Afridi ambush in the Khyber Pass

01The pass closes

The Khyber was the Mughal road between Peshawar and Kabul, and the Afridis who lived on its slopes were paid to keep it open. Quarrels with Mughal officials and an insult to a tribal woman, as the story was told, set off a revolt under Aimal Khan, who proclaimed himself king. In the spring of 1672 Muhammad Amin Khan, governor of Kabul, marched into the pass with his army and his household on his way back from Peshawar. The Afridis held the heights.

02Disaster at Ali Masjid

Near Ali Masjid, where the pass narrows, the tribesmen blocked the road and rained stones and bullets from both sides. The Mughal army broke up in the defile. Its treasure, elephants and the women of the governor’s family were taken. Amin Khan escaped to Peshawar with a few followers. The Pashtun poet-chief Khushal Khan Khattak joined the rising, and for two years the frontier was in flames, until Aurangzeb came to Hasan Abdal in 1674 to direct the war himself.