Pathans

, Hindi: ???? Pa?h?n), ethnic Afghans,[11] or synonymously Afghans[12] (Persian: ????? Af??n), are an Eastern Iranian ethno-linguistic group with populations primarily in eastern and southern Afghanistan and in the North-West Frontier Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Balochistan provinces of western Pakistan. The Pashtuns are typically characterized by their usage of the Pashto language and practice of Pashtunwali, which is a traditional code of conduct and honor.[13]

Pashtun society consists of many tribes and clans which were rarely politically united,[14] until the rise of the Durrani Empire in 1747.[3] Pashtuns played a vital role during the Great Game as they were caught between the imperialist designs of the British and Russian empires. For over 250 years, they reigned as the dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan. They gained world-wide attention after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and with the rise and fall of the Taliban, since they were the main ethnic contingent in the movement. Pashtuns are also an important community in Pakistan, where they are prominently represented in the military and are the second-largest ethnic group.[15]

The Pashtuns are the world's largest (patriarchal) segmentary lineage ethnic group.[16] The total population of the group is estimated to be around 42 million, but an accurate count remains elusive due to the lack of an official census in Afghanistan since 1979.[17] There are an estimated 60 major Pashtun tribes and more than 400 sub-clans.[18]
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Demographics
* 2 History and origins
o 2.1 Ancient references
o 2.2 Anthropology and linguistics
o 2.3 Oral traditions
o 2.4 Genetics
o 2.5 Modern era
* 3 Pashtuns defined
o 3.1 Ethnic definition
o 3.2 Cultural definition
o 3.3 Ancestral definition
o 3.4 Putative ancestry
* 4 Culture
o 4.1 Language
o 4.2 Religion
o 4.3 Pashtunwali
o 4.4 Pashto literature and media
o 4.5 Sports
o 4.6 Performing arts
* 5 Tribes
* 6 Women
* 7 See also
* 8 Notes and references
* 9 Further reading and external links

Demographics
Kandahar lady of rank

Part of a series on
Pashtuns ?????

Etymology · Pashtunwali
Language · Culture · Art
Tribes · Diaspora

Kingdoms (Hotaki · Durrani)
Pakistan · Afghanistan
Pashtunistan · Pakhtunkhwa
Pashtunization
v • d • e

Main articles: Demographics of Afghanistan and Demographics of Pakistan

The vast majority of Pashtuns are found in an area stretching from southeastern Afghanistan to northwestern Pakistan. Additional Pashtun communities are found in the Northern Areas of Pakistan and in Khorasan Province of eastern Iran. There is also a sizeable community in India, that is of largely putative ancestry.[19][7] A large migrant-worker community resides in the countries of the Arabian Peninsula and in smaller communities in Europe and North America. Important metropolitan centers of Pashtun culture include Peshawar and Kandahar. Quetta and Kabul are ethnically mixed cities with large Pashtun populations. With 1.5 million ethnic Pashtuns, Karachi hosts one of the largest Pashtun populations in the world.[20]

Pashtuns comprise over 15.42% of Pakistan's population or 25.6 million people.[1] In Afghanistan, they make up an estimated 39%[21] to 42% of the population or 12.4 to 13.3 million people. The exact numbers remain uncertain, particularly in Afghanistan, and are affected by approximately 3 million Afghan refugees that remain in Pakistan, of which 81.5% or 2.49 million are ethnic Pashtuns.[2] An unknown number of refugees continue to reside in Iran.[22] A cumulative population assessment suggests a total of around 42 million across the region.[1][3][2]

History and origins

See also: History of Afghanistan and History of Pakistan

The history of the Pashtuns is ancient, and much of it is not fully researched. Since the 2nd millennium BC, regions now inhabited by Pashtuns have seen invasions and migrations, including by Aryan tribes (Iranian peoples, Indo-Aryans), Medes, Persians, Mauryas, Scythians, Kushans, Hephthalites, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols. There are many conflicting theories about the origins of the Pashtun people, some modern and others archaic, both among historians and the Pashtuns themselves.

Ancient references

See also: Origins of the name Afghan

Ghilzai nomads of Afghanistan.
Ghilzai nomads of Afghanistan.

