Early life
Achakzai wrote that he was born on the 7th of July, in the village of Innayatullah Karez. He lost his father early in life. He and his brother, Abdul Salam Khan, were raised by the matriarch Dilbara. Achakzai received his early education at home and was well-versed in the classical Pashto, Arabic, and Persian texts. He joined the local middle school and proved an outstanding student, earning a scholarship.Career
Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai was imprisoned in May 1930 for the first time. He was previously warned by the rulers for his lectures to the villagers at the mosque. In his political struggle he foundedLiterary life
Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai reformed the Bayazid Roshan Pashto script by excluding the Arabic alphabets that his fellow Pashtuns could not pronounce, and was the advocate to have a script of Pashto the way it is pronounced. Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai had command over the Arabic, Persian, English, Urdu, Balochi and Sindhi languages but loved his mother tongue Pashto the most and believed in its core importance in the nationalist struggle. He translated several books to Pashto, including, Tarjuman-ul-Quran of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Gulistan-i-Saadi of Sheikh Saadi and Future of Freedom of Dotson Carto, ‘Seerat-ul-Nabi of Shabli Numani. Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai succeeded in publishing the first ever newspaper in the province historMemoirs
Abdul Samad Khan began writing his memoirs in jail, covering the period of his birth in 1907 to serving sentence at district jail, Lahore in 1952. Originally written in Pashto, the memoirs entitled, ‘Zama Zhwand aw Zhwandoon’ ‘The Way I Lived’ unfurls to the birth of Khan Abdul Samad Khan quickly taking the reader to the patrilineal labyrinth of his ancestry. He introduces his great grandfather, Inayatullah Khan, son of Bostan Khan and finally Barkhurdar Khan the founding patriarch of his family. He writes: “Our ancestors since the time of Barkhurdar Khan remained connected to the national Afghan court and government and were apparently educated and well versed in the ways of courts and governance…. It is being related that Burkhurdar Khan was a contemporary of Ahmed Shah Baba (Durrani) the founder of present day Afghanistan.” “More than his style of writing, Samad Khan’s unreserved thoughts on religion, jargas, drug addiction, pedophilia and other afflictions violating his beloved Pukthun and Pukhtun society force the reader to hasten to the next page”. “In the year 1928 I got married. To get married was a thing to be done so did I. The truth however is that for many years I did not understand the profound and lasting value and meaning of marriage,” writes Khan Abdul Samad Khan. “His memoirs are replete with similarly unexpected personal revelations, not ascribed usually to a Pukhtun”. Zama Zhwand aw Zhwandoon’ (The way I lived) were transliterated into English by Samad Khan's son, Mohammad Khan Achakzai who also served as governor Balochistan from 2013 to 2018. It took Mohammad Khan Achakzai more than seven years to translate his father's opus written in haute Pashto into English. Later, the original Pashto edition was also translated into Ukrainian by high ranking diplomats, Mr Vasili Ivashko and Dr Ghulam Sarwar. Both of the versions, English and Ukrainian, will out of press by the end of November.References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Achakzai, Abdul Samad Khan Pashtun people Pashtun nationalists Indian nationalists Indian independence activists People from Quetta 1907 births 1973 deaths Members of the Provincial Assembly of Balochistan Achakzai family Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party politicians