Historical context of Pakhtunkhwa

A central theme within pashtunwali is the discourse on the origins of the Pashtun as a nation, and that of the Pashto language. A number of theories have emerged over the centuries accounting for the emergence of the Pashtun in Pakhtunkhwa. Prominent amongst these is the Israelite theory that suggests the Pashtuns are one of the lost tribes of Israel (Noelle 2004:

159). Another explanation suggests that the Pashtuns are descended from the Bedouin Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula (Caroe 1958: 7-8). Neither of these explanations is based upon empirical findings, and are largely considered the product of an oral culture which itself has

21 Jon Anderson (1979: 223-240) treats the concept of „zai‟ extensively in his doctoral dissertation.

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historically contributed little to civilisation in the region, but which has recorded in detail and now mirrors much of what has occurred around it (Anderson 1979: 25).

The recorded history of Pakhtunkhwa reveals that it has been invaded or traversed sequentially by Greeks, Arabs, Persians, Mongols and White Huns, amongst others.

Archaeological evidence reveals that there have been numerous migrations of varying sizes into and through Pakhtunkhwa over the last ten thousand years.²²

The Greek campaigns through Pakhtunkhwa led by Alexander in 326 B.C.E., while far reaching in scope were, more significantly, brief (Holt 2006: 66). The brief period of Alexander was followed by the re-emergence of two parallel polities in Pakhtunkhwa. Bactria, previously a satrapy of the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great (559-539 B.C..E.), re-emerged as Greco-Bactria where modern-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan meet northern Afghanistan in around 180 B.C.E. (Rawlinson 2002: 65). The Bactrian civilisation represented a fusion of Hellenistic and Persian cultures resultant from Greek administration of the mixed population comprised largely of Persians and Central Asian tribes (Caroe 1958: 63). The population at this time most likely spoke an east Iranian Bactrian dialect, but the Hellenised elite managed to impart a Greek character to Bactria, manifest in the construction of buildings in the Hellenic style, as well as the minting of coins bearing images of Zeus (Fussman 1996: 243-244).

Gandhara, the second of the two polities, was an enduring Buddhist civilisation, existent in some form from early in the first millennium B.C.E. until the rule of Mahmud of Ghaznavi (997-1030). Centred around Takshasila (modern-day Taxila) and Pushkalaavati (modern-day Charsadda), between the first and third centuries C.E. its domain stretched from Bactria in the north, through Pakhtunkhwa to the Indus valley in the south. While comparatively smaller than Bactria in area and population, Gandhara demonstrated advancement politically, economically and militarily. City development, agrarian and irrigation development were advanced during its zenith during the second century C.E. (Caroe 1958: 61-173). Centres of Gandharan civilisation were established at Purushpura (modern-day Peshawar) as well as at numerous other localities across the area that are no longer population centres.

Gandhara was, however, soon to be impacted by a geo-strategic trend that would dominate the region for the next two millennia: the southward sweep into the Indus Valley of northern

22 Louis Dupree‟s Afghanistan is a treatise on the cultural and political history of the country, highly regarded as the single most comprehensive work on the country. While not as detailed in its treatment of Pashto and Pashtuns as other earlier works, Afghanistan does treat the anthropological history of Pakhtunkhwa well. See Dupree (1980: 253-264).

tribal peoples. The first of these was by the Saka. Originating north of the Syr Darya, the Saka were displaced from their original lands by the Yueh-Chi, who in turn were displaced from their ancestral lands in western China during the first century C.E. (Watson 1961: 231). The now nomadic Saka invaded Bactria,²³ as the Hellenist cultural influence in Bactria became subsumed by indigenous Indo-Iranian and Turkic culture and languages.²⁴

By the end of the third century C.E., the southward movement of the Saka had dismantled the social and political structures of Gandhara also, returning civilisation in the region to a nomadic existence for a brief period. The Saka were in turn subdued by the Middle Iranian Parthians (247-224 B.C.E.) within the century, only to re-emerge as the Kushan, pushing the Parthians back to the Persian frontier. Under Kanishka (127-151 C.E.), the Kushan Empire expanded to include all of Pakhtunkhwa, stretching to Yarkand in Chinese Turkestan, Khokand in Central Asia, Sindh and Agra (Hunter 2005: 147). Kanishka established his Kushan capital at the Gandharan capital of Purushapura.

