Ghazi Muhammad Ayub Khan (1857–1914)

Wood engraving of Ghazi Mohammad Ayub Khan

He was third son of Amir Sher Ali Khan and full brother to Amir Yaqub Khan. Born in 1857 from a Mohmand mother, daughter of Saadat Khan, Chief of Lalpura.

During Second Anglo-Afghan War (after British deposed Ayub's brother Yakub Khan), Ayub Khan led an army from his governorship of Herat, and defeated a British force at Maiwand on 26 July 1880. The disastrous defeat of British arms in Asia could not go unchallenged, so Lt. General Sir Fredrick Roberts was dispatched to Kandahar with a picked mobile force of 9,987 men. The British won a decisive victory, and Ayub Khan returned to Herat.

In August 1887, Ayub Khan left his exile in Teheran and slipped into Afghanistan, but before he could lead a serious insurrection against his cousin in order to seize the throne, he encountered Afghan authorities who had learned of his presence at Ghurian, a town west of Herat, and he had to flee into the desert of that area where he suffered privations. Ayub Khan finally turned himself over to the British emissary in Mashad, Persia. He was sent to India as a state prisoner and kept in confinement for sometime. He spent the last years of his life with his family in Lahore, living off a pension fixed by the Government of India. He died on April 7, 1914 and was buried in the Durrani Graveyard, Peshawar.