Chapter 1 -->Pathans(Pashtuns)

Pathans or Pashtuns historically known as Afghans are an iranian ethnic group native to central or south asia.

The ethnic group's native language is Pashto, an Iranian Language Additionally, ethnic Pashtuns in Afghanistan speak the Dari dialect of Persian as a second language,while those in the indian subcontinent use Hindi/Urdu as a second language.However, a significant minority speaks Persian or Hindi-Urdu as their first language.The total number of Pashtuns is estimated to be around 63 million; however, this figure is disputed because of the lack of an official census in Afghanistan since 1979.

Pashtuns are native to the land comprising southern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan.

(which is occasionally referred to as the Pashtunistan region), which is where the majority of the population resides. Significant and historical communities of the Pashtun diaspora exist in the Sindh and Punjab provinces of Pakistan(particularly in the cities of Karachi and Lahore) and in the Rohilkhand region of the Uttar Pradesh state in India (as well as in major cities such as Delhi and Mumbai). A recent diaspora has formed in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf(primarily in the United Arab Emirates) as part of the larger South Asian diaspora.

Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, constituting around 48% of the country's total population. They have been the dominant ethnolinguistic group in Afghanistan since the nation's founding.

Additionally, Pashtuns are the second-largest ethnic group in Pakistan,forming 15% to 18% of the country's total population, and are considered one of the five major ethnolinguistic groups of the nation.

Pashtuns are the 26th-largest ethnic group in the world, and the largest segmentary lineage group. There are an estimated 350–400 Pashtun tribes and clans.

Prominent Pashtun figures include Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Abdul Ghani Khan, Ahmad Shah Abdali, Alauddin Khalji, Ayub Khan, Bahlul Lodi, Daoud Khan, Imran Khan, Khushal Khan, Madhubala, Malala Yousafzai, Malalai, Mirwais Hotak, Pir Roshan, Rahman Baba, Salman Khan, Shahid Afridi, Sher Shah Suri, Zakir Hussain.

GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

The majority of Pashtuns are found in the native Pashtun homeland, located south of the river Amu Darya which is in Afghanistan and west of the Indus River in Pakistan. This includes Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and northern Balochistan. Metropolitan centres within this area include Jalalabad, Quetta, Kandahar, Mardan, Mingora and Peshawar.

Indian subcontinent

Pashtuns of the Indian subcontinent, outside the traditional homeland, are referred to as Pathans (the Hindustani word for Pashtun) both by themselves and other ethnic groups of the subcontinent.

Historically, Pashtuns have settled in various cities east of the Indus River before and during the British Raj. These include Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Bombay (now called Mumbai), Delhi, Calcutta, Rohilkhand, Jaipur and Bangalore. The settlers are descended from both Pashtuns of present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan(British India before 1947). In some regions in India, they are sometimes referred to as Kabuliwala.

In India significant Pashtun diaspora communities exist.The Rohilkhand region of Uttar Pradesh is named after the Rohilla community of Pashtun ancestry. They also live in the states of Maharashrta in central India and Weat 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 Rajhastan and Bangalore in Karnataka. Bombay (now called Mumbai) and Calcutta both have a Pashtun population of over 1 million, whilst 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, Karachi  is home to the largest community of Pashtuns outside of the native homeland (with estimates of around 7 million).

Iran

Outside of South and Central Asia, 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 sizable 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.[69] According to a sample survey in 1988, 75 percent of all Afghan refugees in the southern part of the Iranian Khorasan Province were Durrani Pashtuns.

In other regions

Indian and Pakistani Pashtuns have utilised 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 (and the United States). 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.

Due to the multiple wars in Afghanistan since the late 1970s, various waves of refugees (Afghan Pashtuns, but also a sizeable number of Tajiks, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen and Afghan Sikhs) have left the country as asylum seekers.

There are 1.3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and 1 million in Iran. Others have claimed asylum in the United Kingdom, United States and European Union countries through Pakistan. 

Tribes

Main article: Pashtuns Tribes

A prominent institution of the Pashtun people is the intricate system of tribes. The Pashtuns remain a predominantly tribal people, but the trend of urbanisation has begun to alter Pashtun society as cities such as Kandahar, Pehawar, Quetta and Kabul have grown rapidly due to the influx of rural Pashtuns. Despite this, many people still identify themselves with various clana.

The tribal system has several levels of organisation: the tribe they are in is from four 'greater' tribal groups: the Sarbani, the Bettani, the Gharghashti, and the Karlani, the tabar (tribe), is then divided into kinship groups called khels, which in turn is divided into smaller groups (pllarina or plarganey), each consisting of several extended families called kahols.

History and origins

Excavations of prehistoric sites suggest that early humans were living in what is now Afghanistan at least 50,000 years ago.Since the 2nd millennium BC, cities in the region now inhabited by Pashtuns have seen invasions and migrations, including by Ancient Indian peoples, Ancient Iranian peoples, the Medes, Persians, and Ancient Macedonians in antiquity, Kushans, Hephthalites, Arabs, Turks, Mongols, and others. In recent times, people of the Western world have explored the area as well.

The early precursors to modern-day Pashtuns may have been old Iranian Tribes that spread throughout the eastern Iranian plateau.

According to Yu. V. Gankovsky:

"The Pashtuns began as a union of largely East-Iranian tribes which became the initial ethnic stratum of the Pashtun ethnogenesis, dates from the middle of the first millennium CE and is connected with the dissolution of the Epthalite (White Huns) confederacy. ... Of the contribution of the Epthalites (White Huns) to the ethnogenesis of the Pashtuns we find evidence in the ethnonym of the largest of the Pashtun tribe unions, the Abdali (Durrani after 1747) associated with the ethnic name of the Epthalites — Abdal. The Siah-posh, the Kafirs (Nuristanis) of the Hindu Kush, called all Pashtuns by a general name of Abdal still at the beginning of the 19th century."

— Gankvosky, History of Afganistan

Gankovsky proposes Ephthalite origin for Pashtuns but others draw a different conclusion. Ghilji tribe has been connected to the Khalaj people. According to Abdul Hai Habibi, some oriental scholars hold that the second largest Pasthun tribe, the Ghiljis, are the descendants of a mixed race of Hephthalite and Pakhtas who have been living in Afghanistan since the Vedic Aryan period. But according to Sims-Williams, archaeological documents do not support the suggestion that the Khalaj were the Hephthalites' successors. According to Georg Morgenstierne, the Durrani tribe who were known as the "Abdali" before the formation of the Afghan Empire 1747, might be connected to with the Hephthalites; Aydogdy Kurbanov endorses this view who proposes that after the collapse of the Hephthalite confederacy, Hephthalite likely assimilated into different local populations.

The ethnogenesis of the Pashtun ethnic group is unclear but historians have come across references to various ancient peoples called Pakthas (Pactyans) between the 2nd and the 1st millennium BC,who may be their early ancestors. However, there are many conflicting theories amongst historians and the Pashtuns themselves.

Mohan Lal states

... the origin of the Afghans is so obscure, that no one, even among the oldest and most clever of the tribe, can give satisfactory information on this point."

Willem Vogalseg states

Looking for the origin of Pashtuns and the Afghans is something like exploring the source of the Amazon. Is there one specific beginning? And are the Pashtuns originally identical with the Afghans? Although the Pashtuns nowadays constitute a clear ethnic group with their own language and culture, there is no evidence whatsoever that all modern Pashtuns share the same ethnic origin. In fact it is highly unlikely.