Josiah Harlan
Josiah Harlan in his Afghan robes.
Born	12 June 1799 Newlin Township in Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States
Died	October 1871 (aged 72) San Francisco, United States
Occupation(s)	American adventurer, best known for traveling to Afghanistan and Punjab with the intention of making himself a king.

Josiah Harlan, Prince of Ghor (12 June 1799 − October 1871) was an American adventurer, best known for travelling to Afghanistan and Punjab with the intention of making himself a king. While there, he became involved in local politics and factional military actions, eventually winning the title Prince of Ghor in perpetuity for himself and his descendants in exchange for military aid. Rudyard Kipling's short story The Man Who Would Be King is believed to be partly based on Harlan.

Josiah Harlan was born in Newlin Township in Chester County, Pennsylvania. His parents, Joshua Harlan and Sarah Hinchman,^[1] were Quakers, and Josiah and his nine siblings, including Richard Harlan, were raised in a strict and pious home. His father was a merchant broker in Philadelphia and several of his sons would later enter the merchant business.

Losing his mother at the age of thirteen, Josiah delved into reading. A contemporary records that Harlan, at the age of fifteen, amused himself with reading medical books and the biographies of Plutarch, as well as the inspired Prophets.^[2] He read Latin and Greek, while speaking fluent French.^[3] He also developed a passion for botany that would last his entire life. He also studied Greek and Roman Ancient history, particularly taken by stories of Alexander the Great.^[4] A muscular man standing at over 6 feet tall described as being handsome when he was young, Harlan impressed everyone he met as preciously intelligent, brash, ambitious, and more than a little arrogant as he convinced that he was destined to achieve great things like his hero Alexander the Great.^[5]

In 1820, Harlan embarked on his first travels while joining the Freemasons.^[6] His father secured him a job as supercargo on a merchant ship bound for the East, sailing to Calcutta, India, then Guangzhou, China and back.^[7] Returning from this first trip and preparing for the next, he fell in love quite "accidentally" with a Miss Elizabeth Swaim, for whom he wrote several verses of poetry to honor.^[8] They become engaged and were to be married when he returned from the voyage to India and China.^[9] However, in Calcutta he received notice from his brother Richard that his fiancée had broken the engagement and already married another.^[10]

Broken by this news, Harlan vowed never to return to America, instead seeking adventure in the East.^[11] After learning his fiancee had married somebody else, a heartbroken Harlan used the words solitude over and over again in his writings as the British historian Ben Macintyre noted: "He reached out and grasped a thorn; he would never clasp love in the same way again".^[12] To cope with the pain and heartbreak, Harlan developed the persona of the aloof, romantic loner, a man of action who lived only for glory that was to last for the rest of his life.^[13] In July 1824, without any formal education, he enlisted as a surgeon with the British East India Company's army.^[14] Macintrye noted "That he had never actually studied medicine was not, at least in his own mind, an impediment".^[15] The Company was about to enter a war in Burma, and was in need for qualified surgeons, and Harlan wanted to forget about his heartbreak and to be far away from America as possible; serving in Burma seemed to fulfill both criterion.^[16] Relying on his self-studies and some practice while at sea, Harlan presented himself to the medical board for examination and was appointed as surgeon to the Calcutta general hospital.^[17] From January 1825 he served with the army in Burma, until he was injured or became ill..^[18] Harlan admired the impressive capacity of the Company's sepoys who "consumed nothing, but parched grain, a leguminous seed resembling the pea", and yet kept going.^[19] Harlan was trained and worked as a surgeon, but owing to heavy losses suffered by the Company's troops due to disease and war in the jungles of Burma, Harlan sometimes fought with the Bengal Artillery, acquiring military knowledge that was later to serve him well.^[20] Harlan was present at the Battle of Prome, where Anglo-Indian forces stormed the city of Prome and engaged in fierce hand-to-hand fighting with the Burmese.^[21] Meanwhile, the Treaty of Yandabo in 1826 ended hostilities.^[22]

Once recuperated, Harlan was posted to Karnal, north of Delhi, where he soon grew weary with taking orders from the Company.^[23] During this time, Harlan read the 1815 book An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, and its dependedencies in Persia, Tartary and India, comprising a View of the Afghaun Nation and history of the Dooraunee Monarchy by East India Company's Mountstuart Elphinstone, who visited Afghanistan in 1809 to meet its Emir, Shuja Durrani, who wore the world-famous Koh-i-Noor ("Mountain of Light") diamond on his left arm and who was deposed by half-brother Mahumd Durrani during Elphinstone's visit.^[24] Afghanistan was for people in the West at the time a remote and mysterious country in Asia, and Elphinstone's book describing his visit to a nation that no Westerner had ever visited before was a best-seller.^[25] Harlan began to dream of going to Afghanistan, an essentially medieval country with a feudal economy where tribal chiefs who owned most of the land battled each other for supremacy, inspiring Harlan to write about Afghanistan in his usual purple prose: "Audacious ambition gains by the sabre's sweep and soul-propelling spur, a kingdom and a name amongst the crowned sub deities of the diademed earth".^[26] As consolation for his broken heart, Harlan began to fantasize about going to Afghanistan to win himself a kingdom.^[27] Throughout his life, Harlan was a martinet who would not tolerate any insubordination from those serving under him, but at same time, he had much difficulty with taking orders from those above him, and Harlan was openly insubordinate towards his superiors in the Company.^[28] In the summer of 1826, he left their service. As a civilian, he was granted a permit to stay in India by the Governor General Lord Amherst.

