Kabul Shahi - Move To Kabul; Dynastic Continuity

Move To Kabul; Dynastic Continuity

In subsequent years, the Muslim armies returned with large reinforcements and Kabul was swept when the Shahi ruler agreed to pay tribute to the conquerors. For strategical reasons, the Shahis, who continued to offer stubborn resistance to Muslim onslaughts, finally moved their capital from Kapisa to Kabul in about AD 794. Kabul Shahis remained in Kabul until AD 879 when Ya'qub-i Laith Saffari, the founder of the Saffarid dynasty, conquered the city. Kabul Shahis had built a defensive wall all around the Kabul city to protect it against the army of Muslim Saffarids. The remains of these walls are still visible over the mountains which are located inside the Kabul city.

The first Hindu Shahi dynasty was founded in AD 870 by Kallar (see above). Kallar is well documented to be a Brahmin. The kingdom was bounded on the north by the Hindu kingdom of Kashmir, on the east by Rajput kingdoms, on the south by the Muslim Emirates of Multan and Mansura, and on the west by the Abbasid Caliphate.

According to the confused accounts recorded by Alberuni which are chiefly based on folklore, the last king of the first Shahi dynasty, Lagaturman (Katorman) was overthrown and imprisoned by his Brahmin vizier Kallar, thus resulting in the change-over of dynasty.

The Hindu Shahi, a term used by history writer Al-Biruni to refer to the ruling Hindu dynasty that took over from the Turki Shahi and ruled the region during the period prior to Muslim conquests of the 10th and 11th centuries.

The term Hindu Shahi was a royal title of this dynasty and not its actual clan or ethnological name. Al-Biruni used the title Shah for many other contemporary royal houses in his descriptions as well.

It is very remarkable that Kalhana (c. 12th century), the author of Rajatarangini (written in AD 1147–49), also refers to the Shahis and does not maintain any difference or distinction between the earlier Shahis (RT IV.143) and the later Shahis or does not refer to any supplanting of the dynasty at any stage as Alberuni does in his Tarikh-al-Hind. etc., unbroken to as far as or earlier than AD 730. It is also remarkable that Rajatrangini and all other sources refer to the Shahi rulers of Udabhandapura/Waihind as belonging to the Kshatriya lineage in contrast to Alberuni who designates the earlier Shahi rulers as Turks and the later as Brahmins

Since the change of Shahi capital from Kabul to Waihind or Uddhabhandapura had also occurred precisely around this period, it is probable that the narrator of the folklore/tellatale to Alberuni had confused the "change of capital" issue with the "supplanting of Kabul Shahi dynasty" since the incidence of shift had occurred remotely about 200 years prior to Alberuni's writing (AD 1030). There is no doubt, as the scholars also admit, that the change in dynasty is effected by "a common legend of eastern story", which surely bears the express mark of folklore for the previous history of Kabul Shahis, hence obviously speculative and not much worthy of serious history.