Kohan Dil Khan

Kohan Dil Khan was a Barakzai sardar of Kandahar, a son of the Barakzai chief Payandah Khan by a Hotak mother, and a half-brother of the Kabul amir Dost Mohammad Khan.¹ He was born in 1792 at Kandahar — the article gives 1792, though 1793 also circulates — and he ruled Kandahar twice, from 1830 to 1839 and again from 1842 to 1855.¹ The Pashto article describes him as head of the Kandahar rulership from 1818 to 1855, a framing that covers the whole period in which he and his full brothers governed the city together.²

After the fall of Mahmud Shah Durrani, Kohan Dil and his full brothers — Pur Dil Khan, Rahim Dil Khan, Mehr Dil Khan and Sayyid Mohammad Khan — took control of Kandahar and turned it into an independent principality, while their half-brothers held Kabul, Herat and Peshawar.¹ The brothers, known collectively as the Dil brothers, divided the administration of the city among themselves; Kohan Dil, regarded as the most eminent of them, took charge of the judiciary and the market tax, and was sent by his brothers on diplomatic missions to Herat, Kabul and the court of Persia.¹ The principality traded with British India, minted its own coins, and fought a long rivalry with Herat — losing the city of Farah to it, then retaking it in 1837.¹

When the British invaded in 1839 and placed Shah Shujah on the throne, the brothers' rule was recognised at first, but in 1840, after refusing a summons to Kabul, they fled and took asylum in Persia, where they were received by Muhammad Shah Qajar.¹ After the British withdrawal and Dost Mohammad's restoration, they returned to Kandahar in 1842, and the principality continued as a Barakzai enclave alongside the growing Kabul emirate.¹

Kohan Dil Khan died at Herat on 21 August 1855 and was buried in the Great Mosque of Herat.¹ His death set off a succession struggle among the Dil brothers themselves; Dost Mohammad Khan intervened and conquered Kandahar, ending the brothers' thirty-seven years of independent rule and uniting it with Kabul.¹

No source consulted names a school of law or a religious affiliation for Kohan Dil Khan beyond the generic Islam of the period; the English article carries no religion field at all. His faith is therefore recorded as unknown.