Pashtun Historiography in Pre-modern Times: Afzal Khān Khatak and Tārikh-e Morassaʿ

The history of Pashtun tribes in the long period preceding the formation of the first Afghan state in 1747 is rather poorly and, as a rule, superficially documented by written sources, which up to the sixteenth century are entirely external, i.e. created outside tribal boundaries, while more detailed if fragmentary local sources of the sixteenth—to early eighteenth centuries, composed either in conventional Persian or in Pashto, still await close systematic investigation. Available materials on the notable accomplishments of the Afghan ruling dynasties in India—the Lodis (1451‒1526) and the Suris (1540‒55)—as well as substantial data on the rise of the Ghilzay Hotaks in Qandahar in 1709 and their subsequent military campaigns in Safavid Iran in 1719‒25 are far from suitable to provide deep insight into the many-sided historical processes within the Pashtun tribal society on its native territories.

A peremptory and too hasty premise formulated by J. Darmesteter at the end of the nineteenth century that “the Afghans do not have history for the anarchy does not have it,”Footnote ¹ which clearly points to tribalism as the main impediment to making a coherent historical account of any tribal, or segmentary, society lacking centralized state institutions, was later challenged by O. Caroe, the last British governor (1946‒47) of the North-West Frontier Province of India (then NWFP of Pakistan), now renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Caroe’s profound essay The Pathans (1958) offered an exemplary outline of the Pashtun national history with no strict attachment to the state borders and establishments of modern Afghanistan and neighboring countries. This essay also proved that obscurities of the Pashtuns’ history gradually fade away with the emergence of Pashto literary tradition, which became explicitly national in its ideological implications in the mid-seventeenth century works of Khushhāl Khān Khatak (1613‒89). Supplemented with external, primarily Mughal sources beginning with Bābor-nāmeh (finished in 1529), the works, both prose and poetical, written by Khushhāl Khān and other authors from the Pashtun tribal milieu shed light upon origins, migrations, conflicts and wars, mechanisms of leadership and social regulation, interactions with the Mughal imperial powers, customs and religious beliefs of Pashtun tribes—what makes their history actually tangible.Footnote ²

Works in Pashto apparently appeared in the first half of the sixteenth century, in the early period of the Mughal domination, after the Pashto language acquired an alphabet based on the Arabic-Persian model.Footnote ³ Among the first works in Pashto were the records of some events related to the conquests of the fertile mountain valleys (Bājaur, Swāt, Dir, Buner), located to the north of the Peshawar Vale, by the Yusufzay tribe. Although originals of these texts have been lost, it is very likely that they may be partly traced in the later historiographical work Tavārikh-e Hāfezrahmatkhāni composed in 1767/68 for Hāfiz Rahmat Khān (d. 1774), a Yusufzay chief and ruler of an Afghan principality in Rohilkhand, the historical region of North India extensively populated at that time by Pashtun diaspora.Footnote ⁴ Among the earliest local sources in Persian is the book Tazkerat al-abrār va-l-ashrār, which contains very informative memoirs of Akhund Darweza (d. 1618/19 or 1638/39), the renowned Afghan theologian of Turkic descent. Focused mainly on religious issues and the author’s missionary activities aimed at resisting radical mystical doctrines among Pashtuns, this book also describes various political, social and cultural developments within the Pashtun tribes of the Peshawar Vale and the adjacent areas of southeastern Hindu Kush in the second half of the sixteenth century during the rule of the Mughal Emperor Akbar (d. 1605).

About the same time, in 1612/13, the Indian historian Neʿmatallāh Haravi compiled in Persian for his patron Khānjahān Lodi (d. 1631), a Mughal general and a Pashtun by birth, the book Tārikh-e Khānjahāni, which became the first work on Pashtun genealogies and history, both legendary and real, the latter concerning mostly the reign of the Lodi and the Suri dynasties in the Delhi sultanate.Footnote ⁵ Needless to say, the contents of this book, especially in the parts dealing with the origins and early history of Pashtuns, should be critically evaluated as it pursued not only scholarly but also political purposes, with obvious implications for the legitimization of everlasting claims of the Afghan military elite to power in Muslim North India. Over many decades this book remained the most authoritative study of the subject, and eventually, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was rendered into the Pashto language and included in the Pashto pioneering historiographical compilation Tārikh-e Morassaʿ by Afzal Khān (1665/66‒circa 1740), the ruler of the Khatak tribe and the grandson of the abovementioned Khushhāl Khān, the acknowledged founder of the Pashto national literature.Footnote ⁶

