A Note on Qandahar Pashtuns: An Early Eighteenth-Century Pashto Source and Its Literary Context

Abstract

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.