Then, again, there seems no doubt that the men of the border believed that they might safely rely upon the support, moral and material, of the Amir of Afghanistan. It was known that the Durand Boundary Agreement was not particularly palatable to the Ruler of the Unruly; he had lately written a book on _Jehad_; he had recently assumed a title[117] which seemed to include all Muhammadans under his sovereignty; for years he had been a personal friend of the Hadda Mullah, one of the chief apostles of insurrection. As a matter of fact, however, subsequent revelations proved that the Amir’s attitude towards his ally had been perfectly correct, throughout a situation which for him was both difficult and dangerous; he issued proclamations enjoining neutrality; he caused Afghan reinforcements moving eastward to be stopped and dispersed; the Afridis themselves admitted that “His Highness advised us not to fight with the British Government;” but the Amir was not able effectively to control the active sympathies with the insurrectionary movement of some of his people in general, and of Ghulam Haidar, his Commander-in-Chief, in particular. [Sidenote: Amir and Afridis] The initial outbreaks, preceding that of the Afridis, occurred on the 10th June, 1897, in the Tochi Valley, on the 26th July at the Malakand, and on the 7th August at Shabkadar in the Peshawar Valley; and shortly after this latter date the possibility of the rising, already sufficiently formidable, spreading to the Afridis and Orakzais, caused the concentration at Rawal Pindi of two brigades, in addition to those which had already been formed for service against other tribes on the frontier. At the same time a movable column, composed of the three arms, was formed at Peshawar, intended for the protection of the frontier immediately adjacent to that cantonment, but not intended to carry on operations in the Khyber; the garrison of Jamrud was doubled, and regular troops occupied the frontier forts at Michni and Abazai. For some reason, not readily apparent, the authorities on the spot, military and civil, do not seem to have felt any real apprehension for the safety of the Khyber; and, as has been said elsewhere, reports sent from Kohat, emphasising the serious and widespread character of the rising, and pointing out the extent to which Afridis and Orakzais seemed to be implicated, appear to have been discredited or were considered to be exaggerated.