What would 'Great Afghanistan' actually look like?

[Porus]

Time and time again, Tajiks didn't have an empire. The Samanids were Persian, their court language was Persian, etc. Kushans, Bactrians, etc were of Pashtun origin. To say that there has been no Pashtun empire before 1700s is as ignorant as saying there was no India before independence.

Samaniyan are celebrated in Tajikistan as Timur is celebrated in Uzbekistan and Abdali is celebrated in Kandahar. Read what I said again, Pashtun empires within Afghanistan began in the 1700s, the Suris, the Lodis were Pashtun rulers within India. Very much so they were Indianised. Bactrians and Kushans are ancient people whom, no source has proved that they spoke Pashto. You can claim their achievements but not a single historian would be on your side.


My point remains, northern Afghanistan is Khorasan: Persian-speaking. Their heroes are Jalaluddin Rumi, Ferdowsi, Ibn-e Sina, Ismoil Ahmad Samani, while Pashtuns celebrate Mirwais and Ahmad Khan.

LOL Porus is owning you idiots. Aryana, you must be an Indian pretending to be Pashtun. Your comments about Tajiks prove what a filthy uninformed cretin you are.

Let me make one thing clear, I am not pro-Pakistan. Just because I'm arguing with Afghans does not mean I agree with my country's foreign policy, or the claim that Afghans who hate Pakistan are 'Indians'.

[Aryana]

[MENTION=18484]Porus[/MENTION]
I can't seem to quote you.

Yes, I will agree with you that Tajiks are Persian-speakers. I think I've made my point clear that Tajiks aren't Persian, but they're Persian speakers.

Kushans and Bactrians didn't speak Pashto? Well of course they didn't speak Pashto, they spoke an ancient form of Pashto. Saying this is as comparable to saying that Achaemenids didn't speak Persian. They didn't speak Persian, they spoke Old Persian which is an ancient form of Persian. Pashtun empires began springing up during the 1700s, but they had control of Afghanistan for much of history. Why do you think the Mongols could never succeed past the Pashtun-held areas of Afghanistan?

You want some source on Pashto --> Bactrian? Here it is:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bactrian_language

What language in the region, other than Pashto, have the consonants of ts and dz?

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bactrian-language

Quote: "Bactrian thus occupies an intermediary position between Pashto and Yidgha-Munj"

[Porus]

[MENTION=19433]Aryana[/MENTION] Can't quote you either. Something wrong with the site.

You said

Tajiks are Persian-speaking not Persians

According to Richard Nelson Frye, a leading historian of Iranian and Central Asian history, the Persian migration to Central Asia may be considered the beginning of the modern Tajik nation, and ethnic Persians, along with some elements of East-Iranian Bactrians and Sogdians, as the main ancestors of modern Tajiks.

Fine. Some elements of other Iranic tribes is expected, but generally when the Persians migrated Eastward into Central Asia, settled there, and to this day still speak Persian. I think it's safe to say Tajik and Persian are pretty indistinguishable. Tajik, as a term refers to Persians living in Central Asia, rather than Iran.

Also,

Bactrian shares features with the extinct Middle Iranian languages ..... as well as to the modern Eastern Iranian languages Pashto, Yidgha, and Munji

That's not the same as being predecessors of Pashtuns. Pashto also shares features with Middle Persian and Sanskrit.

Why do you think the Mongols could never succeed past the Pashtun-held areas of Afghanistan?

Man, if you think that the Mongols conquered the vast majority of the known world but couldn't conquer a poor agricultural people in the Suleiman Mountains, who were badly equipped (as everyone else was compared to the Mongols), then I don't know what to say. I don't wanna argue about it even.

[DSM0305]

[MENTION=18484]Porus[/MENTION]

Fine. Tajiks follow Pashtunwali, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Turkmen all follow the Pashtun code. There's no difference in culture at all. In fact, Afghanistan is completely homogeneous. It's not a multi-cultural society.

There is no need to sarcasm, since Afghanistan is indeed a homogeneous culturally, but is a multi ethnic. There is a huge difference between multi ethnic and multi cultural.

