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The article offers a discussion of a little-known Pashto document from 1712 containing presumably the earliest report on the Ghilzay revolt of 1709 in Qandahar and a few additional notes on relations between the Abdālī chieftains and the regional Safavid authorities. The text has been preserved in the Tārīkh-i muraṣṣaʿ (The Ornamented History) by Afżal Khān Khaṫak (d. c. 1740/41). The content, stylistic peculiarities, and underlying tribalist ideologies of the document are examined with an overview of sporadic remarks about Qandahar Pashtuns in the writings of Khushḥāl Khān Khaṫak (d. 1689). To better comprehend the specificity of Afżal Khān's account as a specimen of Pashtun "counter-narrative," the article considers the text in the broader context of available sources, predominantly in Persian, which impart mostly retrospective data on the activities of Pashtun tribes in the Qandahar region. The article also includes a full translation of the Pashto text under study.

AbstractAvailable essays on Pashtunwali describe this system of customary laws and ethics for the most part as a static model of ideal conduct, without a diachronic perspective. Offering a historical approach to Pashtunwali, this article introduces and analyzes fragmentary data on the nənawāte custom from early modern Pashto sources—historiographical narratives of the Khatak chieftains in the Tarikh-i Murassaʿ (finished 1724) and the romantic poem Adam Khan aw Durkhaney (1706/7). Recorded cases of resorting to nənawāte, considered among the main pillars of Pashtunwali but still variously interpreted, prove that this is a complex legal custom based on the right to appeal for protection, mediation, and reconciliation. As a common means of dispute settlement, nənawāte originates with a binding request for help and favor in a conflict situation. The discussion of nənawāte is preceded by a brief overview of the existing scholarly definitions of Pashtunwali, underscoring its emic perception as an ethnic identity marker.

AbstractThe article explores the ethnocultural aspects and ideological implications of a hagiographical collection from the Tārīkh-i Khānjahānī wa Makhzan-i Afghānī (1613), a book on the general history of the Pashtuns compiled in the Indo-Afghan diaspora. This article primarily focuses on the stories that either presumably originate from or directly relate in content to Pashtun tribal areas to the west of the Indus. Being foremost a supplement to the Tārīkh-i Khānjahānī's genealogical section, the hagiographical anthology was included in this book to highlight and illustrate the idea of the Pashtuns' continuous adherence to Islam throughout many centuries. However, its narratives suggest that Islamic traditions in the Pashtuns' collective memory can be traced back as far as the turn of the thirteenth century. While the genealogies maintained the principle of patrilineal descent as the basic attribute of Pashtun identity, the hagiographies affirmed the profession of Islamic faith as another integral component of this identity and also brought to light its linguistic criterion. One of the article's sections offers a survey of the cases where the Pashto language as well as Pashto lexemes and phrases are mentioned in the Persian text of the hagiographies. The article also attempts to locate the Tārīkh-i Khānjahānī's hagiographical collection among similar works in Indo-Persian literature; it also considers such still-understudied issues as the emergence of spiritual lineages in Pashtun tribes and the entwining of folklore and conventional Islamic elements in the stories about Pashtun religious leaders.

The article overviews the earliest Pashto texts, mostly poetic, in which the incipient forms of literary criticism can be traced as authorial self-reflections related in Persian classics to the self-praise genre (fakhriyya) and explanations of reasons for composing works (sabab-i taʾlīf). Under close examination are the seventeenth century verses of the poets affiliated with the Roshānī religious community and the writings of Khushḥāl Khān Khaṫak (d. 1689). Analyzed texts prove that through the rudimentary discourse on a variety of literary criticism topics, Pashtun authors of early modern times declared and justified the presence of emerging literature in Pashto within the Persophone cultural space of Mughal India, articulating simultaneously their commitment to the proliferation of literacy and Islamic book culture among their countrymen.

The complicated process of the Pashtun tribes' conversion to Islam is indirectly reflected in tribal genealogies, which bear traces of artificial Islamification. Recorded in the early 17th century, these genealogies are poorly consistent with apocryphal Hadiths and hagiographies intended to prove that Pashtuns had steadily adhered to Sunni Islam since the times of the Prophet Muḥammad. The politicised concept of the primordial adherence of Pashtuns to Islam was likely to have been released for wide circulation during the reign of the Lodī sultans in the late 15th century. By the mid-17th century, it became an integral part of Pashtun ethnic identity. However, written sources in Pashto and Persian dating from the same period and originating from tribal areas are unanimous in describing Pashtuns' religious beliefs and practices as a motley assemblage of Pīrī-murīdī and Pīrparastī customs conforming to the tribalistic ideology of a segmentary Islamic society. More sophisticated forms of Pashtuns' tribal Islam emerged with the progress of literature in the native vernacular.

