as undisputed ruler in Kabul, and was there proclaimed Emir. He defeated a further attempt to oust him by his exiled rival Shuja Shah Durrani in 1833; however the Sikhs seized all of Peshawar the following year. In 1837 Dost Mohammad launched a counter-attack through the Khyber, but the Afghan force was halted at Jamrud Fort. Dost Mohammad had sought assistance from the East India Company against the resurgent Punjab, but was rebuffed. So Dost Mohammad turned to Imperial Russia for help. Sikh Empire Maharaja Ranjit Singh (Punjabi: ਮਹਾਰਾਜਾ ਰਣਜੀਤ ਸਿੰਘ ), (1780–1839) was a Sikh ruler of the sovereign country of Punjab and the Sikh Empire. His Samadhi is located in Lahore, Pakistan. He then spent the following years fighting the Afghans, driving them out of western Punjab, taking opportunity of the Afghans being embroiled in civil war. The deposed Afghan king Shah Shuja rallied a significant number of tribes and received British backing in the form of the Sikh army against the Barakzai king Dost Muhammad. The civil war in Afghanistan coupled with a British backed assault meant that the Sikhs could virtually walk into Peshawar. They managed to capture Pashtun territory including Peshawar which was under direct British supervision and control. British East India Company At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the East India Company controlled southern India, Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa (modern Odisha). Dominance was gained at the expense of its French equivalent, the Compagnie des Indes. Britain and France were at war, and the Franco-Persian alliance of 1807, followed the same year by the Franco-Russian Treaty of Tilsit, alerted the HEIC to the external threat posed from the north-west. By 1819 only Sindh and the Sikh Empire remained outside the company's control. Napoleon was vanquished, but the Empire of the Tsars had begun to expand south and east. Russian influence grew likewise, and by the early 1830s Qajar Irān was within the Tsar's sphere. Attempts by Irān to recover Herat in 1834, and again in 1837, raised the spectre of Russian armies on the road to Kandahar, whence direct access to India through the Khojak and Bolan passes. Meanwhile, the conflict between Afghanistan and the Punjab focused on the Khyber route. Dost Mohammad appealed to the HEIC for aid in recovering Peshawar, but the company could not help him without alienating its treaty ally Ranjit Singh. When Dost Mohammad redirected his appeal to Russia,