Pashtuns

"Ethnic Afghan" redirects here. For the citizens of the modern state of Afghanistan, see Pathan (disambiguation).
"Pathan" and "Pakhtoon" redirect here. For other uses, see Pathan (disambiguation).
For the Pashtun language, see Pashto.

Pashtuns
پښتانه
Number of Pashtun Tribal and religious men in Southern Afghanistan
Total population
c. 60-70 million
Regions with significant populations
 Pakistan43,633,946 (2023 census) [only includes those who speak Pashto as mother tongue][1]
 Afghanistan15,000,000 [estimations, 40-50% of the population][2][3][4]
 India3,200,000 (2018) [primarily non-Pashto speaking estimates]
21,677 (2011) [Pashto speakers][5][6][7][8]
 Iran169,000 (2022)[9]
 United States138,554 (2021)[10]
 United Kingdom100,000 (2009)[11]
 Tajikistan32,400 (2017)[12]
 Canada31,700 (2021)[13]
 Russia19,800 (2015)[14]
 Australia12,662 (2021)[15]
Languages
Pashto in its different dialects: Wanetsi, Central Pashto, Southern Pashto, Northern Pashto[16]
Religion
Predominantly Islam (mainly Sunni Islam)
Related ethnic groups
Other Iranic peoples

Pashtuns (/ˈpʌʃˌtʊn/, /ˈpɑːʃˌtʊn/, /ˈpæʃˌtuːn/; Pashto: پښتانه, romanized: Pəx̌tānə́;[17]), also known as Pakhtuns,[18] or Pathans,[a] are a nomadic,[22][23][24] pastoral,[25][26] eastern Iranic ethnic group[18] primarily residing in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan.[27][28] They historically were also referred to as Afghans[b] until 1964[34][35] after the term's meaning had become a demonym for members of all ethnic groups in Afghanistan.[34][36]

The Pashtuns speak the Pashto language, which belongs to the Eastern Iranian branch of the Iranian language family. Additionally, Dari serves as the second language of Pashtuns in Afghanistan,[37][38] while those in Pakistan speak Urdu and English.[39][40] In India, the majority of those of Pashtun descent have lost the ability to speak Pashto and instead speak Hindi and other regional languages.[41][42][43]

There are an estimated 350–400 Pashtun tribes and clans with a variety of origin theories.[44][45][46] In 2021, Shahid Javed Burki estimated the total Pashtun population to be situated between 60 to 70 million, with 15 million in Afghanistan.[47] Others who accepted the 15 million figure include British academic Tim Willasey-Wilsey[48] as well Abubakar Siddique, a journalist specialized in Afghan affairs.[49] Although this figure is disputed due to the lack of an official census in Afghanistan since 1979.[50]

They are the second-largest ethnic group in Pakistan and one of the largest ethnic groups in Afghanistan,[51] constituting around 18.24% of the total Pakistani population and around 47% of the total Afghan population.[52][53][54] 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.[55][7]

