Pashtun

Pashtuns (, , ; ps, پښتانه, ), also known as Pakhtuns or Pathans, are an Iranian ethnic group who are native to the geographic region of Pashtunistan in the present-day countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were historically referred to as Afghans () or xbc, αβγανο () until the 1970s, when the term's meaning officially evolved into that of a demonym for all residents of Afghanistan, including those outside of the Pashtun ethnicity.

The group's native language is Pashto, an Iranian language in the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. Additionally, Dari Persian serves as the second language of Pashtuns in Afghanistan while those in the Indian subcontinent speak Urdu and Hindi (see Hindustani language) as their second language.

Pashtuns are the 26th-largest ethnic group in the world, and the largest segmentary lineage society; there are an estimated 350–400 Pashtun tribes and clans with a variety of origin theories. The total population of the Pashtun people worldwide is estimated to be around 49 million, although this figure is disputed due to the lack of an official census in Afghanistan since 1979. They are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and the second-largest ethnic group in Pakistan, constituting around 48 percent of the total Afghan population and around 15.4 percent 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. A more recent Pashtun diaspora has formed in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf (primarily in the United Arab Emirates) as part of the larger Afghan and Pakistani diaspora in that region.

Prominent Pashtun figures include Abdul Ahad Momand, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Abdul Ghani Baradar, Abdur Rahman Khan, Ahmad Shah Durrani, Alauddin Khalji, Amanullah Khan, Ashraf Ghani, Ayub Khan, Bahlul Lodi, Dilip Kumar, Hamid Karzai, Hasan Akhund, Hibatullah Akhundzada, Imran Khan, Irrfan Khan, Khushal Khan, Madhubala, Malala Yousafzai, Manzoor Pashteen, Mirwais Hotak, Mohammed Daoud Khan, Mullah Omar, Pir Roshan, Rahman Baba, Salman Khan, Sirajuddin Haqqani, Shah Rukh Khan, Shahid Afridi, Sher Shah Suri, Zabiullah Mujahid, Zalmay Khalizad, and Zakir Hussain, among many others.

Geographic distribution

Traditional homeland

The majority of Pashtuns are found in the native Pashtun homeland, located south of the Hindu Kush which is in Afghanistan and west of the Indus River in Pakistan, principally around the Sulaiman Mountains. It is believed that the Pashtuns emerged from the region around Kandahar and the Sulaiman Mountains, roughly around the ancient region of Arachosia, and expanded from there between the 13th and 16th centuries to the adjoining areas of modern day Afghanistan and Pakistan. Starting in the 1880s, various Pashtun-dominated governments of Afghanistan have pursued policies, called Pashtunization, aimed towards settling more ethnic Pashtuns in non-Pashtun regions, particularly the northern region of Afghanistan. Metropolitan centres within Pashtun dominated areas include Kandahar, Quetta, Jalalabad, Mardan, Mingora and Peshawar.

Karachi is home to the largest community of Pashtuns outside of the native homeland (with estimates of around 7 million).

India

Pashtuns in India are often commonly 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 of India before and during the British Raj in colonial India. These include 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. While speakers of Pashto in the country only number 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 (approximately 30 million).

The Rohilkhand region of Uttar Pradesh is named after the Rohilla community of Pashtun ancestry. 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 (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.

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 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. 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

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, Peshawar, Quetta and Kabul have grown rapidly due to the influx of rural Pashtuns. Despite this, many people still identify themselves with various clans.

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:

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 Durrani 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:
Willem Vogelsang states:

Pashtuns are tied to the history of modern Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India: following Muslim conquests from the 7th to 11th centuries, many Pashtun warriors invaded and conquered much of the northern parts of South Asia during the periods of the Suris

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