Afghan genealogies in the early Pashto literary works

Abstract

The article studies genealogical data reported in Dastār-nāma (The Book about Turban) and Tārīkh-i muraṣṣa‘ (An Ornamented History) by the Pashtun tribal chiefs Khūshḥāl Khān Khaṯak (d. 1689) and Afżal Khān Khaṯak (d. circa 1740/41). The main tasks of the study are to distinguish between written and oral (folklore) sources of the Afghan genealogical tradition recorded in the early Pashto literary works, to determine functionality and ideological motifs of genealogical texts, to characterize gender aspect in patrilineal relationships, and to arrange and analyze new material pertaining to the research of ethnic and confessional issues of Pashtun history, such as the historical chronology of formation of particular tribal groups and Pashtun ethnicity as a whole, supposed traces of ethnical assimilations, the stages in the process of Islamization (on the basis of personal names statistics, first of all, and with regard to the existence of parallel “religious” lineages). The study supports the idea that towards the foundation of the first Afghan state in the middle of the XVIII century Pashtun tribes firmly perceived themselves as one people with common cultural heritage, and ethnic self-identification was a key element in their collective as well as individual consciousness. Quoted fragments from original Pashto sources discussed in the article are translated into Russian for the first time.

Keywords:

Pashto literature, Pashtun tribes, ethnography, genealogies