A variety of ancient groups with eponyms similar to either Pashtun or Pukhtun have been hypothesized as possible ancestors of modern Pashtuns. The Greek historian Herodotus mentioned a people called Pactyans, living on the eastern frontier of the Persian Satrapy Arachosia as early as the 1st millennium BC,[23] but their connection to Pashtuns remains unclear. Similarly, the Rig-Veda mentions a tribe called the Pakthas[24] (in the region of Pakhat) inhabiting eastern Afghanistan and some academics have proposed a connection with modern Pashtuns, but this too remains speculative.[25]

In modern history, Pashtuns were also called Afghans until the advent of modern Afghanistan and the division of Pashtuns by a border called Durand Line drawn by the British in the late 19th century. According to several scholars such as V. Minorsky, W.K. Frazier Tyler and M.C. Gillet, "The word Afghan first appears in history in the Hudud-al-Alam in 982 CE."[26] It was used by the Pashtuns and refers to a common legendary ancestor known as Afghana.

Al-Biruni refers to Afghans as various tribes living along the frontier mountains between India and Persia, a possible reference to the Sulaiman Mountains, and further notes that they were neither Muslim or Hindu, indicative of an indigenous Pre-Islamic religion.[27] Thus, it is believed that the Pashtuns emerged from the area around Kandahar and the Sulaiman Mountains, and expanded from there.[11] In this geographic location they would have often been in close contact with the ancient Persians and Indians,[28] and were Zoroastrians, Shamanists, and later Buddhists before the arrival in the 7th century of Muslim Arabs who brought Islam.[29][30]

Anthropology and linguistics
Amir Sher Ali Khan and Suite' in 1869.
Amir Sher Ali Khan and Suite' in 1869.

The origins of the Pashtuns are eastern Iranian. The Pashto language is classified under the Eastern Iranian sub-branch of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Thus, Pashtuns are classified as an Iranian people,[31][32] possibly as partial descendants of the Scythians, an ancient Iranian group.[33]

Early precursors to the Pashtuns were Old Iranian tribes that spread throughout the eastern Iranian plateau.[34][35] According to academic Yu. V. Gankovsky, the Pashtuns began as a "union of largely East-Iranian tribes which became the initial ethnic stratum of the Pashtun ethnogenesis, dates from the middle of the first millennium CE and is connected with the dissolution of the Epthalite (White Huns) confederacy."[36]

Pashtuns who speak a southern dialect of Pashto refer to themselves as Pashtuns, while those who speak a northern dialect as Pukhtuns. These Pashtuns compose the core of ethnic Pashtuns who are found in western Pakistan and southern-eastern Afghanistan. Like other Iranian peoples, many Pashtuns have mixed with various invaders, neighboring groups, and migrants. In terms of phenotype, Pashtuns are predominantly a Mediterranean people,[37] so light hair, eye colors and pale skin are not uncommon, especially among remote mountain tribes.[38]

Oral traditions
A Pashtun man and his son from southern Afghanistan.
A Pashtun man and his son from southern Afghanistan.

Some anthropologists lend credence to the mythical oral traditions of the Pashtun tribes themselves. For example, according to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the theory of Pashtun descent from Israelites is traced to Maghzan-e-Afghani who compiled a history for Khan-e-Jehan Lodhi in the reign of Mughal Emperor Jehangir in the 17th century.

Another book that corresponds with Pashtun historical records, Taaqati-Nasiri, states that in the 7th century a people called the Bani Israel settled in Ghor, southeast of Herat, Afghanistan, and then migrated south and east. These references to Bani Israel agree with the commonly held view by Pashtuns that when the twelve tribes of Israel were dispersed (see Israel and Judah and Ten Lost Tribes), the tribe of Joseph, among other Hebrew tribes, settled in the region.[39] This oral tradition is widespread among the Pashtuns. There have been many legends over the centuries of descent from the Ten Lost Tribes after groups converted to Christianity and Islam. Hence the tribal name 'Yusef Zai' in Pashto translates to the 'sons of Joseph'. A similar story is told by Iranian historian Ferishta.[40]

