WI Afghanistan divided between the Safavids and the Mughals.

What if western Afghanistan including Hazarajat and western Balochistan remained iranian after the Safavids and the rest of Afghanistan was annexed by the Mughals, and eventually become part of the Raj of India. If you want also divide the turkmen, uzbek and tajik north of Afghanistan among the turkic khanates. I think this could become a durable border. Eastern Afghanistan could become shia majority or Hazarajat may became a Bosnia shia equivalent. Not shure what is gonna be of the pashtun on the south.
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Well this was otl up until the Durrani empire, and I think the afghan national consciousness can be pretty easily butterflied with perhaps a longer lasting Ashfarid state but of course, one that loses eastern Afghanistan to India again. If you want the Safavid Mughal border to remain unchanged, you want to butterfly Nader Shahs invasion of India, which to be fair also probably butterflies the Durranis.
Either or, butterflying the Afghan/ Iranian invasions radically changes the Indian 18th century and could end up preventing British colonisation, preventing Mughal collapse, preventing Maratha collapse, or any other of a host of things.
 
It was divided between them IOTL, with Kabul almost always being Mughal and Kandahar usually being Safavid.
 
It was divided between them IOTL, with Kabul almost always being Mughal and Kandahar usually being Safavid.
Then I wonder on the long term concequences of a world without Afghanistan. I guess western Afghanistan gets shia majority or the pashtun majority areas become inconsequencial like the turkmen or baloch majority areas in otl. And the eastern part becomes a giant peshawar, so maybe the pashtun become more politically significant in future Pakistan. Also I guess the turkic and tajik majority areas from the north would eventually get annexed by the Russian empire and the become SSRs under the USSR. So now you have a masive triple border between Iran, Pakistan and the USSR. And before that you have a completly different outcome of the Great Game.
 
Then I wonder on the long term concequences of a world without Afghanistan. I guess western Afghanistan gets shia majority or the pashtun majority areas become inconsequencial like the turkmen or baloch majority areas in otl. And the eastern part becomes a giant peshawar, so maybe the pashtun become more politically significant in future Pakistan. Also I guess the turkic and tajik majority areas from the north would eventually get annexed by the Russian empire and the become SSRs under the USSR. So now you have a masive triple border between Iran, Pakistan and the USSR. And before that you have a completly different outcome of the Great Game.

I think it’s practically impossible that you’ll get a Pakistan if there was no Afghanistan.

As I said before, after Nader Shahs invasion i see very little way of preventing an Ahmed Shah analogue from establishing an Afghan state that would probably manage to retain independence for a good long while, making the Mughal Safavid border impossible to maintain or reproduce.

If we’re going to butterfly Nader Shahs invasions of India, that’s probably best for the subcontinent, as losing the Indus lost the strategic depth and fairly defensible borders that the Mughals has previously had and made it very easy for future invaders eg Ahmed Shah Abdalis repeated incursions. The complete political and economic chaos was extremely damaging for India, as it destroyed trade routes places like Panjab depended on. Additionally it exposed the weakness of Delhi for all to see and led to regional powers increasingly establishing autonomy and the start of the french/ European attempt to assert control over all of India.

Without this, the court of Delhi is still obviously in trouble, the empire has still fallen tremendously and can only exercise power to the extent that regional magnates play ball, but at this point regional magnates still for the most part respect and are a bit in awe of the institution of the Peacock Throne, and without Nader Shah looting the actual Peacock Throne, a ton of other jewels and proving that the emperor is powerless to stop massacres in his own capital, they’d be willing to play ball a little longer I would say. If the riches taken by the Iranian Napoleon stayed in Delhi it would definitely prevent the constant shortage of funds felt by Mughals after this that stymied all attempts at military endeavours. Delhi probably remains the prime commercial centre of the north without the destruction of the trade routes and hopefully at least it would prevent the creation of a genre of poetry solely about how poor Delhi has become. Due to a greater sense of political stability, the sense of après moi le deluge in nobles would be much smaller and this prevents the desperate struggle to get a productive jagir and extract as much money from the peasants as possible while you had it, so the condition of the peasantry is much improved as compared to otl. It definitely increases the chances that the Mughals manage to stay a major power in the subcontinent into the 19th century but the most likely thing i think would happen would be continued corruption and court intrigue further weakening authority in a gradual process but I don’t think it’d be as dramatic or complete as otl, I think they’d at least manage to keep Akbars empire ish boundaries and maybe also Nizams dominions as well as his legitimacy comes from Delhi, though there’s a pretty decent chance Hyderabad ends up de facto independent.

I don’t think it would have much of an effect on the rising challenger states in the south, except without the weakness of indian states being proclaimed to Europeans by Nader shah and the following Afghans, Europeans would be less likely to try and take political power, and stay content in their role as arms dealers and military advisors. Who knows, maybe some of them end up at the Mughal court as opposed to otl when everyone saw them as non actors. On thé other hand, it was Nader shah and the Afghan invasions that introduced light artillery improvements and quick fire rifles to India, so without the rude awakening to modern warfare, indian weaponry probably stays a little bit more medieval for a bit, but considering the fierce competition between southern states, i can’t believe they wouldn’t pick up as much from the Europeans as they could, as per otl anyway so the affect of that is probably minimal.
 
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