Siege of Malakand

Siege of Malakand
Part of the Anglo-Afghan wars

South Malakand Camp, August 1897
Date26 July – 2 August 1897
Location
Malakand, British India 34°35′47″N 71°55′52″E / 34.59639°N 71.93111°E / 34.59639; 71.93111
Result British Victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom British Empire

Pashtun tribes

Commanders and leaders
William Hope Meiklejohn, Bindon Blood Faqīr Saidullah[3]
Strength
10,630 on 26 July 1897[4] 10,000[5]
Casualties and losses
Heavy Heavy

The siege of Malakand was the 26 July – 2 August 1897 siege of the British garrison in the Malakand region of colonial British India's North West Frontier Province.[6] The British faced a force of Pashtun tribesmen whose tribal lands had been bisected by the Durand Line,[7] the 1,519 mile (2,445 km) border between Afghanistan and British India drawn up at the end of the Anglo-Afghan wars to help hold back what the British feared to be the Russian Empire's spread of influence towards the Indian subcontinent.

The unrest caused by this division of the Pashtun lands of Afghania led to the rise of Saidullah, a Pashtun faqir who led a great army of at least 10,000 tribesmen of the regional Yusufzai, Mohmand, Uthmankhel, Bunerwal, Swati tribes among others[5][8] against the British garrison in Malakand. Although the British forces were divided among a number of poorly defended positions, the small garrison at the camp of Malakand South and the small fort at Chakdara were both able to hold out for six days against the much larger Pashtun army.

The siege was lifted when a relief column dispatched from British positions to the south was sent to assist General William Hope Meiklejohn, commander of the British forces at Malakand South. Accompanying this relief force was Second Lieutenant Winston Churchill, who later published his account as The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War.

  1. ^ Kevin James Baker · (2011). Diary of a Spitfire Pilot:Over the English Channel and Over Darwin. p. 115. ISBN 9781921719394.
  2. ^ Michael Barthorp, Douglas N. Anderson (1996). The Frontier Ablaze: The North-west: Frontier Rising, 1897–98. Windrow & Greene. ISBN 9781859150337.
  3. ^ Edwards p. 263. also known as "Mullah Mastun" (Spain. 177, Easwaran p. 49) (Known by the Pashtun as: lewanai faqir, lewanai (Beattie p. 171), and by the British as "The Great Fakir", "Mad Fakir" (Hobday p. 13), or the "Mad Mullah", (Elliott–Lockhart p. 28)
  4. ^ Gore p. 403
  5. ^ a b A number of sources cite between 50,000–100,000 tribesmen as being present in the region during the siege (Wilkinson–Latham p. 20, Gore p. 405) while others give a figure of 10,000 for the actual siege (Easwaran p. 49)
  6. ^ Nevill p. 232
  7. ^ Lamb p. 93
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference DLT was invoked but never defined (see the help page).