Afghan Profile - Origins of the Afghans (Pashtuns)

Origins of the Afghans (Pashtuns)

By: Ali Maisam Nazary

The Afghans a.k.a Pashtuns are people that live in modern day Afghanistan and Pakistan. They speak an Indo-European language called Pashto or Pakhtu. Little is known about where these people and their ancestors originated from. However, months of research has revealed that “Afghans” was not a description of an ethnicity or a nation. Instead, the concept of “Afghans” was the result of an alliance between various tribes that spoke Pashto. We have categorized Pashtuns in three groups: Durranis/Abdalis who live in modern day Afghanistan; Ghilzais who are descendants of Sher Khan Suri, and the Karlanris who are eastern tribes like Afridis, Bangash, Waziris, etc. Each category has its own story and has its own origins.

The original tribes of Gandahara Valley (Peshawar) were called Karlanris. They were tribes which spoke the first dialect of Pashto. According to The Pathans by Olaf Caroe, the first records found about these people were during the Parthian dynasty of Persia written by a Greek Historian named Herodotus. Herodotus says that Karlanris were Indo Aryan and Dravidians that migrated to the west. Elphinestone tells us that Karlanris are descendants of Qais and so they are Semitic. Olaf Caroe also states that Karlanris aren’t Afghans but Pathans.

The next group is the Ghilzais. The Ghilzai Tribe is the biggest Afghan tribe. They live mostly between the Durand Line and speak Pakhtu which is similar to Pashto. The Ghilzais are the archrivals of the Durranis another Afghan tribe. Our Team has concluded that there are three theories behind their origins. Olaf Caroe states in The Pathans that Ghilzais are descendants of Khalaj Turks who came with Attila and the Huns. Mahmoud Kashgari, writing in Baghdad in the eleventh century and the Russian orientalist Barthold both identified the Ghilzais also as the Turkish Khalaj, who made up one of the twenty-four clans of the tribal confederacy of the Oghuz Turks. Olaf Caroe also states that after several centuries these tribes became Pashtunized and they formed a unique dialect of Pakhtu with a lot of Turkish vocabulary.

He also says the word Ghilzai comes from Khalaj which evolved through time from Khalaj to Khalji to Ghalji to Ghalzai or Ghilzai. The next theory for their origins is that Bibi Mato, a Pashtun woman whose father was Bitan, the son of Qais, was raped by a Turkish prince, Prince Hussein, who was traveling to the Suleiman Mountains. Bibi Mato bore a son and she named him Ghalzai which means ‘son of a thief.’ Ghilzai was Ibrahim Lodhi's half brother. Lodhi which means eldest in Pashto was older than Ghilzai. People today think Lodhi and Ghilzai are the same but they aren’t. The third theory is that most Ghilzai sub-tribes like Mangal, Jaji, Jadran, and Karot, etc are descendants of Genghis Khan. In Paul Kahn’s The Secret History of the Mongols Kahn says that Jadarin is the name of the clan that Changiz Khan was from and Jaji was the name of Changiz's grandfather who was also the leader of the Jadarin clan. "Orya" is the name of one of Changiz's grandson and "Oryakhil" is a name of a Ghilzai tribe. It also says Karo was the title of a spiritual man in the clan of Changiz Khan's first wife. And now, Karokhil is the name of the name of a Ghilzai tribe. And Also Mongols call themselves Mangal and a Ghilzai tribe is called Mangal in Paktia.

The last Afghan group is the Abdalis or the Durranis. The Abdalis were actually from the Suleiman Mountains and they started migrating to southern Afghanistan around the 17th and 18th centuries. They were called Abdalis until Ahmad Khan Abdali changed it to Durrani because Nadir Afshar called him Dur e Durran which means Pearl of Pearls in Parsi. The Abdalis have been ruling Afghanistan from 1747 to 1978 when Daud Khan was overthrown in the Saur Revolution. Today, most of them are Persianized and don’t know a single word of Pashto. In the book Maghzan e Afghan written by Nehmatullah during the Mughul dynasty of India, it states that Afghan was the grandson of King Saul or King Talut of Israel. Afghan was raised in David's Court and was a great general for King Salomon. When the Babylonians destroyed Israel the descendants of Afghan named Afghana migrated to the Mountains west of India which they named the mountains after Suleiman.

When Muhammad was in Medina, Qais, the leader of the Afghans traveled to Medina where he meet Prophet Muhamad and converted to Islam and changed his name to Abdur Rashid. Well this is more a myth than reality because four hundred years after Prophet Muhamad died Afghans formed an alliance with the Rajputs against Sultan Mahmouds campaign to convert the people. In his book Afghan Namah, Dr. Afshar Yazdi says that the Durranis were Semitic who spoke a Pashto dialect that had a lot of Hebrew vocabulary and that Durranis served Darius and his descendants. Olaf Caroe also states that the Durranis are Semitic and that they are the descendants of Abdal the great grandson of Sarbanr which was Qais's eldest son. Another Theory on their origins is that the Abdalis were Hephthalites*.There are indeed signs for a Hephthalite origin for the Abdali Pashtuns.The Hephthalite, a coalition of many different nomadic tribes of Turkistan, predominantly Eastern Iranian speaking, created a powerful empire in the Hindu Kush until they were defeated and totally destroyed by Sassanid Shahnshah Khusrow Anushirvan (in alliance with Oghuz Turks, probably the Khilji). Until their destrcution, the Hephthalites were the "de facto" rulers of Persia. They were the ones who managed to kill Piruz and who kept the young Khusrow as a puppet. They managed to defeat the Chinese and the Oghuz and Kyrgiz Turks.

The final battle lasted 8 days, and the leader of the Hephthalites was killed by the Persians.the Hephthalites were hunted and killed, and only a very few managed to hide themselves in the mountains of the Hindu Kush or to escape to India (where they re-appeared as "White Huns" under Mihirakula Khaqan - obviously led by a Turkish elite, "Mihirakula" being the Indian pronounciation of the Turkish name "Mihr-Qul", "slave of Mitra", a common name among Turks influenced by Persian mythology back then). Right here stops the history of the "Hephthalites" - they totally disappeared from history. And suddenly, out of the "barbarian" tribes of the Hindu Kush, a new tribe rises to power: the "Abdali confederation" (striking similarities to "Hephthalite"), speaking an Eastern Iranian tongue (like the Hephthalites, who spoke an un-known Eastern Iranian language and usually used Bactrian as the administrative language), having a "Turkic-like" clan-system (the Hephthalites were a confederation of Iranian, Turkic, and Mongol nomads), and being very patriarchic (indicating later Turkish influences among the descendants of the Hephthalites, since they were - like all Iranian and Indian peoples - "women-friendly", even preforming polyandry).

*A small note regarding the name:

"Hephthalites", "Haytali" or "Hephtal" were the names of this nomadic confederation. The term "White Hun" was invented by Procopius of Caesaria, who believed the Hephthalites to be "Huns", although they looked different (indo-european instead of east-asian like the Huns) and behaved different (they preformed - like Persians and Bactrians - polyandry, while Huns and Mongols had patriarchic system). That's why he called them "White Huns".

References:
The Pathans by Olaf Caroe

Afghan Nama by Dr Afshar Yazdi

Encyclepedia of Britanicca

Encyclepedia of Iranica

Maghzan e Afghan by Nehmatullah

Tareekh Al Hind by Al Beruni

Hudud al Alam