New Perspectives on Aḥmad Shāh Durrānī’s Encounter with the Qing Empire in the Shāhnāma-yi Aḥmadiyya

Aḥmad Shāh Durrānī’s dispatch of an embassy to the Qing court at Beijing was an ambitious diplomatic move, but it scarcely left an imprint in the Persian- or Pashto-language sources of the era. An exception is the Shāhnāma-yi Aḥmadiyya (completed after 1773) a panegyric mas̲nawī history of Aḥmad Shāh’s reign composed by Niẓām al-Dīn ‘Ishrat Siyālkōtī. In its pages are two chapters purporting to contain ‘letters’ between Aḥmad Shāh and ‘Ulugh Khān, the Emperor of China.’ These are patently compositions of Siyālkōtī, who was commissioned to write the Shāhnāma . Therefore we can look to these chapters as indicators of how Aḥmad Shāh wanted his brief encounter with the Qing Empire to be remembered or understood by the Shāhnāma ’s audience: as a victory for the Durrānī ruler which reinforced his claims to universal kingship through the submission of ‘Ulugh Khān