After a stay in Simla, Harlan came to Ludhiana, a border outpost of British India on the Sutlej river which formed the border between the Punjab and British India at the time. Harlan had decided to enter the service of Ranjit Singh, the Maharaja of Punjab.^[29] Through Ranjit Singh was prepared to hire Westerners who could be useful to him, as a general rule he did not allow white people to enter the Punjab as he had seen the way that the East India Company had gobbled much of the Indian subcontinent, and as far he was concerned, the less that whites knew of the Punjab the better, making the Punjab into a rather mysterious region for Westerners.^[30] The East India Company's agent in Ludhiana was a Captain Thomas Wade, who described Harlan as an enigmatic character who dressed well, knew much about the classics and the flora of India, and whose main interest was working as a mercenary for Ranjit Singh, making him into the first classicist/botanist/soldier of fortune that Wade had ever met.^[31] Reflecting his interest with horticulture, Harlan planned to study all of the flora of the Punjab, which were unknown in the West, with the aim of publishing a book about the botany of the Punjab with a special focus on the flowers.^[32]

Here, while awaiting an answer on his request to enter the Punjab, Harlan met the exiled Afghan ruler Shuja Shah Durrani of the Durrani Empire and eventually entered his service.^[33] Harlan heard the story of the deposed Emir of Afghanistan living in exile in Ludhiana, whose rumor had it was fabulously wealthy and decided to enter his service, sending him a letter offering "a general proposition affecting the royal prospects of restoration".^[34] Upon arriving in Shuja's palace, Harlan discovered Shuja was surrounded by a grotesquely deformed court as Shuja had a habit of removing the ears, noses, tongues, penises and testicles of his courtiers and slaves whenever they displeased him in the slightest, and all of them had offended him at some point along the line.^[35] Harlan commented Shuja's court was an "earless assemblage of mutes and eunuchs in the ex-king's service".^[36] Harlan praised "the grace and dignity of His Highness's demeanor", observing the sense of power that Shuja projected, but also that the "years of disappointment had created in the countenance of the ex-King an appearance of melancholy and resignation."^[37] When Shuja went out for a picnic with his wives, a gust of wind blew down his tent.^[38] Shuja flew into a rage, and much to Harlan's horror, had his chief slave, an African named Khwajah Mika who arrived in India via the slave markets of Zanzibar, castrated on the spot to punish him for not erecting the tent more firmly.^[39] After Shuja agreed to hire him, Harlan had a tailor in Ludhiana sew up an American flag, which he used to imply that he was working for the U.S. government as he went about recruiting mercenaries to restore Shuja.^[40] By fall of 1827, Harlan had recruited about hundred mercenaries, a mixture of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs only interested in loot and plunder.^[41]

Writing about Afghanistan's unstable politics where Emirs were frequently overthrown, and the penchant for sons to intrigue against their fathers, and brothers against brothers, Harlan noted: "The prize was literally handed about like a shuttlecock. The king who in the battle may have dispatched a favorite son in the command of his army would probably before night find himself flying from his own troops".^[42] Afghanistan was dominated by a feud between two families, the Durrani and the Barakzai, and furthermore, the men of the Durrani and Barakzai families were just as much inclined to feud with other family members as they were with the rival families.^[43] Shuja, who belonged to the Durrani family, had together with his brother Mahmud overthrown and blinded their brother Zaman; Shuja had then desposed Mahmud and had in his turn had been overthrown by Mahmud, who had in his turn had been overthrown by the Barakzai brothers after he had their father Fateh Khan publicly chopped to pieces; and in their turn the Barazkais were now feuding among themselves.^[44] Given this history, and the fact that the Afghan tribal chiefs tended to be loyal only to those who paid them the most, Harlan believed that despite the small size of his force that he could topple the Emir, Dost Mohammad Khan, who was the most ablest and intelligent of the fractious Barakzai brothers.^[45]

With financial support from Shuja Shah Durrani, Harlan travelled along the Indus and into Afghanistan, first to Peshawar then to Kabul. As he entered Afghanistan, Harlan first met the war-like Pashtun tribes, whose principle interest in life was killing each other, and learned about their strict code of Pashtunwali under which any insult, real or perceived, to a man had to be avenged with swift and blinding violence while at the same time, a man had to be courteous and honorable to all, including his enemies.^[46] As Harlan's army was close to mutiny, he decided would enter Afghanistan disguised as a Muslim holy man returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca.^[47] Harlan knew only a few phrases in Arabic, but it was sufficient to convince a Pashtun chief that he was a holy man returning from Mecca.^[48] Shuja had followed up Harlan's force with his own troop of mercenaries, seizing Peshawar, the summer capital of Afghanistan, and behaved with such outrageous arrogance towards the Pashtun chiefs who had come to swear loyalty to him out of the expectation of lavish financial rewards that they went back to their loyalty to the Bazakzai brothers, who did not obsessively use court etiquette to humiliate chiefs as Shuja did.^[49]

