Durrani Empire

  General Description   The Duranni Empire (1747-1826 CE) was a political entity that lasted 79 years by plundering its higher populated and wealthier neighbors. ^[1] Founded by a former soldier of the Afsharid Kingdom named Ahmad Shah Durrani, at its maximum extent it covered over 1.5 million KM2 of territory surrounding modern-day Afganistan. ^[1]
Ahmad Shah Durrani had been elected to the monarchy by an inter-tribal assembly called the Loya Jirga. ^[1] Following his death in 1772 CE , rebellion and internal strife led to a loss of power so that by 1818 CE, the Durrani controlled a small territory surrounding the capital of Kabul. ^[2] The regime was finally extinguished when Afghanistan fell into a period of sustained civil war. The eventual victors were members of the Barkzai dynasty, who came to power in 1837 CE . ^[2]
The Durrani state was an empire sustained and governed through the maintenance of a large number of armed horseman primarily recruited from the Pashtun peoples, although conquests in the period of 1747-1752 CE added horsemen from the Turkmen, Uzbek, Tajik, and Hazara tribes to the King’s army. ^[2] The army was organized under a hierarchical tribal confederacy. ^[3]
As a loose confederation of tribes there was not much in the way of an administration except for that possessed by conquered elites, who were largely left alone if they made their tribute payments. What short term central administrative posts that did exist were given to members of the governing tribes. ^[4] Soldiers received almost all the money: paid through generous land grants called Jegeirs, while the remaining revenue was spent on meeting the costs of the large army ^[5] which expanded rapidly from 16,000 in 1747 to about 120,000 in 1761 CE. ^[1]

[1]: (Barfield 2010, 97-109) Thomas Barfield. 2010. Afghanistan: a cultural and political history. Princeton University Press.

[2]: (Runion 2007, 69-73) Meredith L Runion. 2007. The history of Afghanistan. Greenwood Publishing Group.

[3]: (Barfield 2010, 100) Thomas Barfield. 2010. Afghanistan: a cultural and political history. Princeton University Press.

[4]: (Saikal 2006, 22-24) Amin Saikal. 2006 Modern Afghanistan: A struggle for Survival. I.B. Tauris.

[5]: Lothar Brock. Hans-Henrik Holm. Georg Sørensen. Michael Stohl. 2011. Fragile states. polity, 2011 comments on the problems of governing such a loose confederation; for a brief look at the decline, see http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/7798/Afghanistan/21395/Nadir-Shah