  1. ^ "TABLE 11 : POPULATION BY MOTHER TONGUE, SEX, and RURAL/URBAN - 2023 Census" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 October 2024.
  2. ^ Burki, Shahid Javed (13 September 2021). "The wandering Pashtuns". The Express Tribune. Afghanistan's current population of 38 million, the Pashtun account for less than a majority — 15 million — or 39 per cent of the total.
  3. ^ Willasey-Wilsey, Tim (10 January 2023). "Tangled history: the Pashtun". Gateway House. There are 15 million Pashtuns in Afghanistan where they are the biggest and dominant ethnicity (...)
  4. ^ Siddique, Abubakar (January 2012). "Afghanistan's Ethnic Divides" (PDF). CIDOB Policy Research Project. There are some 15 million Pashtuns in Afghanistan (...)
  5. ^ Ali, Arshad (15 February 2018). "Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan's great granddaughter seeks citizenship for 'Phastoons' in India". Daily News and Analysis. Retrieved 2 November 2023. Interacting with mediapersons on Wednesday, Yasmin, the president of All India Pakhtoon Jirga-e-Hind, said that there were 32 lakh Phastoons in the country who were living and working in India but were yet to get citizenship
  6. ^ "Frontier Gandhi's granddaughter urges Centre to grant citizenship to Pathans". The News International. 16 February 2018. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
  7. ^ a b "Pakhtoons in Kashmir". The Hindu. 20 July 1954. Archived from the original on 9 December 2004. Retrieved 28 November 2012. Over a lakh Pakhtoons living in Jammu and Kashmir as nomad tribesmen without any nationality became Indian subjects on July 17. Batches of them received certificates to this effect from the Kashmir Prime Minister, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, at village Gutligabh, 17 miles from Srinagar.
  8. ^ Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. "LANGUAGE INDIA, STATES AND UNION TERRITORIES (Table C-16)" (PDF). Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 31 December 2018. AFGHANI/KABULI/PASHTO 21,677{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. ^ "Ethnologue report for Southern Pashto: Iran (2022)". Retrieved 17 November 2023.
  10. ^ 42% of 200,000 Afghan-Americans = 84,000 and 15% of 363,699 Pakistani-Americans = 54,554. Total Afghan and Pakistani Pashtuns in USA = 138,554.
  11. ^ Maclean, William (10 June 2009). "Support for Taliban dives among British Pashtuns". Reuters. Retrieved 6 August 2009.
  12. ^ "Ethnologue report for Southern Pashto: Tajikistan (2017)". Retrieved 17 November 2023.
  13. ^ "Knowledge of languages by age and gender: Canada, provinces and territories, census divisions and census subdivisions". Census Profile, 2021 Census. Statistics Canada Statistique Canada. 7 May 2021. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
  14. ^ "Perepis.ru". perepis2002.ru (in Russian). Archived from the original on 16 January 2017. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
  15. ^ "Language used at home". profile.id.com.au. Retrieved 2 February 2024.
  16. ^ Khan, Ibrahim (7 September 2021). "Tarīno and Karlāṇi dialects". Pashto. 50 (661). ISSN 0555-8158.
  17. ^ David, Anne Boyle (1 January 2014). Descriptive Grammar of Pashto and its Dialects. De Gruyter Mouton. p. 76. ISBN 978-1-61451-231-8.
  18. ^ a b Minahan, James B. (30 August 2012). Ethnic Groups of South Asia and the Pacific: An Encyclopedia: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781598846607 – via Google Books.
  19. ^ James William Spain (1963). The Pathan Borderland. Mouton. p. 40. Retrieved 1 January 2012. The most familiar name in the west is Pathan, a Hindi term adopted by the British, which is usually applied only to the people living east of the Durand.
  20. ^ Pathan. World English Dictionary. Retrieved 1 January 2012. Pathan (pəˈtɑːn) — n a member of the Pashto-speaking people of Afghanistan, Western Pakistan, and elsewhere, most of whom are Muslim in religion [C17: from Hindi]
  21. ^ von Fürer-Haimendorf, Christoph (1985). Tribal populations and cultures of the Indian subcontinent. Handbuch der Orientalistik/2,7. Leiden: E. J. Brill. p. 126. ISBN 90-04-07120-2. OCLC 240120731. Retrieved 22 July 2019.
  22. ^ Lindisfarne, Nancy; Tapper, Nancy (23 May 1991). Bartered Brides: Politics, Gender and Marriage in an Afghan Tribal Society. Cambridge University Press. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-521-38158-1. As for the Pashtun nomads, passing the length of the region, they maintain a complex chain of transactions involving goods and information. Most important, each nomad household has a series of 'friends' in Uzbek, Aymak and Hazara villages along the route, usually debtors who take cash advances, animals and wool from them, to be redeemed in local produce and fodder over a number of years. Nomads regard these friendships as important interest-bearing investments akin to the lands some of them own in the same villages; recently villagers have sometimes withheld their dues, but relations between the participants are cordial, in spite of latent tensions and backbiting.