The article examines the contents and the historical background of five early specimens of diplomatic correspondence on the Pashtun tribal territories. Written in Persian by the Khatak chief Afzal Khān (d. circa 1740/41) these letters supplement the author's Pashto account of his political conflict with the Khatak spiritual leaders, the sheikhs, in 1724. While in the letters the tribal chief appealed for judicial settlement of the conflict via legal procedure in the Sharia Court of Peshawar, in verbal negotiations he sought extrajudicial administrative arbitration or tribal practices of reconciliation according to the Pashtun customary law. The article conttrunains new materials for the historiography of Pashtun tribes and for comparative study of conflict patterns in Muslim tribal societies.

The article argues that the first specimens of Pashto original narratives in free prose are to be found in the historiographical compilation Tārīkh-i muraṣṣaʿ (1724) among the texts of the chronicles, diaries, and memoirs written by the Khaṯak tribal rulers Khūshḥāl Khān (d. 1689) and Afżal Khān (d. circa 1740/41). Over thirty fragments from these texts may be qualified as short stories for, being focused on particular events and episodes, they are distinguished by strikingly realistic manner of narration and well developed elements of detailing, descriptiveness and emotiveness. Richly illustrated with translations of selected excerpts from original Pashto texts the article summarises the stories' subject-matters by grouping them into three main categories (wars, incidents, everyday life events) and discusses various aspects of the authors' narration techniques, such as compression of time and space in kea moments of action, accentuated portrayal of characters, extensive use of direct speech with a range of stylistic timbres. The article proves that the stories of the Khaṯak chiefs may be viewed also as unique documents on the realities of the Pashtun tribal life in pre-modern times.

The Khataks' Chronicle compiled by the Pashtun tribal rulers Khūshḥāl Khān (d. 1689) and Afżal Khān (d. circa 1740/41) abounds in figures, which relate to calculation of people and things, as well as measurement of time and distances. Within dominant human statistics the most numerous and diverse in numbers are calculations of military strength, often divided into main arms (foot, horse, guns), and war losses. Demographical data proper include numbers of descendants in lineages and occasional statistics of tribal populace. Among frequently calculated things are money (in Mogul rupees) and cattle. Time intervals in tribal stories are usually short and measured generally in nights and days, while distances between key geographical objects—in kurūhs (≈ 2-2,2 km). Although most figures are likely to be approximate (usually round after 20), The Crhonicle's authors aimed at being very careful with all numerical data, which, on the whole, are to be considered historically adequate. Almost all basic lexemes of Pashto numbers are found in The Chronicle. The largest numbers are sums of money in rupees related to the Moguls' military budgets (1,700,000; 900,000; etc.). Of particular note are archaic forms of hundreds (dwaṣū, terṣū, etc.) and reflexes of vigesimal calculation. Numerical data in The Khataks' Chronicle well describe the place, which elementary arithmetic occupied in the education of Pashtun tribal rulers in the mediaeval and pre-modern times and may serve as a primary resource for studying the inventory of numbers in early written Pashto.

The article examines statements on Pashtun ethnicity from the original Pashto prose texts written by the Khaṯak tribal rulers Khūshḥāl Khān (d. 1689) and Afżal Khān (d. circa 1740/41) and included in the corpus of the historiographical compilation Tārīkh-i muraṣṣa' (The Ornamented History). Under discussion are conceptual roots of the Pashtun ethnic identity in tribal genealogical traditions and ethical regulations (Code of Honour) of the Pashtun customary law, main hierarchal levels (national, tribal, clannish) within the ethnic consciousness of the Khaṯak chiefs, and the early development of the concept of Homeland (watan) in Pashto literature. Textual material analysed in the article with reference to similar declarations from the national and patriotic poetry of Khūshḥāl Khān suggests that towards the beginning of the 18th century Pashtun tribes in the mass well recognised themselves as one people with common ethno-cultural heritage, and national self-identification was one of the key elements in their collective consciousness that provided necessary ideological ground for the creation of the Afghan national statehood in 1747.

The paper briefly examines underlying ideology and extraliterary functions of the texts, which constitute the largest part of the Pashtun historiographical work Tārīkh-i muraṣṣa' (finished in 1724) and may be classified by genre as tribal chronicle. Under discussion are two related extraliterary functions, both pertaining to the general idea of continuity. It is argued that the principal ideological message of the chronicle, on the one hand, aims at maintaining the continuity of the accepted tribal knowledge of the past and, on the other, strives for the necessity of abiding the laws of power succession within ruling clans according to the principle of primogeniture.