Harlan met in Kabul the man who he had come to depose, Dost Mohammad Khan. By this time, Harlan had become fluent in Farsi, the lingua franca of the Muslim world, and it was in that language that he and Dost Mohammad talked.^[50] Even through Harlan had come to Afghanistan to overthrow Dost Mohammad, upon meeting him, he discovered he rather admired Dost Mohammad, who was a "worthy adversary", a polite, courteous gentleman who was extremely intelligent, a brave warrior, and despite being an Emir, was very modest.^[51] Harlan had arrived with the assumption of the superiority of the West over the East, but meeting Dost Mohammad challenged his thinking as he found Easterners could be just as intelligent as Westerners.^[52] When Dost Mohammad asked Harlan to explain the American system of government to him, Harlan spoke about the tripartite separation of power between the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court, which led the Emir to remark the American system did not sound to him much different from the Afghan system, where there was a tripartite separation of power between the Emir, the tribal chiefs and the Ulama (the Islamic clergy who also served as judges).^[53] In Peshawar, Harlan had met a Nawab Jubbar Khan, who was a brother of Dost Mohammad Khan. Jabbar Khan was important as a possible rival of Dost Mohammad, and thus a possible ally to Shuja Shah. During this time, Harlan first an Afghan maulvi (Islamic scholar) who also worked as an alchemist and doctor, whose name no-one knew and whom Harlan called "the Moolvie".^[54] Harlan discovered much to his amazement that the maulvi "was an enthusiastic Rosicrucian" who was seeking the Philosopher's Stone, and whom kept Jubber Khan happy with the supposed medical secrets that his occult knowledge gave him.^[55] Harlan soon discovered that the maulvi was a fraud, who once insisted that his alchemy could only work if he was provided with a large number of unusually large fish from a local river; when after much difficulty the requisite number of big fish were caught, the maulvi only then "remembered" that they all had to be of the same sex for his alchemy to work, at which point the fishing season had passed.^[56] While staying with Jabbar Khan, Harlan evaluated the situation and realised that Dost Mohammad's position was too strong, and that influence from outside Afghanistan was needed. He decided to seek his luck in Punjab.

Harlan came to Lahore, the capital of Punjab, in 1829. He sought out the French general Jean-François Allard, who introduced him to the Maharaja.^[57] Ranjit Singh, the "Lion of Lahore" had conquered much of what is today north-western India and Pakistan, and was considered to be one of the most powerful rulers in the Indian subcontinent, which explained why Harlan sought to work in his service.^[58] Through it was his French and Italian officers who had turned the Dal Khalsa into one of the most formidable military machines in Asia, Ranjit Singh had a low opinion of his European officers, once saying: "German, French or English, all these European bastards are alike".^[59] However, Singh paid well for the services of his Western officers and Harlan noted Allard lived in a grand mansion, which he called "a miniature Versailles in the midst of an Oriental bazaar".^[60] Allard who felt lonely in the Punjab, being unable to relate to the Indians, and was known to welcome any Westerner, received Harlan as a guest, warning him "It is a very difficult to get an appointment here, but still more to get one's dismissal, when once in office".^[61] When Allard introduced Harlan to Singh, Harlan described the Maharaja as an extremely short man with one eye and a face scarred by smallpox who was dressed all in white with a matching white turban who proudly wore the Koh-i-Noor diamond (which he taken from Shuja when the latter had fled to the Punjab) and who radiated an aura of power.^[62]

Despite being very brave on the battlefield, Singh was a maniacal hypochondriac, having doctors see him everyday to treat him for one imaginary aliment after another, and Harlan by emphasizing his claim to be a doctor preyed upon Singh's principle weakness, who immediately demanded that Harlan start treating him.^[63] Macintyre noted Singh was "...a sensualist with a passion for beautiful women and boys, a taste for laudanum, and an addiction to alcohol in the form of his own lethal homemade cocktails. His parties were fantastic bacchanalian bouts, and his sexual stamina legendary..." with a particular highlight being Singh's practice of getting his dancing girls drunk and then having them engage in wild catfights for his amusement.^[64] The hard-drinking Singh made his own wine, called "firewater", whose exact ingredients remain a mystery even today, but was believed to contain among other things grape juice, orange seeds and grounded down gems, which he drank in conspicuous amounts.^[65] The more honest of Singh's doctors told him to club his drinking and to stop consuming his homemade "firewater" wine, advice that Singh never took.^[66] Harlan had abandoned the pacifism of his Quaker faith, but as a teetotaler refrained from drinking Singh's wine and tried to avoid attending his parties.^[67]

