Northern Persia, and also with some districts of Afghanistan, their new
position was regarded as possibly involving designs against our Indian
Empire, and remonstrances were made by us, more especially as regards
the occupation of Merv.[Footnote: _Central Asia_, No. 2, 1885.]

In a strategical point of view the question would not appear to be of
much importance, and would probably have dropped; but early in 1885 the
Russians attacked and drove the Afghan troops out of Penjdeh, a small,
hitherto almost unknown village in the desert. It was a high-handed
measure, and the relations between the two Governments, British and
Russian, which were already rather strained, became critical, and war at
one moment appeared to be almost inevitable.

It is not necessary, nor would it be desirable, now to recapitulate the
details of this serious crisis; because, happily, owing to the prudence
exercised by both Governments, the danger gradually passed away, a Joint
Commission being agreed on, to meet on the frontier, and to report as to
its delimitation. It may, however, be as well to mention that it seems
rather doubtful whether Penjdeh at the time absolutely belonged to
Afghanistan. Frontiers in the East are proverbially uncertain and
shifting, and in our own official maps, not very long before the
occurrences in question, it was marked as outside the Afghan border.
Colonel Stewart, reporting in 1884 on the northern frontier of
Afghanistan, and alluding to Penjdeh, said that it was inhabited by
Turcomans, and he thus described the position: 'The state of affairs
seems to have been that the Turcomans acknowledged that they were
squatting on Afghan land, and were liable to pay taxes, and each year
they paid something as an acknowledgment of Afghan rights; but so long
as this was done, the Afghans looked upon them as a protection against
the Tekke further north, and left them very much to themselves.'