This is what I mean by western born. A person who never stepped a foot inside the country, for some odd reason believe he knows what he is talking about. While ignoring the people from the very country who lived there and raised there, who have family there, and who visits the country frequently, lol.

[Golden]

Maybe DSM mean that superficially there isn't much difference, since he's talking about watching videos etc So some foreigner going from one place to another will not notice much difference in cloths, people, food etc. But it's hard to believe there are not any differences in culture at all when one dig deeper even ignoring languages.

[DSM0305]

No, I mean there is literally no cultural difference between Afghans. I just didn't expect a search for some videos or pictures would be rocket science for you guys.
The problem with Pakistanis is that they cant comprehend it. They for some odd reason believe there is a completely different cultures in Afghanistan, because there is different ethnicities. Afghanistan isn't Pakistan where Indic people got mixed in with Iranic people. Yes, there is indeed several different ethnicities in Afghanistan, but they're all assimilated into one culture; an Afghan culture.
You guys have never been to Afghanistan and most likely never seen an Afghan, so your ignorance is to be expected. The problem with you people is, that you automatically link Tajiks with people from Tajikistan. Yes, they do share the same name, but they neither look alike and far from share the same culture. The same with Uzbeks and Turkmen. One can even see enormous difference between the people from Afghan border and Tajik border, let along other parts of Afghanistan.

Maybe one day you guys will get the opportunity to visit Afghanistan, and I can guarantee that none of you will be able to tell a part a Pashtun from a Tajik. There is literally no difference other than the language.

[Firdousi]

Whether Pashtun nationalist like it or not, Afghanistan is a diverse, multilingual, multicultural and multiethnic country. All Afghan ethnic groups have indeed many things in common: same clothes, close social and cultural behaviors, food,.. and so on. But you don't need to scratch too much to see a huge difference between people inhabiting the north and west with those living in the south and east.

In Herat we speak Farsi. We celebrate Nowruz. We read Persian poets such as Hafez, Saadi, Khayyam, Mawlana, Rudaki, Ferdowsi or Attari (never heard Pashtun poets such as khushal khan or rahman baba being popular in there). We praise Samanids, Ghorids, Saffarids, Tahirids and Timurids. Our mosques and governmental buildings are built in a pure Persian style. Persian/Tajiki and Afghan Tajik music are popular here (most of people don't like too much Pashtun music such as Mangal, Naghma, etc but Ahmad Zahir, Sarban, Nainawaaz,.. all of them Pashunts are liked. Basically because they were Persianspeakers). We have our own set of values. We have "taarof", we name our children after Persian names such as Jamshid, Farhad, Rostam or Arash (Pashtun names such as Rookai, Ezmerai or Zalmai are pretty popular too though). Even our clothes are a bit different: yekhaanis, different style of turbans (I noticed most of people in khorasan province of iran wear them like Heratis too, specially in Fahriman, Torbat Jam, Taybat and Birjan)

I bet most of Pashtuns in eastern provinces would never feel close to these things. So hell yeah there is a real cultural diversity and difference in Afghanistan. Those who can't stand this are fascists in denial. Get over it, guys.

[Firdousi]

[MENTION=19433]Aryana[/MENTION] Can't quote you either. Something wrong with the site.

You said



Fine. Some elements of other Iranic tribes is expected, but generally when the Persians migrated Eastward into Central Asia, settled there, and to this day still speak Persian. I think it's safe to say Tajik and Persian are pretty indistinguishable. Tajik, as a term refers to Persians living in Central Asia, rather than Iran.

Also,

That's not the same as being predecessors of Pashtuns. Pashto also shares features with Middle Persian and Sanskrit.



Man, if you think that the Mongols conquered the vast majority of the known world but couldn't conquer a poor agricultural people in the Suleiman Mountains, who were badly equipped (as everyone else was compared to the Mongols), then I don't know what to say. I don't wanna argue about it even.

Dont even waste your time on Aryan, Afghanfootball or DSM. They are fascists with a hilarious childish mindset. Rather try to focus on more rational and impartial people such as Shapur, Iblis or History of Pashtuns.

