Afghan (ethnonym)


The ethnonym Afghan has been used historically to refer to the Pashtuns. Since the second half of the twentieth century, the term "Afghan" evolved into a demonym for all residents of Afghanistan, including those outside of the Pashtun ethnicity.

Mentions

The earliest mention of the name Afghan is by Shapur I of the Sassanid Empire during the 3rd century CE. In the 4th century, the word "Afghans/Afghana" was used in reference to a particular people as mentioned in the Bactrian documents.
The name of the Aśvakan or Assakan has been preserved in that of the modern Pashtun, with the name Afghan being derived from Asvakan.
The term "Afghan" is later recorded in the 6th century CE in the form of "Avagāṇa" by the Indian astronomer Varāha Mihira in his Brihat-samhita.
The word Afghan also appeared in the 982 Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam, where a reference is made to the village of Saul, which was estimated to be located near Gardez, in the Paktia province of Afghanistan.
Hudud al-'Alam also speaks of a king in Ninhar, who had Muslim, Afghan and Hindu wives.
In the 11th century, Afghans are mentioned in al-Biruni's Tarikh-ul Hind, which describes groups of rebellious Afghans in the tribal lands west of the Indus River in what is now known as Pakistan.
Al-Utbi, the Ghaznavid chronicler. In his Tarikh-i Yamini records that many Afghans and Khiljis living between Laghman and Peshawar enlisted in the army of Sabuktigin after Jayapala was defeated.
Al-Utbi further states that Afghans and Ghiljis made up a part of Mahmud Ghaznavi's army and were sent on his expedition to Tokharistan, while on another occasion Mahmud Ghaznavi attacked and punished a group of opposing Afghans, as also corroborated by Abulfazl Beyhaqi. It is recorded that Afghans were also enrolled in the Ghurid Kingdom. By the beginning of the Khilji dynasty in 1290, Afghans have been well known in northern India.
Ibn Battuta, a famous Moroccan traveler, visiting Afghanistan following the era of the Khilji dynasty in 1333 writes.A 16th-century Muslim historian writing about the history of Muslim rule in the subcontinent states:
The coined term of Afghanistan came into place in 1855, officially recognized by the British during the reign of Dost Mohammad Khan.

Etymology

Some scholars suggest that the word "Afghan" is derived from the words awajan/apajan in Avestan and ava-Han/apa-Han in Sanskrit, which means "killing, striking, throwing and resisting, or defending." Under the Sasanians, and possibly the Parthian Empire, the word was used to refer to men of a certain Persian sect.
Another view is that the name Afghan evidently derives from the word Aśvakan which means "horsemen", "horse breeders", or "cavalrymen", or the Assakenoi of Arrian, which was the name used for ancient inhabitants of the Hindu Kush. This view was propounded by scholars like Christian Lassen, J. W. McCrindle, M. V. de Saint Martin, and É. Reclus, However, this theory is linguistically untenable. Johnny Cheung notes that "the expected result would be rather †aškān, †askān in Persian."
The Indian epic Mahabharata speaks about Kambojas among the finest horsemen, and ancient Pali texts describe their lands as the land of horses. Kambojas spoke a language close to Younger Avestan and followed Zoroastrianism. Some scholars believe Zoroastrianism originated in the land of Kambojas.

Afghanistan

The last part of the name -stān is a Persian suffix for "place of". The Pashto translation of is prominent in many languages of Asia. The name Afghanistan is mentioned in writing by the 16th century Mughal ruler Babur and his descendants, referring to the territory between Khorasan, Kabulistan, and the Indus River, which was inhabited by tribes of Afghans.
The name "Afghanistan" is also mentioned in the writings of the 16th-century historian Ferishta:
Regarding the modern state of Afghanistan, the Encyclopædia of Islam explains:

Historical and obsolete suggestions

There are a number of other hypotheses suggested for the name historically, all of them obsolete.
  • The "Maḫzan-e Afġān" by Nimat Allah al-Harawi, written in 1612 at the Mughal court, traces the name Afghan to an eponymous ancestor, an Afghana, identified as a grandson of Saul. Afghana was supposedly a son of Irmia, who was in turn a son of Saul. Afghana was orphaned at a young age, and brought up by David. When Solomon became king, Afghana was promoted as the commander-in-chief of the army. Neither Afghana nor Jeremia son of Saul figure in the Hebrew Bible. Some four centuries after Afghana, in the 6th century BCE, Bakhtunnasar, or Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babil, attacked the Kingdom of Judah and exiled the descendants of Afghana, some of whom went to the mountains of Ghor in present-day Afghanistan and some to the neighborhood of Mecca in Arabia. Until the time of Muhammad, the deported Children of Israel of the east continually increased in number in the countries around Ghor which included Kabul, Kandahar and Ghazni and made wars with the infidels around them. Khalid bin Walid is said to belong to the tribe of descendants of Afghana in the neighborhood of Mecca, although actually he was from the tribe of Quraysh. After conversion to Islam, Khalid invited his kinsmen, the Children of Israel of Ghor, to Islam. A deputation led by Qais proceeded to Medina to meet Muhammad and embraced Islam. Muhammad lavished blessings on them, and gave the name Abdur Rashid to Qais, who returned to Ghor successfully to propagate Islam. Qais had three sons, Sarban, Bettan and Ghourghusht, who are progenitors of the various Pashtun tribes.
  • Samuel G. Benjamin derived the name Afghan from a term for 'wailing', which the Persians are said to have contemptuously used for their plaintive eastern neighbors.
  • H. W. Bellew, in his 1891 An Inquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan, believes that the name Afghan comes from Alban which derives from the Latin term albus, meaning "white", or "mountain", as mountains are often white-capped with snow ; used by Armenians as Alvan or Alwan, which refers to mountaineers, and in the case of transliterated Armenian characters, would be pronounced as Aghvan or Aghwan. To the Persians, this would further be altered to Aoghan, Avghan, and Afghan as a reference to the eastern highlanders or "mountaineers".
  • Michanovsky suggests the name Afghan derives from Sanskrit Avagana, which in turn derives from the ancient Sumerian word for Badakhshan - Ab-bar-Gan, or "high country".
  • Scholars such as Yu Gankovsky have attempted to link "Afghan" to an Uzbek word "Avagan" said to mean "original".