The Kushan Empire, while expansive, was again short lived and fragmented within a century after Kanishka, giving rise to the Sassanids (224-651 C.E.) who emerged as a Persian dominated indigenous force, consolidating their influence across Pakhtunkhwa and northwards into Central Asia (Caroe 1958: 73-74). The Sassanids built a century long dynasty, only to succumb to another southward invasion from between the two Darya (trans-oxiana), this time by the nomadic Hephthalites, or White Huns (420-560 C.E.). The White Huns, of no relation to the European Huns, held the domain of the receding Sassanians for nearly a century. By the sixth century C.E., the Hephthalites had disappeared from historical records as a structured polity, succumbing to further southward Turkic nomadic excursions (Vogelsang 2002: 171), merging with the peoples of Punjab, Kashmir and Pakhtunkhwa. The dissolution of Hephthalite influence led to a temporary resurgence of Sassanid rule in Pakhtunkhwa. It was during this Sassanid resurgence that the Arabs arrived at what they termed Khorasan in the middle of the 7^th century (Muir 1891: 178-180) .

After defeating the Sassanid Persians at Battle of Qadissya in 637 AD, Arab expansion continued eastward through Sassanid territory, leading to a routing of the Aryans at Nihawand in 642 (Muir 1891: 179). Following that defeat, all of the Sassanian eastern territories fell to

23 Craig Benjamin makes these observations in his unpublished work The Yuezhi Migration and Sogdia; http://www.transoxiana.org/Eran/Articles/benjamin.html . Accessed 19th January, 2011.

24 Although this is the preponderant view, a notable exception is William Tarn (1966: 114-118) who suggests that the Saka migration did not result in the conquest of Bactria.

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the Arab expansion. That expansion, however, didn’t penetrate deeply into Pakhtunkhwa for another two centuries. The Arab conquerors were content instead to accept royalties from the then Hindu rulers of Kabul, while concentrating on subduing northern Khorasan.

A number of internal political crises led to the slowing of Arab expansion into Pakhtunkhwa during the eighth and ninth centuries (Muir 1891: 423-426). The Arab presence in Pakhtunkhwa remained essentially military in nature. There was no large-scale settlement of Arabs in the region of the same level as witnessed in North Africa or the Eastern Mediterranean coast. Over the next two centuries, Arab influence dissipated, precipitated by a Turkic purging of the Arabic-speaking inhabitants of Khorasan, and was replaced by an indigenous Muslim influence as the indigenous population largely adopted Islam (Muir 1891:

431). Through processes of economic and social integration, the remaining Arabs were largely assimilated into indigenous society. Today, a distinct community of between 50,000-100,000 Arab individuals remains in north-central Afghanistan around the city of Kunduz. These

‘Central Asian Arabs’ have largely assimilated into the local culture and have adopted local languages. Very few still speak Arabic, and those who do retain a dialect quite far removed from the language of their forefathers (Dupree 1980: 63, 503-504).

As this development matured, a still further invasion from Central Asia, unprecedented in its scope, swept southward through Pakhtunkhwa and then westward. The horde of Ghengis Khan eventually succumbed to defeat by the Arabs at the decisive battle of Ain Jalut in historical Palestine in 1260 (Jackson 1999: 709). The reverberations of that defeat permeated the Mongol horde, which subsequently fell to infighting and was consumed by the processes of disintegration. Within fifty years, the Mongol domination of Eurasia was reduced to a number of competing Khanates, unable to project Mongol power beyond Central Asia.

The exception to this was the Mughal dynasty in India, descendant from the Mongol Khan Timur-e-Lang (Tamarlane). Following the defeat of the Ghilzai Khan Ibrahim Lodi by the Mughal King Babur in 1526, Pakhtunkhwa was ruled from India, although this rule was constantly challenged by the Muslim Safavid thrusts eastward from Persia (Caroe 1958: 137).

The Perso-Mughal struggle for supremacy over Pakhtunkhwa continued into the eighteenth century until the emergence of the first Pashtun ruler of the whole of Pakhtunkhwa, Ahmed Shah Abdali, known as Durr-i-Durran or Durrani in 1747 (Caroe 1958: 256).

This historical synopsis demonstrates that the principal formative genealogical, cultural and linguistic influences upon Pakhtunkhwa are primarily Central Asian and Persian, with an enduring reflection of the limited Arab impact upon the region. This synopsis also demonstrates two geostrategic constants: the existence of a great migratory tract stretching from between the Syr and Amu Darya southward into the Indus Valley and the repeated eastward thrusts of successive polities established in the Iranian Plateau. These geostrategic trends, established over millennia, constitute the wider formative context within which Pakhtunkhwa emerged. The emergence of a resilient and resistant, tribally based national grouping in the region of Pakhtunkhwa has reversed trends of this wider formative context.

The Pashtun have, over the last four centuries, extended their own influence westward into the Iranian Plateau, northward to the banks of the Amu Darya, and southward into the Indus Valley. This counter-current to the historical trend preceding it is still impacting the wider strategic context as the primary substructure of Pakhtunkhwa seeks to re-emerge through competition with Pakistan and Afghanistan as a sustainable polity.