Ni'mat Allah al-Harawi (also known as Niamatullah; ) was a chronicler at the court of the
Mughal Emperor
The Mughal emperors ( fa, , Pādishāhān) were the supreme heads of state of the Mughal Empire on the Indian subcontinent, mainly corresponding to the modern countries of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The Mughal rulers styled t ...
Jahangir where he compiled a
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
history of the
Afghans, the ''Makhzan-i-Afghani''. Its translated copies appear as ''The History of the Afghans''.
The original material for the book was provided by
Haibat Khan of
Samana, under whose patronage Nimatullah made the compilation c. 1612. The original material was later published separately as ''Tarikh-i-Khan Jahani Makhzan-i-Afghani''. The first part of both books are the same, but the later part contains an additional history of
Khan Jehan Lodhi.
The material is part fictional, part historical. The book is a major source of tradition relating to the origins of the
Pashtun. It also covers Pashtun rulers in
Bengal
Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...
, contemporary events, and Pashtun
hagiography. It plays a large part in various theories which have been offered about the possibility that
the Pashtun people are descended from the Israelites, through the
Ten Lost Tribes
The ten lost tribes were the ten of the Twelve Tribes of Israel that were said to have been exiled from the Kingdom of Israel after its conquest by the Neo-Assyrian Empire BCE. These are the tribes of Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Ash ...
.
Origin theories
The Bani-Israelite theory about the origin of the Pashtuns is based on Pashtun oral traditions; the tradition itself was documented in the ''Makhzan-i-Afghani'', which is the only written source addressing Pashtun origins. The ''Makhzan'' traces the Pashtuns' origins from the Patriarch
Abraham
Abraham, ; ar, , , name=, group= (originally Abram) is the common Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the special relationship between the Je ...
down to a king named King Talut (Saul). ''Makhza''n to this point agrees with testimony provided by Muslim sources or Hebrew Scriptures, showing King Saul around B.C. 1092 in Palestine. It is beyond this point that the description comes under serious doubt.
Pashtun ancestry
According to Nimat Allah,
Qais was the ancestor of most of the existing Pashtun tribes. He met
Muhammad
Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the mo ...
and embraced
Islam, receiving the Muslim name of Abdur Rashid. He had three sons, Ghourghusht,
Sarban and
Bitan (Baitan) and (Karlan) Karlāṇī, his fourth and adopted son.
English translations
A translation appeared in 1836 by
Bernhard Dorn which had two parts.
[Oriental Translation Fund, London] There is another partial translation from 1958, Nirodbhusan Roy titled, ''Niamatullah's History of the Afghans''. A translation in two volumes by S. M. Imamuddin appeared in
Dhaka
Dhaka ( or ; bn, ঢাকা, Ḍhākā, ), formerly known as Dacca, is the capital and largest city of Bangladesh, as well as the world's largest Bengali-speaking city. It is the eighth largest and sixth most densely populated city i ...
, 1960–62.
See also
*
Assyrian captivity
The Assyrian captivity (or the Assyrian exile) is the period in the history of ancient Israel and Judah during which several thousand Israelites from the Kingdom of Israel were forcibly relocated by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. This is one of the man ...
*
History of ancient Israel and Judah
The history of ancient Israel and Judah begins in the Southern Levant during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. "Israel" as a people or tribal confederation (see Israelites) appears for the first time in the Merneptah Stele, an inscri ...
References
External links
History of the Afghans, Volume 1 (Oriental Translation-Fund, 1829)Nikmat Allah
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nimat Allah Al-Harawi
History of Pakistan
Pashtun society
17th-century Indian historians
Historians of Afghanistan
Ten Lost Tribes