1869 Afzal Khan ousts Sher Ali--Sher Ali regains the Amirship -- Foresight of Sir Henry Rawlinson--The Umballa Durbar In January, 1869, Sir John Lawrence, after a career which was altogether unique, he having risen from the junior grades of the Bengal Civil Service to the almost regal position of Governor-General,[1] left India for good.

He was succeeded as Viceroy by Lord Mayo, one of whose first official acts was to hold a durbar at Umballa for the reception of the Amir Sher Ali, who, after five years of civil war, had succeeded in establishing himself on the throne of Afghanistan, to which he had been nominated by his father, Dost Mahomed Khan.[2] Sher Ali had passed through a stormy time between the death of the Dost, in June, 1863, and September, 1868.

He had been acknowledged as the rightful heir by the Government of India, and for the first three years he held the Amirship in a precarious sort of way.

His two elder brothers, Afzal and Azim, and his nephew, Abdur Rahman (the present Ruler of Afghanistan), were in rebellion against him.

The death of his favourite son and heir-apparent, Ali Khan, in action near Khelat-i-Ghilzai, in 1865, grieved him so sorely that for a time his reason was affected.