Wazir Akbar Khan

Wazir Akbar Khan وزير اکبر خان
Emir of Afghanistan Ghazi
An old drawing of Wazir Akbar Khan
Emir of Afghanistan
Reign	May 1842–1845
Predecessor	Shuja Shah Durrani
Successor	Sher Ali Khan
Born	1816
Died	1845 Jalalabad, Afghanistan
Burial	Blue Mosque, Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan
House	Barakzai dynasty
Father	Dost Mohammad Barakzai
Mother	Mermən Khadija Popalzai
Religion	Sunni Islam

Wazīr Akbar Khān (1816–1845; Pashto: وزير اکبر خان‎), born as Mohammad Akbar Khān (محمد اکبر خان) and also known as Amīr Akbar Khān (امير اکبر خان), was an Afghan prince, general, and finally emir for about three years until his death. His fame began with the 1837 Battle of Jamrud, while attempting to regain Afghanistan's second capital Peshawar from the Sikh army.

Wazir Akbar Khan was militarily active in the First Anglo-Afghan War, which lasted from 1839 to 1842. He is prominent for his leadership of the national party in Kabul from 1841 to 1842, and his massacre of Elphinstone's army at the Gandamak pass before the only survivor, the assistant surgeon William Brydon, reached the besieged garrison at Jalalabad on 13 January 1842. Wazir Akbar Khan became the emir of Afghanistan in May 1842, and ruled until his death in 1845.

Akbar was born as Mohammad Akbar Khan in 1816 to Emir Dost Mohammad Barakzai of Afghanistan and Mermən Khadija Popalzai. Dost Mohammad Barakzai had 2 wives, 8 sons (including Wazir Akbar Khan) and 2 daughters.

In 1836 Dost Mohammad Barakzai's Muslim forces, under the command of his son Wazir Akbar Khan, fought the Sikhs at the Battle of Jamrud, fifteen kilometers west of present-day Peshawar. Dost Mohammad Barakzai did not follow up this triumph by retaking Peshawar, however, but instead contacted Lord Auckland, the new British governor general in India, for help in fighting the Sikhs. With this letter, Dost Mohammad formally set the stage for British intervention in Afghanistan. At the heart of the Great Game lay the willingness of Britain and Russia to subdue, subvert, or subjugate the small independent states that lay between them.