Harlan was offered a military position but declined, looking for something more lucrative.^[68] This, he eventually found: After lingering at the court for some time he was offered the position of Governor of Gujrat District, a position he accepted.^[69] Singh told Harlan: "I will make you Governor of Gujrat and give you 3, 00 rupees a month. If you behave well, I will increase your salary. If not, I will cut off your nose".^[70] Before giving him this position, however, the Maharaja decided to test Harlan. In December 1829, he was instated as Governor of Nurpur and Jasrota, described by Harlan himself as "two districts then newly subjugated by the King in Lahore, located on the skirt of the Himalah mountains".^[71] These districts had been seized by the maharajah of the Punjab in 1816 and were fairly wealthy at the time Harlan arrived. Little, if anything, is known of Harlan's tenure here, but he must have fared well. One visitor noted that given Singh's habit of cutting off the noses of those who failed him that "The fact of his nose being entire, proved that he has done well".^[72] In May 1832 he was transferred to Gujrat.^[73] In Gujrat, Harlan was visited soon after his instatement by Henry Lawrence who later described him as "a man of considerable ability, great courage and enterprise, and judging by appearance, well cut out for partisan work".^[74] Harlan later wrote "I was both civil and military governor" with unlimited powers to do whatever he pleased as long taxes were collected and order maintained.^[75] One of Harlan's visitors was the Reverend Joseph Wolff, a Bavarian Jew who had converted to Catholicism and then Anglicism, and was now travelling all over Asia as a missionary.^[76] Wolff was one of the few people with whom Harlan spoke of his love for Swaim, as Wolff wrote in his journal: "He fell in love with a young lady who promised to marry him. He sailed to Calcutta; but hearing that his betrothed lady had married somebody else, he determined never again to return to America".^[77] However, Harlan was not indifferent to women. Besides for paying well, Singh rewarded those served him well with beautiful concubines with the most successful being given harems, and Harlan himself if not given a harem, had several concubines given to him by Singh for his sexual enjoyment.^[78]

While appointing a European governor was rare, Harlan was certainly not the only one. His colleague Paolo Avitabile was made governor of Wazirabad, and Jean-Baptiste Ventura was made governor of Dera Ghazi Khan in 1831. Unlike Ventura and even more so Avitabile who believed that violence was the only language Indians were capable of understanding and who terrorized their provinces, Harlan attempted to crack down on corruption and avoided brutality, which caused his relations with Ventura and Avitabile to decline.^[79] Harlan was also in turn followed in his position in Gujrat by an Englishman named Holmes, who failed Singh, and lost more than his nose, being publicly beheaded as an example of the fate of those failed the Maharajah. During his time as governor of Gujrat, Harlan's principle friend was the maulvi as the alchemist from Afghanistan unexpectedly showed up at his palace one day. The maulvi taught Harlan about "the traditional lore of Arabia" while the alchemist wanted Harlan to sponsor him to join a Masonic lodge as Harlan noted "My refusal to explain the craft of Freemasonry added to his conviction that in the secrecy of that forbidden region of science lay the Philosopher's Stone".^[80] Joining Harlan in Gujrat was the American adventurer Alexander Gardner who come down from Central Asia, seeking employment with Singh and arrived at Harlan's palace to seek the company of a fellow American.^[81] Gardner who was known as "Gordana Khan" in Central Asia recalled: "I remained a few days with Dr. Harlan and on meeting my countryman, I resumed the character of a foreigner, and resumed also the name of Gardner, which I abandoned for so long that it sounded strangely in my ears".^[82]

In 1834, the Sikh general Hari Singh Nalwa finally captured the contested city of Peshawar for the Punjab, leading Dost Mohammad Khan, the Emir of Afghanistan to send the Maharajah an insulting letter demanding the return of Peshawar or war, leading Ranjit Singh to reply with an equally insulting letter challenging the Afghans to retake Peshawar if they dared.^[83] In the spring of 1835, Dost Mohammd, anxious to regain Peshawar, declared jihad on the Punjab and invaded the Sikh empire.^[84] The traditional hatred between the Sikhs and Muslims meant there was no shortage of volunteers in Afghanistan to go kill Sikhs, and a huge number of tribesmen rallied to Dost Mohammad's banner.^[85] Macintyre noted the devoutly Muslim Afghans had a "fanatical" hatred of the Sikhs, which to a certain extent compensated for the superior training and firepower of the Dal Khalsa.^[86] Singh, knowing that the feuding Barakzai brothers were much as inclined to fight among themselves as against their enemies and that Harlan knew the Barakzai brothers, ordered him up to the front to see if he could divide the Afghan leaders.^[87] The Emir's half brother Sultan Mohammad Khan had fallen in love with a dancing girl at the court, whom he was planning to take into his harem to make into another of his concubines, but Dost Mohammad who also desired her, had used his right as Emir to take her into his harem, causing much discord between the Barakzai brothers, which Harlan knew about.^[88] Viewing the Afghan camp outside of Peshawar, Harlan reported seeing: "Fifty thousand belligerent candidates for martyrdom and immortality. Savages from the remotest recesses of the mountainous districts, many of them giants in form and strength, promiscuously armed with sword and shield, bow and arrows, matchlocks, rifles, spears and blunderbusses, concentrated themselves around the standard of religion, and were prepared to slay, plunder and destroy, for the sake of Allah and the Prophet, the unenlightened infidels of the Punjab".^[89] The French-trained Dal Khalsa was a powerful army, but Singh as usual preferred to achieve his goals via diplomacy rather than war if possible, and so sought to find a peaceful way to send the Afghans home.^[90]

