Ahmad Shah Abdali, later known as Ahmad Shah Durrani, was the founder of modern Afghanistan.

Before being elected king in 1747, Abdali was a cavalry general under the Persian emperor Nadir Shah Afshar. Abdali was part of Nadir Shah's army as it plundered Delhi Nader Shah was a ruler of Iran belonging to Turkish Afshars, a semi-nomadic Qizilbash tribe settled in the northern valleys of Khorasan, a province in the north-east of the Persian Empire. Nadir Shah was assassinated in a brawl between the Afghans and Persians of his army. Before departing from Nader Shah's royal tent where his dead body lay Ahmad Khan managed to remove the seal of Nader Shah from his finger, took possession of the Koh-i-Noor diamond and other property.

Abdali Incursions of India

Between 1747 and 1748, he conquered Ghazni from the Ghilzai Tribe, and worked his way up to Kabul and then to Peshawar. By 1749 Durrani and his army control Punjab, Sindh and Kashmir. Between 1747 and 1769, the Shah invaded (and looted) India nine times. Around this time, he married Hazrat Begum, who was the daughter of the then Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah. Abdali and his army plundered everything they could from the cities of Delhi, Agra, Mathura and Vrindavan- with absolutely no intention of ruling those areas.

i and annexed the famous diamond Koh-i-Noor from the Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah.

Sikhs and Abdali

In October 1757 Ahmed Shah Abdali launched his fourth invasion on India and defeated Marathas decisively at the Third Battle of Panipat. On his victorious return to Afghanistan, the Sikhs made the life of retreating Afghans very difficult. They would constantly harass his troops using guerrilla tactics and would rescue countless Hindu women who were being kidnapped and taken to Afghanistan to be sold as slaves. In order to break the Sikh power base, he attacked and destroyed Sri Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar completely in 1757. The sacred Sarovar was polluted with debris and animal carcasses.

The decline in Abdali empire was when the Sikhs asserted their supremacy in Punjab. Durrani subdued them, but then again they resurfaced. This back and forth went on for a couple of years in the early 1760's, until he finally lost control over Punjab.

The Sikhs decided to liberate Harmandir Sahib under the leadership of Baba Deep Singh in 1757. After a fierce battle, Baba Deep Singh was martyred but the Sikhs were successful in their quest and were able to celebrate Diwali there. They started the process of cleaning and rebuilding of the site on Vaisakhi 1758. The numerically and materially superior Afghan had been humbled by the Sikhs. The shock victory led to Abdali wishing to exterminate the Sikhs once and for all.

Destruction of Harmandir Sahib

On 5th February 1762, an Afghan army numbering 150,000 soldiers feel upon a large gathering of Sikh men, women and children. In the ensuing desperate battle, over 30,000 Sikhs were killed, this became known as the Vadda Ghallughara ( The Great Holocaust).

After this event, Abdali had Sri Harmandir Sahib blown up once again, and the Sarovar was polluted with refuse and the entrails of cows and bullocks. During the cannon fire, a brick from Sri Harmandir Sahib struck Abdali on the nose. This injury later became cancerous and led to his death in 1773.

Abdalis Nose Mask

By the early 1770's, "with cancer eating away at his face, and Sikhs eating away at his empire", he spent the last ten years of his life based out of Kabul, managing his domestic and foreign affairs from there. Legend has it that he wore a silver false nose as the cancer ate away at his face. In June 1773, Abdali finally died of cancer in Murgha, in the Herat Province, at fifty years old