First Herat War
In the late summer of 1837, a young British artillery officer named Eldred Pottinger arrived in Herat disguised as a horse trader. He carried no official orders. He had no army behind him. What he did have was an instinct that this ancient city at the crossroads of Central Asia was about to become the flashpoint of a confrontation between empires -- and he was right. Within weeks, a Persian army of tens of thousands would surround Herat's mud-brick walls, and the fate of this single Afghan city would ricochet through the courts of London, St. Petersburg, and Tehran.
The Prize at the Crossroads
Herat had always been contested ground. Sitting where the fertile Hari Rud valley meets the road to Kandahar and the passes into India, the city was the gateway that every empire coveted. Before the Safavid Empire collapsed, Herat belonged to the greater Khorasan region of Persia. In 1747, when the Durrani Empire broke away during a grand council known as a loya jirga, Herat went with it. The Qajar dynasty that reunified Iran never accepted the loss. Starting in 1816, they made periodic attempts to retake the city, briefly capturing it before retreating when no lasting military advantage could be held. By the 1830s, Qajar Shah Mohammed Shah saw Herat not just as a lost province but as a stepping stone. He planned to extend his influence to the Amu Darya river and punish the rulers of Khiva, Bukhara, and Badghis, whose raids had depopulated much of Khorasan.
Pawns and Proxy Players
What made the First Herat War far more than a regional border dispute was the invisible hand of empire. Russia, pushing south toward British India, encouraged Persia's ambitions. Count Simonich, the Russian envoy, rode with the Persian army. Jan Prosper Witkiewicz, a Polish-Lithuanian officer in Russian service, worked the diplomatic channels. On the other side stood the British, alarmed that a Russian-backed Persia at the gates of Afghanistan could threaten the northwest approaches to India. Sir John McNeill, the British envoy in Tehran, protested the invasion. And Pottinger, who had slipped into Herat on his own initiative, found himself advising the city's defenders -- Kamran Shah and his ruthless vizier Yar Mohammad Khan Alakozai. The Great Game's grand strategy was being played out in the dust and blood of a siege, with Afghan, Persian, British, and Russian interests tangled together like rope.
Ten Months Behind Mud Walls
The Persian army arrived in late November 1837, and the siege ground on for nearly ten months. Mohammad Shah launched a four-pronged attack: three columns converging on Herat itself while a fourth marched into Maimana to neutralize tribal allies. The Afghans defending the city numbered roughly 22,000 infantry and cavalry, but Herat's real defense was its walls and the coalition holding them together. Sher Mohammad Khan Hazara, a Qala-e Naw chieftain, assembled a confederacy of Aimaq, Turkmen, and Uzbek tribes to resist the Persian advance. At Kushk, Mohammad Zaman Khan Jamshidi held out with 6,000 men before being overwhelmed, losing between 200 and 300 fighters. The Qajar campaign against these tribal allies tied up some of Persia's best troops for four months of hard fighting -- a fact that most later histories overlooked in favor of crediting Pottinger as the supposed savior of Herat.
The Bluff That Worked
The siege ended not with a decisive battle but with a diplomatic squeeze. Neither side had gained a clear advantage on the ground. Herat's walls held, but the city was starving. The Persian army was exhausted but unbroken. What tipped the balance was Britain's threat of direct military action. The Royal Navy moved ships into the Persian Gulf, and London made clear that the cost of taking Herat would be war with the British Empire. Simultaneously, Russia withdrew its support, calculating that the prize was not worth the confrontation. Mohammed Shah, abandoned by his patron and threatened by a new enemy, lifted the siege in September 1838. The walls of Herat still stood, battered but unbreached.
Echoes Across the Khyber
The First Herat War did not end the Great Game -- it intensified it. Britain's alarm over Russian influence in Afghanistan led directly to the disastrous First Anglo-Afghan War of 1839-1842, one of the worst military defeats in British imperial history. Herat itself would be besieged again in the 1850s. The city's position as a strategic chokepoint ensured it would remain contested for generations. Standing at Herat today, looking out from the old walls across the plain where Persian cannons once pounded, the landscape reads like a palimpsest of conflict. Every empire that passed through left its mark, and every mark was eventually overwritten by the next.
From the Air
Located at 34.37N, 62.18E in western Afghanistan. Herat sits in the Hari Rud valley, visible as a dense urban area surrounded by arid plains. The nearest airport is Herat International Airport (OAHR), approximately 13 km south of the city center. Best viewed at 5,000-8,000 feet AGL for the city layout and old wall traces. The terrain is flat agricultural land bounded by mountains to the east and south.