Under the flag of truce, Harlan went to the camp of Sultan Mohammad Khan, the half-brother of the Emir, to negotiate the right price for defecting, and he used his resentment of Dost Mohammad for taking away the dancing girl he desired away from him to turn him against the Emir.^[91] Already, many Sikhs and Afghans, anxious to spill each other's blood, had engaged in skirmishes and the ground between the two armies that Harlan traveled through was littered with corpses.^[92] Harlan offered Sultan Mohammad a generous bribe on the behalf of Singh in exchange for going home.^[93] Dost Mohammad had heard that Harlan had arrived in his half-brother's camp, but after receiving a letter from Sultan Mohammad Khan "stating the fact of Mr. Harlan's arrival, and that he had been put to death, while his elephants and plunder had been made booty".^[94] The news was received with loud cheering in Dost Mohammad's camp and it was announced that "now the brothers had become one, and wiped away their enmities in Feringhi blood".^[95] After agreeing to consider to accept Singh's bribe, Harlan and Sultan Mohammad Khan rode into Dost Mohammad's camp, where Harlan told the Emir to go home, telling him that despite his 50, 000 men that "If the Prince of the Punjab chose to assemble the militia of his dominions, he could bring ten times that number into the field, but you will have regular troops to fight, and your san culottes militia will vanish like mist before the sun".^[96] As Dost Mohammad made a veiled threat to kill Harlan, reminding him that when "Secunder" (Alexander the Great) had fought in Afghanistan one of his envoys had been killed under the flag of truce, a servant brought in some doug (fermented milk) to drink, which Sultan Mohammad refused to drink, believing his half-brother was attempting to poison him.^[97] When Dost Mohammad insisted that Sultan Mohammad drink some of the doug under the grounds it was rude to refuse his hospitality, his half-brother insisted that the Emir drink some of the doug first, which he refused under the grounds it too hot of a day to drink a doug, leading to a lengthy argument between the two about who was drink the doug first.^[98] Dost Mohammad finally drank some of the doug to just to prove it was not poisoned.^[99] Dost Mohammad had played a cunning trick on his half-brother as the reluctance of Sultan Mohammad to drink the doug first proved to the assembled tribal chiefs that he had been engaging in treachery, as Dost Mohammad had intended.^[100] The meeting was first of several tense meetings as Harlan traveled back and fourth between the Sikh camp and the two half-brothers before Sultan Mohammad was finally bribed into switching sides while Singh had brought up his heavy artillery, which finally persuaded Dost Mohammad that discretion was the better part of valor, leading him to go home.^[101] Harlan had played the role of a diplomat well, seeing off an Afghan invasion with minimal losses to the Dal Khalsa but Singh decided after the fact that it would had better to have given battle after all, and publicity criticized Harlan for preventing a battle that he now believed he would won, the beginning of a rift between the two.^[102]

On 19 August 1835, Singh suffered a stoke, which left him with slurred speech, and demanded that Harlan use his knowledge of Western medicine to cure him.^[103] In the 19th century it was widely believed that running electrical jolts though the body had restorative effects, and following Harlan's advice an electrical machine was brought to Lahore to pump Singh full of electricity, an experience that did not restore his speech.^[104] However, Singh was always proud of his physical toughness and discovered much to his delight that electricity could pass from one human body to another, which led him to devise a game, where all his courtiers had to hold hands in an line with one man holding Singh's hand as he was pumped full of electricity, which caused the others to let go in pain while Singh continued to be electrified.^[105] Singh rather enjoyed this game, through it doubtful his courtiers found much enjoyment being zapped and shocked by the electricity.^[106] The final blow to his friendship with Singh occurred when Harlan's enemies at the court mentioned to Singh that Harlan had the maulvi living with him who was alleged to be able to turn base metals into precious ones (knowledge that Singh expected to be shared with him), and that Harlan was allegedly minting counterfeit coins (for which the penalty was death).^[107] In some fear of his life, Harlan left Singh's employ in early 1836.^[108]

In 1836 after a following-out with Singh, Harlan defected over to the service of Dost Mohammad Khan, the Emir of Afghanistan and the arch-enemy of Singh.^[109] Even through Harlan had in the service of Singh and Shah Shujah had fought against Dost Mohammad in the past, the Emir was sufficiently impressed with Harlan's ability to accept his former enemy into his service.^[110] In March 1836, Lord Auckland, the governor-general of India received a letter in English purportedly from Dost Mohammad (who did not know English), whose flowery style and a number of Americanisms strongly suggest that Harlan was the real author, asking him to sign an alliance and force Ranjit Singh to return Peshawar to Afghanistan.^[111] Writing as Dost Mohammad, Harlan declared: "The field of my hopes, which had before been chilled by the cold blast of the wintry times, has by the happy tidings of your Lordship's arrival become the envy of the Garden of Paradise", going on to ask the British to force "the reckless and misguided Sikhs" to return Peshawar to the Afghans.^[112] Lord Auckland replied: "My friend, you are aware that it is not the practice of the British government to interfere with the affairs of the independent states", a statement that Macintyre noted was highly ironic given that two years later it was Lord Auckland who decided to depose Dost Mohammad in favor of Shah Shuja.^[113]