[Porus]

Whether Pashtun nationalist like it or not, Afghanistan is a diverse, multilingual, multicultural and multiethnic country. All Afghan ethnic groups have indeed many things in common: same clothes, close social and cultural behaviors, food,.. and so on. But you don't need to scratch too much to see a huge difference between people inhabiting the north and west with those living in the south and east.

In Herat we speak Farsi. We celebrate Nowruz. We read Persian poets such as Hafez, Saadi, Khayyam, Mawlana, Rudaki, Ferdowsi or Attari (never heard Pashtun poets such as khushal khan or rahman baba being popular in there). We praise Samanids, Ghorids, Saffarids, Tahirids and Timurids. Our mosques and governmental buildings are built in a pure Persian style. Persian/Tajiki and Afghan Tajik music are popular here (most of people don't like too much Pashtun music such as Mangal, Naghma, etc but Ahmad Zahir, Sarban, Nainawaaz,.. all of them Pashunts are liked. Basically because they were Persianspeakers). We have our own set of values. We have "taarof", we name our children after Persian names such as Jamshid, Farhad, Rostam or Arash (Pashtun names such as Rookai, Ezmerai or Zalmai are pretty popular too though). Even our clothes are a bit different: yekhaanis, different style of turbans (I noticed most of people in khorasan province of iran wear them like Heratis too, specially in Fahriman, Torbat Jam, Taybat and Birjan)

I bet most of Pashtuns in eastern provinces would never feel close to these things. So hell yeah there is a real cultural diversity and difference in Afghanistan. Those who can't stand this are fascists in denial. Get over it, guys.

Thank you! I thought I was going crazy for a second, Afghans telling me people up North are not Persians lol. And yeah, I think I'm done with this thread more or less. I made my point

[Win Butler]

It was Pashtuns who gave Mongols their first defeat outside of east asia.
(excerpt from A MILITARY HISTORY FROM ALEXANDER THE GREAT TO THE FALL OF THE TALI BAN by Stephen Tanner)

With Iran being ravaged by Mongol columns as far as the Caucasus,the only place of refuge for Turks and Persians willing to fight on was south of the Hindu Kush, and Genghis Khan had stretched a full tumen between the Amu Darya and Khorasan to prevent such af low. After escaping from Gurganj, Jalal al-Din had been chased by Mongol scouting parties. At one point, he and three hundred accompanying cavalry had burst through a Mongol cordon of seven hundred men. During this stage his brothers, including the crown prince of Khwarezm, had headed in a different direction and been caught and killed.

The Mongols lost Jalal al-Din's trail near Farah in western Afghanistan. The prince made his way to Ghazni, where he assembled and garrison Turkish forces, including a strong contingent under Temir Malek, one of the few Khwarezm generals who had fought well against the Mongols. In addition, the call went out to the Pashtun hill tribes, who descended from the mountains in strength.These descendants of the Scythians, Kushans, White Huns, Khalaj Turks, and perhaps even Greeks, gathered, ready for war, making Jalaal-Din's army sixty thousand strong. At this point Genghis Khan summoned Jagatai and Ogadei to join him, and the main army reassembled near Kunduz. Genghis planned to march through the passes to Bamian while he directed another general, Shigi Kutaku, with three tumens, to advance due south. This general, a Tartar, had been adopted by Genghis when young and had been married to one of his daughters.

In the spring of 1221, Jalal al-Din's advancing army encountered a forward patrol of Kutaku's at a village called Valian along the Ghori River. The Mongol patrol was destroyed with only a few survivors. Jalal al-Din moved to Parwan, some fifty miles north of today's Kabul,where he awaited the inevitable battle. Kutaku, possibly without orders, followed up the destruction of his probe with his full thirty thousand man Mongol army.

At Parwan the two sides met in a rock-strewn, sharply cut valley. It was poor ground for cavalry, so the mobility of both sides was negated. Jalal al-Din took the tactical initiative by ordering his right wing of Turks under Temir Malek to dismount. An archer on foot can put more strength and accuracy behind his shots. At the same time, the Mongols's usual tricks of feigned retreat and ambush, and their standard practice of encirclement, could not be employed. But they were good enough to hold their own through the first day, even as the native pashtuns must have sensed their enemy's vulnerability and clambered among the heights in order to shoot down at the invader, gravity assisting their shots with both velocity and range.

The next morning, Jalal al-Din's army looked across the valley at a Mongol army that seemed greatly reinforced. But Kutaku had only tried a ruse, creating dummies of straw packed in clothes atop extra horses.Jalal al-Din calmed the unease of his commanders and remained eager to resume the fight. This time he dismounted his entire front line.

A Mongol attack on the Pashtun left wing wilted under a barrage of arrows, the men retreating in disorder. The Mongol general then ordered an attack along the entire front. The dismounted defenders were easy prey if the Mongol horsemen could close; but the attackers were hard pressed to penetrate the wall of arrows and were forced by the terrain to wade into it head-on. Gradually the famous Mongol discipline began to come apart. They began to fall back and Jalal al-Din saw his chance. He quickly brought up his army's horses and his men remounted. Then he ordered a counterattack. The Mongols were surprised and began to retreat headlong from the valley. Jalal al-Din's men overtook the fleeing horde and Kutaku lost over half his army. One can picture the most casualties in defiles where the panicked Mongols became jammed, falling victim en masse to the pursuing Turkic and Pashtun tribesmen.

Parwan was not just the only Mongol defeat in the war against Khwarezm, it was the only defeat the Mongols would suffer in any battle outside East Asia for another eighty years. But it may have been a Pyrrhic victory for Afghanistan, because it was unclear whether the Mongols had had any designs south of the Hindu Kush prior to Jalalal-Din's assembling his army of resistance at Ghazni. Now Genghis Khan himself was on the way through the passes with an army of seventy thousand.

In keeping with past and future Afghan practices, Jalal al-Din's army began to fall apart in discord immediately after its victory. The Turks became disenchanted in a dispute over the spoils (which must have consisted mainly of horses and weapons), while the Pashtun tribesmen—delighted with the victory but eager to avoid its consequences—drifted back to their mountains. Left with twenty thousand men, Jalal al-Din passed through the Suleiman Range into today's Pakistan, heading for the Indus River.

.................................................

When John of Piano Carpini interviewed Mongols nineteen years after Genghis Khan's death, he heard many fantastic stories about the campaign,among which one rings true of Afghanistan. According to what he heard, the Mongols, starting from the Caspian mountains, traveled for more than a month through a wasteland to a deserted country where they found a man and his wife whom they led to Genghis Khan: "And when he had asked them where the people of that country were, they replied that they lived underground beneath mountains." Genghis told the man and wife to order the people to appear and they seemed to agree. But then, according to the Mongols, "these men gathered by ways hidden beneath the earth and came against the Tartars to do battle and sprang suddenly upon them and killed many."

What the monk heard from Mongol veterans is strikingly similar to the stories Soviet soldiers told following their war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The qanat irrigation system, with its thousands of holes and tunnels adjacent to communities, provided excellent hiding places for defenders (in addition to the caves naturally carved in the mountains).

It is interesting that Genghis Khan's baggage train, left behind north of the Hindu Kush when he began his pursuit of Jalal al-Din,was repeatedly raided and plundered in his absence. The sedentary communities of Afghanistan had fallen but the nomadic Pashtun hill tribes remained free, and were still dangerous.

Credit probably to [MENTION=18842]Samandri[/MENTION]

LOL Parwan is mainly Tajik. And Mir Masjidi Khan was definitely not Pashtun..kohistani/shamaali chiefs were not Pashtun. Now STFU and stop trying to simplify history by claiming Pashtuns have a monopoly over everything. You're from Termez and Tajik yourself, kek.



State and Tribe in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir Dost ... - Christine Noelle - Google Books

[Firdousi]

Thank you! I thought I was going crazy for a second, Afghans telling me people up North are not Persians lol. And yeah, I think I'm done with this thread more or less. I made my point

Most of these fascists losers are frustrated by their own history. Persian culture is old, rich and sophisticated. Pashtun culture is poor, tribal and completely lack of manners. So they try to compensate this by stealing our heritage. Dont take them too seriously. Believe me there are plenty of educated and nice Pashtuns here. Talk to them. Their point of view and mentality will help us to understand much better Pashtuns.

BTW are you a Tajik? Tell me a bit more about you, bro.

[Aryana]

Fine. Some elements of other Iranic tribes is expected, but generally when the Persians migrated Eastward into Central Asia, settled there, and to this day still speak Persian. I think it's safe to say Tajik and Persian are pretty indistinguishable. Tajik, as a term refers to Persians living in Central Asia, rather than Iran.

Also,

That's not the same as being predecessors of Pashtuns. Pashto also shares features with Middle Persian and Sanskrit.



Man, if you think that the Mongols conquered the vast majority of the known world but couldn't conquer a poor agricultural people in the Suleiman Mountains, who were badly equipped (as everyone else was compared to the Mongols), then I don't know what to say. I don't wanna argue about it even.

Um, no. Historically, maybe it was the case that Tajiks were referred to as Persian. Nowadays, "Tajiks" are far from being Persian. They have mixed a lot with Mongols, and there's no denying that.

To your surprise, they actually couldn't conquer those "poor agricultural regions". They tried many times, but failed. Only the Khorezmian-controlled areas of Afghanistan were conquered by the Mongols. Why do you think the Khiljis kept their empire? In fact, the Khiljis were Afghan anyway.

[Win Butler]

Um, no. Historically, maybe it was the case that Tajiks were referred to as Persian. Nowadays, "Tajiks" are far from being Persian. They have mixed a lot with Mongols, and there's no denying that.

To your surprise, they actually couldn't conquer those "poor agricultural regions". They tried many times, but failed. Only the Khorezmian-controlled areas of Afghanistan were conquered by the Mongols. Why do you think the Khiljis kept their empire? In fact, the Khiljis were Afghan anyway.

Everyone is mixed, you Pashtuns have mixed a lot with Indians. Generally speaking most Tajiks (including the ones from Tajikistan) and Pashtuns are pretty close and most Tajiks and Turkmen cluster west of you and are closer to Iranians than you are to them. Now don't comment on matters you know nothing about and quit being such a racialist. That contradicts Pashtun values.

[Friends of Baloch]

I dont think it is correct to call Tajiks mixed with Mongols or to treat Tajiks as a monolithic group racially. For example Tajiks of Herat city are basically the same as northeast Iranians and dont look like Mongols. They have more in common with Iranians from Mahshhad than they do with Tajiks from Dushanbe or Samarqand due to common history and ethnicity with the former.

Many Tajiks in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are difficult to distinguish physically from Turko-Mongols but at the same time some of them are not. This is also true for some Tajiks in places like Takhar and Badakshan, but not so much in Panjshir. Herat they dont look like Turks. People from Kabul have diverse looks because it is a diverse city.

I think Tajiks can have varied looks it depends on where they are from. The word doesnt correspond to modern nations and borders. It was applied also to Persians of what is now modern Iran by the Turks from the 10th to perhaps 15th or 16th century CE or until the self designation of Irani/Iranian was revived in Iran probably under Safavids while Tajik was the word still being used in Central Asia by Turkmens and Uzbeks.

[Samandri]

In Afghanistan, Kohistani is sub-group of Tajiks (In Pakistan there is also Dardic population by name of Kohistani). If this Mir Masjidi Khan was a Kohistani, then he was a Tajik (Pashtun dont use "Mir" title). Some British illustrations floating around on net , are wrongely caption as "Pashtun warrior" but are of Kohistani Tajiks. for example the following one is actually captioned "Ko-i-staun foot soldiery in summer costume" by the artist, and in the description his name is given as "Mir Alam", a robber who escorted British forces
Ko-i-staun foot soldiery in summer costume