{"book":"adl1197","page":177,"text":"—158—\neach one of which requires a separate chapter to itself. It is\nstrange, too, that this tragedy shows the valour and the Afghan\nspirit on both sides, but most unfortunately, that very unhappy trait\nof discord which had time and again hindered the happiness\nand had distressed our country is singularly manifested in this\nas in others. During this tragic encirclement of the town of Herat,\nthe Sirdar and his wife died within a short time of each other,\nand the city surrendered: It should be recorded that two weeks\nafter this the Amir too, died, and thus the curtain falls upon\nthis tragedy.\n\n* * *\n\nTEN MONTHS SIEGE OF HERAT.\nAmir Dost Mohamed Khan versus Sirdar Sultan Ahmed Khan.\n\nARTICLE FORTY FIRST\n\nThe last year of the life and reign of Amir Dost Mohamed\nKhan was practically spent in laying a siege of Herat ( 1278.\nA. H. ). This was a battle which had all the appearance of\nan internecine war, but as the fate of Herat depended upon\nit, both the king and the people of Herat were determined\nthat this tussle must take place, and the fight must con-\ntinue to the end. Sirdar Sultan Ahmed, too, did not show\nthe slightest inclination to weaken, and continued to defend\nthe city gallantly, so that the Sirdar did not surrender\n[margin: may 1863] till he died, and the king did not die till he did not\ncapture the city. In his old age, the national urge came\nupon the king, and in his failing health and physical dis-\nabilities he persevered to reduce Herat and was successful,\n( or was it death that solved the question ?)\n\n* * *\n\nThere is little doubt that it was Sirdar Sultan Ahmed Khan,\nthe son of Sirdar Mohamed Azeem Khan, who put in a great\ndeal of effort to expel the aggressors from the realm, and\ntowards his later, years was a claimer to the throne. But when\nthat feeling did and not translate itself into reality, ( through the","chars":1851,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl1197/00177.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":205,"title":"Men and events through 18th and 19th century Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl1197/177","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl1197/canvas/177","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl1197/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl1197_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}