Dost Mohammad wanted Harlan to train his tribal levy (Afghanistan had no army) how to fight in the Western style of war.^[114] The French had traditionally excelled at artillery, and as befitting an army trained by French officers, the Dal Khalsa had excellent artillery, which had been repeatedly used to decimate the Afghan tribesmen in various battles. Singh had pushing steadily into the "badlands" that make the modern border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but in 1837 he recalled the best of the Dal Khalsa for a parade to honor his son's wedding in Lahore, which Dost Mohammad took advantage of by attacking the Sikhs.^[115] Under the banner of jihad, about 10, 000 Afghan tribesmen swept down the Khyber Pass under the command of Dost Mohammad's son Wazir Akbar Khan to attack the Sikhs, accompanied by Harlan as his special military adviser.^[116] On 30 April 1837, the Afghans defeated the Sikhs at the Battle of Jamrud.^[117] At Jamrud, the Sikh artillery blasted holes in the Afghan ranks, with a single cannon ball killing or wounding dozens of men, but when the Sikh infantry advanced through the gaps in the Afghan line, the Afghans following Harlan's advice used their reserves and greater numbers to crush the Dal Khalsa in furious hand-to-hand fighting. The Afghans lost about 1, 000 killed while the Sikhs lost about 2, 000 dead, including General Hari Singh Nalwa, Ranjit Singh's favorite general.^[118] Harlan wrote that Singh must had been besides himself with fury, imagining that "The proud King of Lahore quailed upon his threatened throne, as he exclaimed with terror and approaching despair, 'Harlan has avenged himself, this is all his work'".^[119] Singh reacted by sending his best general, the French mercenary Jean-François Allard to avenge the Sikh defeat while the Afghans-unable to take the fortress of Peshawar-retreated back beyond the Khyber Pass, starting on 9 May 1837.^[120] Feeling his hold on Peshawar was weak, Singh appointed the Neapolitan mercenary Paolo Avitabile the new governor of Peshawar with orders to terrorize the city into submission, using methods that Harlan called barbaric.^[121]

Harlan liked and admired Dost Mohammad, whom he called a hard-working, self-disciplined and efficient king who always got up early every morning to pray towards Mecca and read the Koran before receiving tribal chiefs except on Thursday, which was the only day of the week that Dost Mohammad took a bath.^[122] After discussing the affairs of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammad would have his breakfast at 11 am, to be followed by new meetings before retiring to his harem to enjoy his concubines, to be followed by a ride around Kabul in the afternoon to hear the complaints of his subjects.^[123] Harlan observed that Dost Mohammad was stern in his rule as once he was presented with a man and a woman had been captured when a "nocturnal orgie" had been discovered; the others had escaped, but the couple were too drunk to manage their own get-away.^[124] Harlan observed that Dost Mohammad "listened to the charges of licentiousness and immorality", and with a wave of his hand ordered the man's beard to be burned off while the woman was to be put into a bag and given 40 lashes with a whip.^[125] When Harlan asked why the woman had to be put into a bag before whipping her, the Emir replied "To avoid the indecency of exposure".^[126] On 20 September 1837, Alexander Burnes, the Scotsman who had been appointed the East India Company's agent in Kabul arrived, and immediately become Harlan's rival.^[127] Harlan wrote that Burnes was "remarkable only for his obstinacy and stupidity".^[128] In Afghanistan, the Emir was expected to reward loyal chiefs with gifts, which given the poverty of Afghanistan meant the Emirs expected equally lavish gifts from foreign ambassadors, and Harlan recorded that Dost Mohammad was greatly offended when the only gifts that Burnes brought with him were two pistols and a spyglass.^[129]

In 1838, Harlan set off on a punitive expedition against the Uzbek slave trader and warlord Mohammad Murad Beg.^[130] He had multiple reasons for doing this: he wanted to help Dost Mohammad assert his authority outside of Kabul; he had a deep-seated opposition to slavery and he wanted to demonstrate that a modern army could successfully cross the Hindu Kush.^[131] Taking a force of approximately 1,400 cavalry, 1,100 infantry, 1,500 support personnel and camp followers, 2,000 horses, 400 camels and one elephant, Harlan thought of himself as a modern-day Alexander the Great.^[132] In emulation of Alexander the Great, Harlan also took along with him a war elephant.^[133] He was accompanied by a younger son and a secretary of Dost Mohammad. Dost Mohammad sought to collect tribute from the Hazara who were willing if the Afghans also ended Murad Beg's raids. Before leaving Kabul to hunt down Murad Beg, Dost Mohammad knowing of Harlan's fascination with ancient Greece, gave him a gift of a piece of jewelry found at Bagram, the site of the ancient city of Alexandria ad Caucasum, depicting the goddess Athena, which greatly moved him.^[134] Just like his hero Alexander the Great, Harlan discovered that his war elephant could not handle the extreme cold of the Hindu Kush mountains, and Harlan was forced to send the elephant back to Kabul.^[135]

