Pashtuns
Pashtuns are an Iranian ethnic group primarily residing in southern and eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. They were historically referred to as Afghans until 1923, after the term's meaning had become a demonym for all citizens of Afghanistan, regardless of their ethnic group, creating an Afghan national identity.
The Pashtuns speak the Pashto language, which belongs to the Eastern Iranian branch of the Iranian language family, the Wanetsi language, mainly among Pashtuns of the Tareen tribe, and Ormuri among non-Pashtun Ormur people and Wazir Pashtuns. Additionally, Dari serves as the second language of Pashtuns in Afghanistan, while those in Pakistan speak Urdu and English. In India, the majority of those of Pashtun descent have lost the ability to speak Pashto and instead speak Hindi and other regional languages, while those in Iran primarily speak Southern Pashto, and Persian as a second language.
Pashtuns form the world's largest tribal society, comprising from 60–70 million people, and between 350–400 tribes with further having more sub-tribes, as well as a variety of origin theories. In 2021, Shahid Javed Burki estimated the total Pashtun population to be situated between 60 and 70 million, with 15 million in Afghanistan. Others who accept the 15 million figure include British academic Tim Willasey-Wilsey as well as Abubakar Siddique, a journalist specializing in Afghan affairs. This figure is disputed due to the lack of an official census in Afghanistan since 1979 due to ongoing conflicts there.
They are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and the second-largest ethnic group in Pakistan, constituting around 42–47% of the total Afghan population and around 15.4% of the total Pakistani population In India, significant and historical communities of the Pashtun diaspora exist in the northern region of Rohilkhand, as well as in major Indian cities such as Delhi and Mumbai.
Geographic distribution
Afghanistan and Pakistan
Pashtuns are spread over a wide geographic area, south of the Amu river and west of the Indus River. They can be found all over Afghanistan and Pakistan. Big cities with a Pashtun majority include Jalalabad, Kandahar, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Khost, Kohat, Lashkar Gah, Mardan, Ghazni, Mingora, Peshawar, Quetta, among others. Pashtuns also live in Abbottabad, Farah, Herat, Islamabad, Kabul, Karachi, Kunduz, Lahore, Mazar-i-Sharif, Mianwali, and Attock.The city of Karachi, the financial capital of Pakistan, is home to the world's largest urban community of Pashtuns, larger than those of Kabul and Peshawar. Likewise, Islamabad, the country's political capital, also serves as the major urban center of Pashtuns. More than 20% of the city's population belongs to the Pashto-speaking community.
India
Pashtuns in India often identify as Pathans, and are referred to this way by other ethnic groups of the subcontinent. Some Indians claim descent from Pashtun soldiers who settled in India by marrying local women during the Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent.Many Pathans chose to live in the Republic of India after the partition of India. Khan Mohammad Atif, a professor at the University of Lucknow, estimates that "The population of Pathans in India is twice their population in Afghanistan".
Historically, Pashtuns settled in various cities of India before and during the British Raj in colonial India. These include Bombay, Farrukhabad, Delhi, Calcutta, Saharanpur, Rohilkhand, Jaipur, and Bangalore. The settlers are descended from both Pashtuns of present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. In some regions in India, they are sometimes referred to as Kabuliwala.
In India significant Pashtun diaspora communities exist. While speakers of Pashto in the country number only 21,677 as of 2011, estimates of the ethnic or ancestral Pashtun population in India range from 3,200,000 to 11,482,000, to as high as double their population in Afghanistan.
The Rohilkhand region of Uttar Pradesh is named after the Rohilla community of Pashtun ancestry; the area came to be governed by the Royal House of Rampur, a Pashtunized Jat dynasty. They also live in the states of Maharashtra in central India and West Bengal in eastern India that each have a population of over a million with Pashtun ancestry; both Bombay and Calcutta were primary locations of Pashtun migrants from Afghanistan during the colonial era. There are also populations over 100,000 each in the cities of Jaipur in Rajasthan and Bangalore in Karnataka. Bombay and Calcutta both have a Pashtun population of over 1 million, while Jaipur and Bangalore have an estimate of around 100,000. The Pashtuns in Bangalore include the Khan siblings Feroz, Sanjay and Akbar Khan, whose father settled in Bangalore from Ghazni.
During the 19th century, when the British were recruiting peasants from British India as indentured servants to work in the Caribbean, South Africa and other places, Rohillas were sent to Trinidad, Surinam, Guyana, and Fiji, to work in the sugarcane fields and perform manual labour. Many stayed and formed communities of their own. Some of them assimilated with the other South Asian Muslim nationalities to form a common Indian Muslim community in tandem with the larger Indian community, losing their distinctive heritage. Some Pashtuns travelled as far as Australia during the same era.