  23. ^ Rubin, Barnett R. (1 January 2002). The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System. Yale University Press. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-300-09519-7. In some parts of Afghanistan, Pashtun nomads favored by the state often clashed with non- Pashtun (especially Hazara) peasants. Much of their pasture was granted to them by the state after being expropriated from conquered non-Pashtun communities. The nomads appear to have lost these pastures as the Hazaras gained autonomy in the recent war.___Nomads depend on peasants for their staple food, grain, while peasants rely on nomads for animal products, trade goods, credit, and information...Nomads are also ideally situated for smuggling. For some Baluch and Pashtun nomads, as well as settled tribes in border areas, smuggling has been a source of more income than agriculture or pastoralism. Seasonal migration patterns of nomads have been disrupted by war and state formation throughout history, and the Afghan-Soviet war was no exception.
  24. ^ Baiza, Yahia (21 August 2013). Education in Afghanistan: Developments, Influences and Legacies Since 1901. Routledge. p. 100. ISBN 978-1-134-12082-6. A typical issue that continues to disturb social order in Afghanistan even at the present time (2012) concerns the Pashtun nomads and grazing lands. Throughout the period 1929 78, governments supported the desire of the Pashtun nomads to take their cattle to graze in Hazara regions. Kishtmand writes that when Daoud visited Hazaristan in the 1950s. where the majority of the population are Hazaras, the local people com- plained about Pashtun nomads bringing their cattle to their grazing lands and destroying their harvest and land. Daoud responded that it was the right of the Pashtuns to do so and that the land belonged to them (Kishtmand 2002: 106).
  25. ^ Clunan, Anne; Trinkunas, Harold A. (10 May 2010). Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty. Stanford University Press. p. 101. ISBN 978-0-8047-7012-5. In 1846, the British sought to segregate settled areas on the frontier from the pastoral Pashtun communities found in the surrounding hills." British au- thorities made no attempt "to advance into the highlands, or even to secure the main passages through the mountains such as the Khyber Pass."2" In addition, the Close Border Policy tried to contract services from more resistant hill tribes in an attempt to co-opt them. In exchange for their cooperation, the tribes would receive a stipend for their services.
  26. ^ Banuazizi, Ali; Weiner, Myron (1 August 1988). The State, Religion, and Ethnic Politics: Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan. Syracuse University Press. p. 95. ISBN 978-0-8156-2448-6. The Hazaras, who rebelled and fought an extended war against the Afghan government, were stripped of their control over the Hindu Kush pastures and the pastures were given to the Pashtun pastoralists. This had a devastating impact on the Hazara's society and economy. These pastures had been held in common by the vari- ous regional Hazara groups and so had provided important bases for large "tribal" affiliations to be maintained. With the loss of their sum- mer pastures the units of practical Hazara affiliation declined. Also, Hazara leaders were killed or deported, and their lands were confis- cated. These activities of the Afghan government, carried on as a deliberate policy, sometimes exacerbated by other outrages effected by the Pashtun pastoralists, emasculated the Hazaras.
  27. ^ Cite error: The named reference Caldwell2011 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  28. ^ Cite error: The named reference Brit-Pashtun was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  29. ^ Sims-Williams, Nicholas. "Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan. Vol II: Letters and Buddhist". Khalili Collections: 19.
  30. ^ "Afghan and Afghanistan". Abdul Hai Habibi. alamahabibi.com. 1969. Retrieved 24 October 2010.
  31. ^ "History of Afghanistan". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 22 November 2010.
  32. ^ Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah (Firishta). "History of the Mohamedan Power in India". Persian Literature in Translation. Packard Humanities Institute. Archived from the original on 11 February 2009. Retrieved 10 January 2007.
  33. ^ "Afghanistan: Glossary". British Library. Archived from the original on 2 July 2010. Retrieved 15 March 2008.
  34. ^ a b Huang, Guiyou (30 December 2008). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature [3 volumes]. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-56720-736-1. In Afghanistan, up until the 1970s, the common reference to Afghan meant Pashtun. . . . The term Afghan as an inclusive term for all ethnic groups was an effort begun by the "modernizing" King Amanullah (1909-1921). . . .