After an arduous journey (which included an American flag-raising ceremony at the top of the Indian Caucasus), Harlan reinforced his army with local Hazaras, most of whom lived in fear of the slave traders. The Hazaras are the descendants of the Mongols who conquered Afghanistan in the 13th century, makes them different both culturally and to a certain extent linguistically (the Hazaras speak a distinctive sub-dialect of Dari, which itself is a dialect of Farsi) from the rest of the Afghan peoples. Harlan himself noted the Hazaras are East Asians who did not look at all like other Afghans.^[136] Because the Hazaras are Asians and are Shia Muslims, the Sunni Muslim Uzbeks and Tajiks liked to raid their lands in search of people to enslave. Harlan noted that because of the fear of Uzbek slavers, the houses of the Hazaras were "half sunk into slopes of hills" under "a bastion constructed of sun-dried mud, where people of the village can resort in case of danger from the sudden forays of the Tartar robbers."^[137] Harlan's first major military engagement was a short siege at the Citadel of Saighan, controlled by a Tajik slave-trader. Harlan's artillery made short work of the fortress. As a result of this performance, local powers clamored to become Harlan's friends.

One of the most powerful and ambitious local rulers was Mohammad Reffee Beg Hazara, a prince of Ghor, an area in the central and western part of what is now the country of Afghanistan. He and his retinue feasted for ten days with Harlan's force, during which time they observed the remarkable discipline and organization of the modern army. They invited the American back to Reffee's mountain stronghold. Harlan was amazed by the working feudal system. He admired the Hazaras both because of the absence of slavery in their culture and by the gender equality he observed (unusual in that region at the time).^[138] Harlan observed that the Harzara women did not wear veils, worked out in the fields with their husbands and even went to war with their menfolk.^[139] Writing about relations between the sexes among the Hazaras, Harlan noted: "The men display remarkable deference for the opinions of their wives...The men address their wives with the respectful and significant title of Aga, which means mistress. They associate with them as equal companions, consult with them on all occasions, and in weighty matters, when they are not present, defer a conclusion until the opinions of their women can be heard".^[140] A strong feminist who believed in sexual equality, Harlan was greatly impressed with the Hazara women who were the equals of the Hazara men.^[141] At the end of Harlan's visit, he and Reffee came to an agreement. Harlan and his heirs would be the Prince of Ghor in perpetuity, with Reffee as his vizier. In return, Harlan would raise and train an army with the ultimate goal of solidifying and expanding Ghor's autonomy. At another fortress, that of Derra i Esoff, ruled by an Uzbek slaver Soofey Beg, who had recently enslaved 300 Hazara families, Harlan began a siege and soon his artillery had smashed holes in the wall of the fortress.^[142] Harlan sent his Hazara tribesmen into the breach, writing: "In the storming of Derra i Esoff these men were amongst the first to mount the breach, along with their regimental colours. Their firmness and bravery, and, more especially their fidelity to their officers, were creditably displayed on many occasions".^[143] After the taking the fortress, Harlan found about 400 Hazara slaves, who he promptly had "released from a loathsome confinement in the dry wells and dungeons of the castle and sent home to their friends".^[144]

Harlan tracked down Murad Beg to his fortress in Kunduz, who dragged out the only cannon at his fort, an old Persian gun left over from the days of Nadir Shah to try to intimidate Harlan.^[145] A great amateur horticulturist, Harlan was offended that the Uzbeks were much interested in raiding for slaves than in growing flowers, noting "Little attention is bestowed upon the elegant in horticulture. Their flowers are, consequently, few and not of a pleasing variety".^[146] As soon as Harlan reached Kunduz, Murad Beg sent out emissaries to sent a diplomatic solution as Harlan noted: "The Uzbecks [Uzbeks] have a great horror of bloodshed, and think that prudence is the better part of valor".^[147] Harlan further noted that Uzbek armies always fought the same way: "a few individual sallies of vaunting cavaliers are made in advance, the parties uttering unearthly yells of defiance, and assuming threatening attitudes. A parley ensures, an interview between the leaders follow, and the affair terminates with the harmless festivals of a tournament."^[148] As Harlan surrounded Kunduz, Murad Beg who was terrified of giving battle, chose to make a treaty with Harlan recognizing Dost Mohammad as the Emir of Afghanistan and to stop slave raiding in exchange for being allowed Kunduz.^[149] Harlan described Murad Beg as: "A great bear of a man with harsh Tartar features. His eyes were small and hard as bullets, while his broad forehead was creased in a perpetual frown. He wore no beard and was no more richly dressed than his followers, except that his long knife was richly chased, as was the smaller dagger with which he toyed with while talking".^[150]

However, when Harlan returned to Kabul the British forces accompanying William Hay Macnaghten arrived to occupy the city in an early stage of the First Anglo-Afghan War. The British had restored Shuja-who was just cruel as ever-and Harlan heard a proclamation read by Shuja's herald from the Bala Hisar fortress: "Everyone is commanded not ascend the heights of the vicinity of the Royal harem under the pain of being disemboweled alive. May the king live forever!".^[151] Harlan commented that Shuja's "harsh barbarity" had not changed, and he was going to be just as hated by his people now that he was restored as much as he was when was overthrown the first time back in 1809.^[152] Harlan, who was not an admirer of the British, quickly became a persona non grata and after some further travel returned to the US.

