Battle of Malandrai Pass

By the mid-1580s, Emperor Akbar had consolidated Mughal control over northern India and stood at the height of his power. Yet this stability was threatened when the ruler of Transoxiana occupied Badakhshan, threatening Kabul, then ruled by Akbar's unreliable and only intermittently loyal half-brother Hakim. In July 1585, Hakim died, opening the way for Akbar to assume direct control of Kabul. He immediately sent Man Singh, one of his most trusted generals, to occupy Kabul and set about widening and improving the road that ran from the new fort at Attock via the Khyber Pass to Kabul. The area through which the new road ran was then, as now, wild and lawless, populated by fierce and independent Pushtu tribes. The Afridi of the Khyber and Yousafzai raiding parties from modern Swat and Buner became increasingly bold, their depredations on law-abiding travellers irking some. Their main source of income was extortion and theft from passing travellers.

Things came to a head in 1586 when the Afridis overran the Khyber Pass and attacked Peshawar, killing the governor. Enough was enough. Akbar planned two concurrent expeditions. Man Singh marched back down the Grand Trunk Road from Jalalabad and, without difficulty, re-opened the Khyber Pass. However, Akbar was determined to also chastise and intimidate the recalcitrant Yousafzai tribes in Bajaur and Swat and dispatched a punitive expedition for this purpose under the command of his own foster-brother, the competent Zain Khan Khokhak. The column started from Attock and, having harassed the region between Peshawar and the Swat River, marched up into Bajaur. However, as the Mughal entered Swat, they ran into increasing resistance from the Yousafzai tribesmen, who were reported to be "as numerous as ants and locusts". Zain Khan halted at Chakdara and started to build a fort while he sent to Akbar for reinforcements. The emperor agreed and a contingent was readied, but there was disagreement over who would command it.

The three commanders met at Chakdara, near where Churchill's Piquet now stands, and held a stormy council of war. It is hard to think of three men so ill-assorted as these. Zain Khan was the son of Akbar's first wet-nurse by a Turk from Herat. He was almost illiterate, but a tough warrior, a brave man and a good commander who was able enough to have risen through the ranks. Birbal and Hakim were very different. They were cultured and urbane members of the Mughal court, neither of whom had ever commanded an army in the field. Birbal was Akbar's poet laureate, a scholar and wit—the Muslim chronicles call him a "proud and haughty Brahmin"—who, though he had briefly been in nominal charge of the construction of Attock Fort, had no military experience or ability whatever. Hakim was perhaps an even worse choice. He was a Persian poet and philosopher with unconventional, even heretical, religious beliefs, whom many believed had been responsible for turning Akbar from the path of Muslim orthodoxy.

The council of war was contentious. The meeting had to be moved to the Brahmin's tent when substantive discussions began. Zain Khan proposed that they should complete the fort in Chakdara (by implication, with himself in charge) and could campaign again against the tribes. However, neither of the others would agree to this, insisting that the whole army must decamp together through Buner and back by the quickest route back to Attock (though Birbal decamped bitterly that "he did not know what would be the upshot of climbing mountains in this horrible country"). Zain Khan argued in vain that it was madness to entangle the whole army in the unknown and precipitous defiles without a base, but was overruled. Fearing that the two "elegant courtiers" would complain against him to the emperor, Zain Khan was forced to yield.

The imperial forces, now numbering about 16,000, left Chakdara on 12 February 1586. The next day they ran into heavy tribal opposition on the approach to the Karakar Pass. A whole day was needed to clear a passage through, but instead of stopping there, Birbal pressed straight on down into Buner. To prevent the army being split, Zain Khan was forced to follow. Great confusion ensued, for the pass is much steeper on this side and almost impossible to follow. Zain Khan's rearguard fought off a succession of heavy attacks and it took two more days of incessant fighting to reach the flat ground of the Buner valley. Once there, the troops imagined they were safely down on the plains of the Peshawar Valley, only to discover with dismay that they faced yet another stiff climb by a narrow and difficult defile over the Malandrai Pass. A further council of war was held. Again Zain Khan proposed that they should build a camp and reorganize before undertaking the operation against the tribes. They were lucky to have got so far. The tribesmen could not stay in the field for long, and must be thoroughly cowed before the Mughal army attempted the passes ahead, which were even rougher than those they had come through. It was no use. Frightened now, the others wanted only to get out as quickly as they could. Again Zain Khan yielded and the march resumed, with Birbal in the lead and Zain Khan taking up the rear as before.

The Yousafzai opposition continued to grow and everything fell into confusion as the army entered the Malandrai Pass. The tribesmen lined the hills on both sides of the track, pouring in volleys of arrows and stones. Birbal was killed and, as night came on, panic set in. The route was blocked by an inextricable mêlée of elephants, horses and stores. Disoriented soldiers fled into the maze of hills, to be slaughtered by the tribesmen or fall over precipices. Only the rearguard under Zain Khan retained any semblance of order. Pushing on doggedly through the mayhem, he picked a spot to shelter under a bush, and bivouacked for the night just short of the crest of the pass. The tribesmen, sated with the slaughter, drew off to loot, and three days later the sorry remnant of the Mughal army struggled into Attock, having lost some 8,000 men, or about half the army. The destruction of the Mughal army here was principally a result of poor leadership and poor discipline.