Battle of Maiwand

Overview

The Battle of Maiwand was fought on 27 July 1880 during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Fought near the village of Maiwand in Kandahar Province, the battle resulted in an Afghan army of 25,000 regulars and irregulars under Mohammad Ayub Khan defeating a force of 2,476 British and Indian troops under Brigadier-general George Burrows. The Afghans suffered between 2,500 and 3,000 men killed and wounded while Burrows' force suffered possibly as high as 1,200 killed. Though the battle proved to be a major setback for the British, they would go on to decisively defeat Ayub Khan at the Battle of Kandahar on 1 September.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Significance

The Battle of Maiwand delivered one of the most severe defeats suffered by British forces during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Ayub Khan's army of 25,000 regulars and irregulars overwhelmed Brigadier-General Burrows's force of 2,476 British and Indian troops, inflicting roughly 1,200 killed — casualties that made it a major operational setback for the British in Kandahar Province. The scale of the loss, with Afghan forces absorbing between 2,500 and 3,000 of their own casualties in the engagement, underscored the intensity of the fighting and the disparity in force sizes. Despite the defeat, the British recovered quickly; Ayub Khan was decisively beaten at the Battle of Kandahar on 1 September 1880, just over a month later. Maiwand thus stands as a significant but ultimately contained reverse within the broader arc of the Second Anglo-Afghan War, demonstrating both the vulnerabilities of British imperial expeditionary forces operating at extended reach and the limits of a single Afghan victory in determining the war's outcome.

Forces & casualties

Commanders (2)