24/02/2026
Joseph Wolff, the eccentric Bavarian Jew-turned-Christian missionary, was on a two-fold quest: to find the Lost Tribes of Israel and to bring the message of Christ to the farthest reaches of Asia. His pilgrim’s road wound through the sweltering deserts of Anatolia, the high passes of Armenia and Afghanistan, and, in 1832, saw him standing beneath the carved eaves of a governor’s palace in Gujrat, a bustling province of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s vast Sikh Empire.
As Wolff stepped into the courtyard, his ears were assaulted by an incongruous melody — the ragged, nasal strains of “Yankee Doodle.” The tune echoed off the walls like a ghost from a distant land. He blinked, certain his long journey had warped his senses.
From the shadows emerged a tall, striking man in a finely cut Western suit, a fragrant cloud of ho**ah smoke rising from his lips. With a deliberate drawl, he answered Wolff’s incredulous question about the tune:
“I am a free citizen of the United States of North America, from the State of Pennsylvania, and the City of Philadelphia."
The governor's name was Josiah Harlan, and he was one of the 50-odd foreigners serving the Maharaja of Punjab.
Born into a Quacker family, Harlan moved to Calcutta when he was only twenty. In Calcutta, he picked up medical knowledge through rigorous self study, following which he was enrolled as a surgeon at the Calcutta General Hospital (now the SSKM IPGMER Hospital).
His medical education helped him make his way to the Lahore Durbar. A confirmed hypochondriac, Maharaja Ranjit Singh liked to be surrounded by a crowd of medical men.
In walked Josiah Harlan. First as a doctor, then as an administrator — till he became the governor of Gujrat, drawing the princely salary of three thousand rupees per month.
For a time, Harlan prospered. He sat in his palace courtyard, smoking ho**ah, reading Greek philosophy and whistling American tunes while his subordinates administered trade, justice and taxes. But his ambition — and his turbulent nature — would catch up with him.
When Maharaja Ranjit Singh suffered a paralytic stroke in 1835, Harlan offered to heal him with electric cure — to be precise, with a galvanic battery, the cutting edge of European science. But not only did he demand the cost upfront, he offered it with the bluntness of a frontiersman:
“I do not trust the Maharaja to pay later.”
The Lion of Punjab flew into rage at the American's audacity. Harlan was dismissed at once. But his adventures hadn't ended. Not yet.
From Punjab, Harlan slipped into Afghanistan, that graveyard and gateway of empires, where conspiracies brewed in the shadows and alliances shifted like windblown sand. He attached himself for a time to Dost Mohammad Khan, navigated the rivalries of Barakzais and Sadozais, and rode into the highlands of the Hazaras. There, astonishingly, he was granted the title “Prince of Ghor,” reviving the name of the medieval dynasty that had once sent conquerors thundering into North India. An American Quaker, styling himself a Central Asian prince — and meaning it.
Yet, Harlan's title proved more parchment than granite. As power shifted once again in Afghanistan, he had to return to United States, where the last chapter of his life would find him publishing a memoir, criticizing the British policy in India, and raising a cavalry regiment during the Civil War — briefly inhabiting the same national moment as Abraham Lincoln, another self-made man of the nineteenth century.
And that is what makes his story irresistible. The nineteenth century was an age when a Quaker boy could treat sepoys in Calcutta, govern Punjabi districts under a Sikh sovereign, negotiate with Afghan warlords in mountain citadels, and return to a republic still inventing itself. It was a world where caravans met steamships, where telegraphs hummed even as horsemen still carried royal seals across deserts. Identities were fluid, frontiers porous, ambition boundless.
In any quieter age, Josiah Harlan's story would have been a febrile dream. In the nineteenth century, however, it was only too probable.
In the Picture: Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab. Artwork executed by James Skinner.
© Neelesh Chatterjee