Today, the Pashtuns are a collection of diversely scattered communities present across the length and breadth of India, with the largest populations principally settled in the plains of northern and central India. Following the partition of India in 1947, many of them migrated to Pakistan. The majority of Indian Pashtuns are Urdu-speaking communities, who have assimilated into the local society over the course of generations. Pashtuns have influenced and contributed to various fields in India, particularly politics, the entertainment industry and sports.
Iran
Pashtuns are also found in smaller numbers in the eastern and northern parts of Iran. Records as early as the mid-1600s report Durrani Pashtuns living in the Khorasan province of Safavid Iran. After the short reign of the Ghilji Pashtuns in Iran, Nader Shah defeated the last independent Ghilji ruler of Kandahar, Hussain Hotak. In order to secure Durrani control in southern Afghanistan, Nader Shah deported Hussain Hotak and large numbers of the Ghilji Pashtuns to the Mazandaran province in northern Iran. The remnants of this once sizeable exiled community, although assimilated, continue to claim Pashtun descent. During the early 18th century, in the course of a very few years, the number of Durrani Pashtuns in Iranian Khorasan, greatly increased. Later the region became part of the Durrani Empire itself. The second Durrani king of Afghanistan, Timur Shah Durrani was born in Mashhad. Contemporary to Durrani rule in the east, Azad Khan Afghan, an ethnic Ghilji Pashtun, formerly second in charge of Azerbaijan during Afsharid rule, gained power in the western regions of Iran and Azerbaijan for a short period. According to a sample survey in 1988, 75 per cent of all Afghan refugees in the southern part of the Iranian Khorasan province were Durrani Pashtuns.In other regions
Indian and Pakistani Pashtuns have utilized the British/Commonwealth links of their respective countries, and modern communities have been established starting around the 1960s mainly in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia but also in other commonwealth countries. Some Pashtuns have also settled in the Middle East, such as in the Arabian Peninsula. For example, about 300,000 Pashtuns migrated to the Persian Gulf countries between 1976 and 1981, representing 35% of Pakistani immigrants. The Pakistani and Afghan diaspora around the world includes Pashtuns.Etymology
Ancient historical references: Pashtun
A tribe called Pakthās, one of the tribes that fought against Sudas in the Dasarajna, or "Battle of the Ten Kings", are mentioned in the seventh mandala of the Rigveda, a text of Vedic Sanskrit hymns dated between 1500 and 1200 BCE:Heinrich Zimmer connects them with a tribe mentioned by Herodotus in 430 BCE in the Histories:
These Pactyans lived on the eastern frontier of the Achaemenid Arachosia Satrapy as early as the 1st millennium BCE, present-day Afghanistan. Herodotus also mentions a tribe of known as Aparytai. Thomas Holdich has linked them with the Afridi tribe:
Joseph Marquart made the connection of the Pashtuns with names such as the Parsiētai, Parsioi that were cited by Ptolemy 150 CE:
Strabo, the Greek geographer, in the Geographica makes mention of the Scythian tribe Pasiani, which has also been identified with Pashtuns given that Pashto is an Eastern-Iranian language, much like the Scythian languages:
This is considered a different rendering of Ptolemy's Parsioi. Johnny Cheung, reflecting on Ptolemy's Parsioi and Strabo's Pasiani states: "Both forms show slight phonetic substitutions, viz. of υ for ι, and the loss of r in Pasianoi is due to perseveration from the preceding Asianoi. They are therefore the most likely candidates as the ancestors of modern day Pashtuns."
Middle historical references: Afghan
In the Middle Ages until the advent of modern Afghanistan in the 18th century, the Pashtuns were often referred to as "Afghans".The etymological view supported by numerous noted scholars is that the name Afghan evidently derives from Sanskrit Aśvakan, or the Assakenoi of Arrian, which was the name used for ancient inhabitants of the Hindu Kush. Aśvakan literally means "horsemen", "horse breeders", or "cavalrymen". This view was propounded by scholars like Christian Lassen, J. W. McCrindle, M. V. de Saint Martin, and É. Reclus,
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" as a reference to a particular people is mentioned in the Bactrian documents found in Northern Afghanistan.
The name 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 a village, Saul, which was probably located near Gardez, Afghanistan.
The same book 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 today Pakistan.
Al-Utbi, the Ghaznavid chronicler, in his Tarikh-i Yamini recorded that many Afghans and Khiljis enlisted in the army of Sabuktigin after Jayapala was defeated. Al-Utbi further stated that Afghans and Ghiljis made a part of Mahmud Ghaznavi's army and were sent on his expedition to Tocharistan, 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, when visiting Afghanistan following the era of the Khilji dynasty, also wrote about the Afghans.
Ferishta, a 16th-century Muslim historian writing about the history of Muslim rule in the subcontinent, stated: