The Battle of Jamrud

The fort at the mouth

The Sikh Empire took Peshawar in 1834 and then had to hold it, which meant holding the passes behind it. Hari Singh Nalwa, governing the frontier, built a chain of forts through the approaches; Jamrud, raised in 1836 at the eastern mouth of the Khyber, was the furthest forward and the most provocative. It sat directly across the road any Afghan force would use.^1,3

April 1837

The timing was chosen. Much of the Sikh court and a large part of the army were at Lahore for the wedding of Ranjit Singh’s grandson, and an Afghan force under Dost Muhammad Khan’s sons moved on the frontier while they were there.

Jamrud’s garrison was small. Hari Singh rode from Peshawar with what troops were available and fought a defensive action through the last days of April 1837. The fort was not taken and the Afghan advance did not get past it, but he was hit — the accounts say by musket fire — and died of the wound.^1,3

The tradition holds that he ordered his death kept from the garrison until relief came up from Peshawar, on the reasoning that men who knew their commander was dead would not hold the walls. Reinforcements arrived, the Afghan force withdrew, and the frontier stayed where it was.

What it settled and what it did not

Jamrud is usually described as a Sikh victory, and in the terms that mattered at the time it was: the pass was held and the Sikh Empire kept the north-western frontier until it fell. It is a strange victory to celebrate, though, and Sikh accounts generally do not celebrate it. The empire lost the one general it could not replace, two years before it lost the Maharaja as well.¹

Both sides claimed the field, which is common enough when an attack fails without the defenders being able to pursue. Afghan accounts emphasise the death of Hari Singh; Sikh accounts emphasise that Jamrud remained in Sikh hands. Both are accurate.

Ranjit Singh died in 1839. Within six years of that, the empire was at war with the British, and within ten it no longer existed.