He held the throne of Afghanistan as Emir for one week, from 21 to 28 February 1919, until Habibullah's son Amanullah staged a coup against his uncle.

[3] Nasrullah's birth occurred during a period in which his father Abdur Rahman Khan was living in exile in Russian Turkestan.

As a consequence of his father's ascension of the throne, Nasrullah (and his elder brother Habibullah) became Shahzada (crown princes) of Afghanistan.

In 1895 the Emir Abdur Rahman Khan had intended to undertake a state visit to England to pay his respects to the ageing Queen Victoria.

[4] Nasrullah departed Bombay on 29 April 1895, with an entourage of over 90 dignitaries, including "five or six" high-ranking Afghan nobles and a group of priests for the observance of religious functions.

[4] During his trip he also visited the Liverpool Overhead Railway, and went to Ascot, Glasgow, and the Elswick Company Gun Range at Blitterlees Banks,[5] as well as staying with Lord Armstrong at Cragside.

[4] Prior to his death, Abdur Rahman had sought to totally subdue any sources of opposition to his reign and the stability of Afghanistan with strict laws and restrictions.

Upon Abdur Rahman's death, the religious establishment sought to regain its power, and saw in Nasrullah a potential ally.

Upon Habibullah's succession to the throne he named Nasrullah commander-in-chief of the Afghan army, and also gave him the title of President of the State Council.

[3] The level of influence Nasrullah enjoyed led Angus Hamilton in his 1910 book Afghanistan to describe Habibullah as a "weak-willed" ruler, and the possibility of Nasrullah making an attempt on the throne caused Hamilton to describe him as a "stormy petrel in the Afghan sea of domestic politics".

[10] The significance of the tribal areas was that they formed a natural military barrier against the British, who periodically threatened to invade the region to counter Russian advances from the north.

[10] At around the same time, during 1904–05, Sir Louis Dane (later governor of the Punjab region of India) attempted to establish a new British mission at Kabul in line with the terms of the Treaty.

In this they had the support of Nasrullah and the religious factions he represented, who were sympathetic towards the Ottomans because of what they saw as unwarranted infidel aggression towards Islamic states.

Nasrullah was involved in introducing the expedition to journalist Mahmud Tarzi, whose papers began taking an increasingly anti-British stance.

[11] Finally in 1916 Nasrullah offered to remove Habibullah from power and take charge of the frontier tribes in a campaign against British India, but by then the mission realised such action would be fruitless and declined.