Afghan Gold

The Background

It is the greatest ‘lost treasure’ in history: a mountain of gold and jewels reputed to be worth in excess of $530 billion. Ask anyone in Central Asia about the legendary hoard and they will recount the facts:

In 1740 Nadir Shah of Persia swept through Afghanistan into India. After sacking its capital at Delhi, he plundered the fabulous treasuries of the Mughal emperors, and hauled the wealth of three hundred years westward, over the Hindu Kush, towards his kingdom of Persia. The treasure caravan was said to have been a 150 miles long, and to have contained the greatest accumulation of gold and gems in human history.

But during the journey back to Persia, Nadir Shah was murdered in his tent, by one of his young Afghan generals, Ahmad Shah. The young solider, whom was to become first king of modern Afghanistan, found himself in possession of the immense treasure: a million gold coins and sacks of jewels, as well as the sacred Peacock Throne (now in Iran), and the fabled Koh-i-noor diamond – which today can be found in the British Crown Jewels.

Ahmad Shah died an agonizing death soon after, succumbing to cancer of the face. Some say his death was the result of the curse of the Koh-i-noor. More certain is that Ahmad Shah managed to conceal the bulk of the treasure before his death. One popular account tells how he diverted a river near Qandahar and hid the hoard in a labyrinth of tunnels behind it.

For almost two and a half centuries, ordinary Afghans and their rulers have searched for the treasure of Ahmad Shah. A century ago, Amir Abdur-Rahman sent convicts to hunt in the dangerous tunnels commonly found in the region. Most of them perished. The British mounted their own quest for the treasure, as did the Russians during the 1980s. More recently, Al Qaeda's henchmen have been thought to be looking. Some Afghans who are ever fond of conspiracy theories, will tell you that America invaded not to destroy the Taliban, but to get their own hands on the golden hoard of Ahmad Shah.

Tahir Shah's family have lived in Afghanistan for more than a thousand years, as rulers, warriors, and mystics. Shah shares the same name as the first king, and a common ancestry. His father, Idries Shah, was Afghanistan's most famous writer of modern times, and was preoccupied with the fabulous lost treasure. His own fascination for riddle led him to write a bestselling novel about the gold of Ahmad Shah.

Now Tahir Shah is taking up the gauntlet, and hoping to find the treasure himself. His recent experiences searching for King Solomon's gold mines in Ethiopia, and the lost wealth of the Incas in Peru, will prove invaluable on what is sure to be a perilous journey across Afghanistan on the trail of the greatest treasure in history.


Thee Expedition

The Team, led by explorer Tahir Shah, will set off from the Old City of Delhi in India, from where the treasure was raided in 1740. It will begin by considering how such a massive fortune could have been stolen, and the logistical problems involved in moving it. Contemporary accounts record that a gigantic caravan hauled it westward from India to Afghanistan. Three hundred elephants, 12,000 horses and 10,000 camels were needed to transport the hundreds of sacks of emeralds, diamonds and rubies, and more than a million gold mohur coins.

Tahir Shah’s expedition will travel from India to the Peshawar in the borderlands of Pakistan, the ancient Gateway to Afghanistan, fiefdom of gunrunners and mercenaries. Once there, Shah will hire a band of Pushtun tribesmen for protection, will buy horses and camels, and create his own caravan, before moving down through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan itself.

Shah plans to travel on foot where possible, gathering fragments of folklore and unearthing hidden clues, uniting material from archives with legend. From his previous journeys, he knows too well that the hardest part is often rooting out the trail in the first place. The key to the treasure may be a line in an antique text, or a memory in the mind of a man. Shah and his team will have to scan thousands of archival records, and quiz hundreds of ordinary people, the kind who frequent teahouses and caravanserais across Afghanistan. It is they, he believes, who ultimately guard the secret of Ahmad Shah’s gold.

Discovering where the treasure lies is not going to be easy. For more than two centuries warlords and kings, governments and private citizens, have searched for the lost treasure. Tahir Shah hopes that the information needed to find the hoard lies within the communal folklore of Afghanistan. After all, few subjects have entertained Afghans so comprehensively as the matter of Ahmad Shah’s hoard. Most Afghans seem to believe the fortune is hidden away the mountains near Qandahar, ready for the taking – waiting any man who can piece together the clues.

Others say that the treasure’s already been found: by the British in the 19th century, or by Amir Abdur Rahman (who sent an army of slaves to search for it), or more recently by the Russian invaders in the 1980s, or even by Al-Qaeda: for their hideouts lay in the mountainous belt above Qandahar, too. Most recently, some conspiracy theorists have even claimed that the Americans entered Afghanistan not to root out Al-Qaeda, but to find the treasure of Ahmad Shah.

What is certain is that the first King of Afghanistan covered the trail meticulously. Those who assisted in moving the treasure to its resting place were probably executed en mass. Ahmad Shah is thought also to have circulated misinformation to further guard the gold and gems. Legends surrounding the location include the one which says he hid the fortune in natural caves (of which there are many in Afghanistan), before diverting a rivulet to conceal the entrance.

Travel in Afghanistan is never safe, even in times of fragile peace. For this reason, Shah and his team will require an armed bodyguard of Pushtun tribesmen as they move through the country. Precise details for a journey such as this are, by their nature, likely to evolve and change while en route. We know that the treasure was divided into several smaller caravans for its own safety. Some of these travelled towards Persia on a southerly route, with others keeping to the north. Shah’s team plans to venture down through the Khyber Pass to Kabul, and then northward to the fabled lapis lazuli and ruby mines at Badakhshan. No foreigners are thought to have visited the mines since 1842. They will then travel on Nuristan, whose people worshipped idols until a century ago. A local legend there says that the Mughal treasure passed that way almost two and a half centuries ago.

From Nuristan, Shah’s caravan will travel west, to Mazar-i-Sharif. This northern stronghold is regarded by many northerners to be the true location of the treasure. They say that the idea of its existence near Qandahar, is part of an elaborate smokescreen laid by Ahmad Shah himself. From Mazar, the expedition will trek fifty miles to the west, to the ancient city of Balkh, known to Alexander the Great and his army as Bactria. The city is important, for it contains a number of shrines, many of them relating to Ahmad Shah’s family and his army. Local people have spent centuries attempting to decipher to geometric patterns on a Sufi martyrs’ tomb in Balkh, which is believed to hold an important clue to the puzzle of treasure.

From Balkh, Shah will journey south, to the mysterious lake of Band-i-Amir in central Afghanistan. Its brooding waters are widely believed to conceal a monster, an Afghan version of the Loch Ness legend. The locals there say that, realizing he would soon die from cancer, Ahmad Shah hurled the massive treasure into the enchanted lake, shouting ‘He who can wrest it from the cursed water may lay claim to my treasure!’

Then on to the extreme west of Afghanistan, towards the border with Persia, and the ancient citadel of Herat. A foreigner visiting the city recently reported being offered ancient gold Mughal coins in the bazaar. Shah is certain that important clues lie in Herat, through which the Peacock Throne of Shah Jahan would have passed en route to Tehran, where it can be found today.

The search for the Afghan Gold will exploit meetings with hundreds of Afghans: farmers and country people, government officials, clerics and warriors. But Shah will also make use of various fragments of cryptic of information supposedly related to the treasure, passed down through his own family. He believes they may form a primitive code of some kind, devised by Ahmad Shah.

The trek through Afghanistan will showcase Afghan society and culture, shifting the focus from documentaries considering hostilities and war. The odds that Tahir Shah’s team will find the greatest treasure in history may be slim, but Shah is adamant that as an explorer you have to set yourself impossible goals if you want to be assured a great journey.

Ends