were locally recruited to protect the Northern Frontier from attacks by waring tribes hostile to British rule.

Emir Dost Mohammad Khan 1792-1863 was the founder of the Barakzai dynasty. He was a formidable military and political strategist and considered to be one of the greatest Afghan rulers. By 1854, after a serious uprising in Balkh and further difficulties arising in Herat and Kandahar through the intrigues of Persia, the Emir sought an alliance with the British and a letter of goodwill was forwarded to the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, in Calcutta, who proposed that the friendship of the British and the Afghans should be recorded in a valid treaty. The Emir was invited to deputise a Sirdar of high rank and wisdom to Peshawar to meet a British Officer, who would be appointed to act as agent of the Governor-General, and who would have full power and liberty to enter into and execute a treaty. In response to this invitation the Emir sent his son and Heir-apparent, Sirdar Ghulam Haidar Khan, to Peshawar to act as his plenipotentiary. Sir John Lawrence was sent to Peshawar, and was invested with full powers to negotiate with Sirdar Ghulam Haidar Khan.
The meeting took place and the treaty was concluded at Peshawar on the 30th March 1855. It was guaranteed that the British should respect the Emir's possessions in Afghanistan, and never interfere with them, while the Emir engaged, similarly, to respect British territory, and also to be the friend of our friends, and the enemy of our enemies.
In the present drawing it is very likely Ghulam Haidar Khan is holding up a copy of this treaty as witnessed by Lumsden's date inscription '30th March 1855'.