  35. ^ "Constitution of the Kingdom of Afghanistan - Wikisource, the free online library". en.wikisource.org. Retrieved 29 March 2024.
  36. ^ Tyler, John A. (10 October 2021). Afghanistan Graveyard of Empires: Why the Most Powerful Armies of Their Time Found Only Defeat or Shame in This Land Of Endless Wars. Aries Consolidated LLC. ISBN 978-1-387-68356-7. The largest ethnic group in Afghanistan is that of Pashtuns, who were historically known as the Afghans. The term Afghan is now intended to indicate people of other ethnic groups as well.
  37. ^ Bodetti, Austin (11 July 2019). "What will happen to Afghanistan's national languages?". The New Arab.
  38. ^ Chiovenda, Andrea (12 November 2019). Crafting Masculine Selves: Culture, War, and Psychodynamics in Afghanistan. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-007355-8. Niamatullah knew Persian very well, as all the educated Pashtuns generally do in Afghanistan
  39. ^ Hakala, Walter N. (2012). "Languages as a Key to Understanding Afghanistan's Cultures" (PDF). National Geographic. Retrieved 13 March 2018. In the 1980s and '90s, at least three million Afghans--mostly Pashtun--fled to Pakistan, where a substantial number spent several years being exposed to Hindi- and Urdu-language media, especially Bollywood films and songs, and being educated in Urdu-language schools, both of which contributed to the decline of Dari, even among urban Pashtuns.
  40. ^ Saddiqa, Ayesha (2018). "The Role of Pashto (as L1) and Urdu (as L2) in English Language Learning". Linguistics and Literature Review. 4 (1): 1–17. doi:10.29145/2018/llr/040101 (inactive 1 November 2024). ISSN 2221-6510.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)
  41. ^ "Hindu Society and English Rule". The Westminster Review. 108 (213–214). The Leonard Scott Publishing Company: 154. 1877. Hindustani had arisen as a lingua franca from the intercourse of the Persian-speaking Pathans with the Hindi-speaking Hindus.
  42. ^ Green, Nile (2017). Afghanistan's Islam: From Conversion to the Taliban. University of California Press. p. 18. ISBN 978-0-520-29413-4. Many of the communities of ethnic Pashtuns (known as Pathans in India) that had emerged in India over the previous centuries lived peaceably among their Hindu neighbors. Most of these Indo-Afghans lost the ability to speak Pashto and instead spoke Hindi and Punjabi.
  43. ^ Krishnamurthy, Rajeshwari (28 June 2013). "Kabul Diary: Discovering the Indian connection". Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. Retrieved 13 March 2018. Most Afghans in Kabul understand and/or speak Hindi, thanks to the popularity of Indian cinema in the country.
  44. ^ Romano, Amy (2003). A Historical Atlas of Afghanistan. The Rosen Publishing Group. p. 28. ISBN 0-8239-3863-8. Retrieved 17 October 2010.
  45. ^ Syed Saleem Shahzad (20 October 2006). "Profiles of Pakistan's Seven Tribal Agencies". Jamestown. Retrieved 22 April 2010.
  46. ^ "Who Are the Pashtun People of Afghanistan and Pakistan?". ThoughtCo. Retrieved 14 August 2022.
  47. ^ Burki, Shahid Javed (13 September 2021). "The wandering Pashtuns". The Express Tribune. Afghanistan's current population of 38 million, the Pashtun account for less than a majority — 15 million — or 39 per cent of the total.
  48. ^ Willasey-Wilsey, Tim (10 January 2023). "Tangled history: the Pashtun". Gateway House. There are 15 million Pashtuns in Afghanistan where they are the biggest and dominant ethnicity (...)
  49. ^ Siddique, Abubakar (January 2012). "Afghanistan's Ethnic Divides" (PDF). CIDOB Policy Research Project. There are some 15 million Pashtuns in Afghanistan (...)
  50. ^ "Hybrid Census to Generate Spatially-disaggregated Population Estimate". United Nations world data form. Archived from the original on 17 May 2020. Retrieved 2 August 2020.
  51. ^ "Pakistan - The World Factbook". www.cia.gov. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
  52. ^ "Afghanistan". The World Factbook (2024 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 24 September 2022. (Archived 2022 edition.)
  53. ^ "South Asia :: Pakistan — The World Factbook - Central Intelligence Agency". cia.gov. Retrieved 24 February 2019.
  54. ^ "What Languages Are Spoken In Pakistan?". World atlas. 30 July 2019.
  55. ^ Canfield, Robert L.; Rasuly-Paleczek, Gabriele (4 October 2010). Ethnicity, Authority and Power in Central Asia: New Games Great and Small. Routledge. p. 148. ISBN 978-1-136-92750-8. By the late-eighteenth century perhaps 100,000 "Afghan" or "Puthan" migrants had established several generations of political control and economic consolidation within numerous Rohilkhand communities


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