After leaving Afghanistan, Harlan spent some time in Imperial Russia. A woman he knew in England sent letters to Russian nobility in which she claimed that Harlan was an experienced administrator who could help the Russian peasantry better itself. Though he was well liked by Russia's society women, Harlan made no important government contacts and soon decided to go back to America.

Once he returned to America, Harlan was feted as a national hero. He skillfully played the press, telling them not to dwell on his royal title, as he "looks upon kingdoms and principalities as of frivolous import, when set in opposition to the honourable and estimable title of American citizen".^[153] His glory quickly faded after the publication of A Memoir of India and Afghanistan − With observations upon the present critical state and future prospects of those Countries, published in Philadelphia. Harlan attacked his old British enemies from Afghanistan and called the British imperial system despicable. Most alarmingly, he wrote about the ease with which Russia could, if it so chose, attack and seriously harm the British Empire.

Harlan was denounced in Britain, although, as one historian has observed, his book was "officially discredited, but secretly read, under the table, by historians and British strategists".^[154] The American press did not pan him, but the controversy ensured that he would never publish another book.

With his funds dwindling, Harlan began taking on new tasks. He began lobbying the American government to import camels to settle the Western United States. His real hope was that they would order their camels from Afghanistan and send him there as purchasing agent. Harlan convinced the government that camels would be a worthy investment (Secretary of War Jefferson Davis was particularly interested), but it was decided that it would be cheaper to import them from Africa than from Afghanistan. When the US Army discovered the resistance of American horses, mules, and cows to the aggressive camels, the Camel Corps was disbanded in 1863. Camels were set free in Arizona. On 1 May 1849, Harlan was finally married, to a Elizabeth Baker in Chester Country in Pennsylvania.^[155] As Miss Baker was a Quaker like Harlan, who abandoned the pacifism of his faith during his time in Asia, her family were scandalized to have her marry a man who fought in wars.^[156] In 1852, Harlan's wife bore him a daughter, Sarah Victoria, whom he greatly loved.^[157]

Harlan next decided that he would convince the government to buy Afghan grapes. He spent two years working on this venture, but the coming of the American Civil War prevented this. Harlan then proposed to raise a regiment.

In 1861, when the American Civil War began, Harlan wrote to the Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, declaring that "General Josiah Harlan" was ready and willing to fight for the Union against the Confederacy.^[158] Macintrye noted: "The man who had trained the Afghan army and humbled the slaving warlord Murad Beg saw no reason why he should not go into battle, once more, with a private army. Bizarrely, nor did the authorities in Washington, and permission was duly granted for the formation of "Harlan's Light Calvary". Harlan had no formal rank, no experience of the American army, and had no knowledge of modern warfare. He was also sixty-two years old, but gave his age as fifty-six".^[159] Always horrified by slavery, he raised a Union regiment 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry^[160] of which he was colonel,^[161] but he was used to dealing with military underlings in the way an oriental prince would. This led to a messy court-martial, but the aging Harlan ended his service due to medical problems. Harlan collapsed on 15 July 1862 from the effects of a mixture of fever, dehydration, and dysentery, and was ordered to give up command of his regiment, and was reluctantly invalidated out of the U.S Army on 19 August 1862 under the grounds he was "debilitated from diarrhea".^[162]

He wound up in San Francisco, working as a doctor, dying of tuberculosis in 1871. He was essentially forgotten. His remains were buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery in San Francisco (now defunct), but were moved and his gravesite is unknown^[163] However, Harlan, a man who detested the British Empire lives on as an inspiration for Rudyard Kipling's 1888 short story The Man Who Would Be A King. Many critics have noted a close resemblance between Daniel Dravot, the hero of "The Man Who Would Be King" and Harlan as both were ambitious adventurers and other similarities such as the Afghan settling, entering Afghanistan disguised as a Muslim holy man, the interest in Freemasonry and Alexander the Great, the desire to conquer a kingdom in Central Asia, and being granted an Afghan title of nobility.^[164] Kipling, who was a Freemason himself, had always said he received the inspiration for The Man Who Would Be A King while working as a journalist in 1880s India, saying that an unnamed Freemason had told him the stories that gave him the idea for "The Man Who Would Be King", which suggests that Harlan's adventures in Afghanistan were still be retold in Masonic lodges in India in the 1880s.^[165]

• Scott Reiniger, star of cult classic 1978 horror film Dawn of the Dead, is Harlan's great-great-great-grandson, and thus (as of 2004^[update]) heir to the title Prince of Ghor.
• Harlan also appears in George MacDonald Fraser's novel Flashman and the Mountain of Light.

• A Memoir of India and Avghanistaun. Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1842.

• Afghanistan–United States relations
• Ghōr Province
• Star Gazers' Stone

• Macintyre, Ben (2004). Josiah the Great : the true story of the man who would be king. London: Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-00-715107-1.
• Macintyre, Ben (2004). The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-20178-4.
• Harlan, Josiah (1987). A Man of Enterprise: The Short Writings of Josiah Harlan. New York, NY, USA: Afghanistan Forum. OCLC 20388056.

• Biography of Josia Harlan
• US movie actor is 'Afghan prince', BBC

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