But the Bani-Israel theory has major historical and linguistic inconsistencies. The main one is that the Ten Lost Tribes were exiled by Assyria, while Maghzan-e-Afghani says they were permitted by the ruler of Persia to go east to Afghanistan.[41] This inconsistency can be explained by the fact that Persia acquired the lands of the ancient Assyrian Empire when it conquered the Empire of the Medes and Chaldean Babylonia, which had conquered Assyria decades earlier. But no ancient author mentions such a transfer of Israelites further east, or no ancient extra-Biblical texts refer to the Ten Lost Tribes at all. Also, the Rig Veda, believed to have been composed before 1200 BC, already mentions the Pashtuns as living in the area of Afghanistan.[42] No ancient author before the conversion of the Pashtuns to Islam mentions any Israelite or Jewish connection.[43] The oral tradition may be a myth which grew out of a political and cultural struggle with the Mughals.[41]

Other Pashtun tribes claim descent from Arabs, including some even claiming to be descendants of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad (popularly referred to as sayyids).[44] Some groups from Peshawar and Kandahar (such as the Afridis , Khattaks and Sadozais) also claim to be descended from Alexander the Great's Greeks.[45]

Genetics

Research into human DNA is as a new way to explore historical movements of populations by studying their genetic make-up. Some recent genetic genealogy studies show Pashto-speaking Pashtuns are mainly related to Iranian peoples and to the Burusho who speak a language isolate.[46][45] There is evidence of a small Greek contribution to the Pashtun gene pool that will likely require further testing in order to ascertain its pervasiveness.[47]

Modern era
Ahmad Shah Durrani established the Durrani Empire in 1747.
Ahmad Shah Durrani established the Durrani Empire in 1747.

The Pashtuns are intimately tied to the history of modern Afghanistan and western Pakistan. Following Muslim Arab and Turkic conquests from the 7th to 11th centuries, Pashtun ghazis (warriors for the faith) invaded and conquered much of northern India during the Khilji dynasty (1290-1321), Lodhi dynasty (1451-1526) and Suri dynasty (1540-1556). The Pashtuns' modern past stretches back to the Hotaki dynasty (1709-1738) and later the Durrani Empire (1747-1823).[48] The Hotakis were Ghilzai tribesmen, who defeated the Safavid dynasty of Persia and seized control over much of the Persian Empire from 1722 to 1738. This was followed by the conquests of Ahmad Shah Durrani who was a former high-ranking military commander under the ruler Nadir Shah of Persia. He founded the Durrani Empire that covered most of what is today Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, Indian Punjab, and Khorasan province of Iran.[49][50] After the fall of the Durrani Empire in 1818, the Barakzai clan took control of Afghanistan. Specifically, the Mohamedzai subclan ruled Afghanistan from 1826 to the end of Mohammad Zahir Shah reign in 1973. This legacy continues into modern times as Afghanistan is run by President Hamid Karzai, who is an ethnic Pashtun from Kandahar.
President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai wearing his traditional Pashtun clothes and a karakul hat in 2003.
President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai wearing his traditional Pashtun clothes and a karakul hat in 2003.

The Pashtuns in Afghanistan resisted British designs upon their territory and kept the Russians at bay during the so-called Great Game. By playing the two empires against each other, Afghanistan remained an independent state and maintained some autonomy (see the Siege of Malakand). But during the reign of Abdur Rahman Khan (1880-1901), Pashtun regions were divided by the Durand Line, and what is today western Pakistan was ceded to British India in 1893.[51] In the 20th century, some Pashtun leaders living under British Indian rule in the North-West Frontier Province supported Indian independence, including Khan Wali Khan and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (both members of the Khudai Khidmatgar, popularly referred to as the Surkh posh or "the Red shirts"), and were inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent method of resistance.[52] Later, in the 1970s, Khan Wali Khan pressed for more autonomy for Pashtuns in Pakistan.
Zalmay Khalilzad, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, is an ethnic Pashtun.
Zalmay Khalilzad, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, is an ethnic Pashtun.[53]

Pashtuns in Afghanistan attained complete independence from British intervention during the reign of King Amanullah Khan, following the Third Anglo-Afghan War. The monarchy ended when Sardar Daoud Khan seized control of Afghanistan in 1973. This opened the door to Soviet intervention and culminated in the Communist Saur Revolution in 1978. Starting in the late 1970s, many Pashtuns joined the Mujahideen opposition against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. They fought for control of Afghanistan against the Communist Khalq and the Parcham factions. More recently, the Pashtuns became known for being the primary ethnic group that comprised the Taliban, which was a religious movement that emerged from Kandahar, Afghanistan.[54] In late 2001, the Taliban government was removed from power as a result of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Technorati Tags: Childcare

Vote Result

Score: 0.0, Votes: 0