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Sir Henry Mortimer Durand, (14 February 1850 – 8 June 1924) was a British diplomat and member of the Indian Civil Service. He is best-known as the namesake for the Durand Line, which serves as the international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He was appointed a CSI in 1881 knighted with a KCIE in 1888, and a KCSI in 1894 and appointed a GCMG in 1900.
Durand unsuccessfully stood as a Conservative candidate for Plymouth in the January 1910 United Kingdom general election.
In 1884 Durand informed Abdur Rahman Khan, the Amir of Afghanistan, the frontier between modern-day Pakistan (the successor state of British Raj) and Afghanistan that the garrison of Panjdeh had been Panjdeh incident on the orders of the Russian General Komarov. The Russians wished to stop British occupation of Herat, so Durand was despatched to prevent "the strained relations which then existed between Russia and ourselves," wrote the Viceroy, Lord Dufferin, and "might in itself have proved the occasion of a long miserable war." Tensions at home in British newspapers heightened the urgency of the incident, threatening war in Central Asia, which Rahman was desperate to avoid. A telephone line was kept open between Lord Granville and Count Giers in St Petersburg.
Sir Mortimer was deputed to Kabul by the government of British India for the purpose of settling an exchange of territory required by the demarcation of the Durand Line between northeastern Afghanistan and the Russian possessions along the same lines as in 1873, except for the southward salient at Panjdeh. The British made it clear that any further extension towards Herat would amount to a declaration of war. Rahman showed his usual ability in diplomatic argument, his tenacity where his own views or claims were in debate, with a sure underlying insight into the real situation. A Royal Commission was established to demarcate the boundary between Afghanistan and the British-governed India. The two parties camped at Parachinar, now part of FATA Pakistan, near Khost Afghanistan. From the British side the camp was attended by Mortimer Durand and Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum, the Political Agent for Khyber Agency. The Afghans were represented by Sahibzada Abdul Latif and Governor Sardar Shireendil Khan representing Amir Abdur Rahman Khan. The territorial exchanges were amicably agreed upon; the relations between the British Indian and Afghan governments, as previously arranged, were confirmed. The Durand Road in Lahore is also named after him.
He also published the biography of his father, General Henry Marion Durand (1812–1871), and also had ambitions as a novelist, often with his wife, Lady E. R. Durand (1852–1913), as a co-author. Some of his publications are:
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