The very idea of composing in Pashto a comprehensive study of the history of Pashtuns in general and of the Khatak tribe in particular came from Khushhāl Khān who announced it in his didactical treatise Dastār-nāmeh written in 1665 during his imprisonment in the Mughal jail-fortress of Rantambhor: “After Almighty God gives freedom to me and allows me to depart and after I come home back from Rantambhor I shall write a special [book on] history that is to be widely known.”Footnote ⁷ What Khushhāl had managed to note down in his lifetime about tribal histories and genealogies as well as some fragments from his personal diaries Afzal Khān incorporated into the original (i.e. not translated or retold from available Persian sources) part of Tārikh-e Morassaʿ which by genre may be characterized as tribal chronicle.Footnote ⁸ Though it covers almost exclusively the developments in the Khatak tribe, The Chronicle has every reason to be considered the most authentic and detailed source for the study of the Pashtun tribal society in the late middle ages and pre-modern times. Abounding in unique and little known factual material, this voluminous work consists of diverse texts, such as genealogies, historical narratives, memoirs, diaries, political declarations, letters and verses.Footnote ⁹ However, regardless of its significance as a major historical document as well as a remarkable literary work in Pashto, The Khataks’ Chronicle, partially because of imperfect arrangement of its often extremely fragmentary, laconic and vague accounts, has not been examined properly so far and its vast data in general are still missing from the mainstream research of the history and culture of Pashtun tribes.Footnote ¹⁰

It is in the corpus of The Khataks’ Chronicle that we come across the first specimens of the epistolary genre authored by Pashtun tribal rulers and literati.Footnote ¹¹ These are two series of letters written by Afzal Khān in both Pashto and Persian in connection with internal tribal conflicts, which took place in 1719‒22 and 1724, and an epistle of Khushhāl Khān composed in 1666 in the Mughal prison as a kind of political testament.Footnote ¹² The letters of the Khatak chiefs are very important documents because, on the one hand, they substantiate The Chronicle’s patchy accounts of such delicate matters as confrontations within the tribal elite, often between close relatives, by disclosing true motives and goals of conflicting parties and elucidating many niceties of the complicated political games and entanglements of endless military actions. On the other hand, the letters prove the fact that notwithstanding the overall low degree of literacy among Pashtuns in these and much later times, there existed quite extensive written communication on tribal territories as an effective instrument of policy making. It is very possible that Afzal Khān included these documents in The Chronicle under the influence of the Bābor’s memoirs which apparently served for him and his grandfather as a model of a “story-telling” type of historiography and contained similar materials: official charters, decrees and private letters.Footnote ¹³

The letters under discussion in this paper are quoted in the longest section of The Chronicle which narrates the conflict, eventually growing into a full-scale war, between the ruling family of the Khatak chiefs headed by Afzal Khān and the clan of the Khatak spiritual leaders, the tribal sheikhs, headed by Sarfarāz-Gul.Footnote ¹⁴ Though addressed to persons of Pashtun origin, these letters were deliberately written by Afzal in Persian since they dealt with legal Sharia matters and, for quite understandable political reasons, had to be widely publicized within the Mughal administrative circles.

Afzal Khān’s Pashto Account of his Conflict with the Khatak Sheikhs

The account of the conflict between the Khatak chiefs and the sheikhs itself deserves special attention as factually the first written evidence of steady political tensions between military-administrative and religious authorities in the Pashtun tribal society. Like The Chronicle’s other narratives this account is also very fragmentary and one-sided. Nevertheless, it is a perfect illustration of what may be called an Afghan pattern of the traditional opposition between secular and spiritual powers and therefore it may add new data for comparative studies on this issue.

The conflict between Afzal Khān and the Khatak spiritual clan (stāna) Yāsinkhel broke out in December 1723. It was provoked by a local incident in which Afzal’s men attempted to levy extra tax on transit of a horse-traders’ caravan. Sarfarāz-Gul and other sheikhs from his clan took the part of the traders, supposedly for the simple reason that they had commercial interest in this affair. Thus, on the surface it was a purely financial disagreement that was behind the sudden outburst of a severe political and armed confrontation. However, the conflict had much deeper roots, being a manifestation of fundamental and continuous dispute about the distribution of political authority between tribal military and spiritual leaders.

The earliest testimony about discords between these tribal groups goes back in The Chronicle to 1672 when the sheikhs’ leader Ziyā al-Dīn, Khushhāl’s son-in-law, openly supported Bahrām Khān (d. 1712), Khushhāl’s son, in the latter’s struggle for power against his father and eldest brother Ashraf Khān.Footnote ¹⁵ Moreover, it is directly stated in The Chronicle that Ziyā al-Dīn was a true mastermind and the spiritual inspiration of the fratricidal war, which lasted to the death of Bahrām Khān in 1712. The antagonistic character of relations between the Khatak chiefs and the sheikhs is reflected even in tribal folklore: according to a popular legend recorded by J. Darmesteter in 1886, Khushhāl Khān’s five-year imprisonment in India was invoked by an imprecation by the highly revered Khatak Sheikh Rahmkār (d. 1653), who punished the Khatak chief in this way for disrespect and cruelty towards his son Ziyā al-Dīn.Footnote ¹⁶ Sarfarāz-Gul, who in 1724 confronted Khushhāl’s grandson Afzal, was a great-grandson of Sheikh Rahmkār.

In his records Afzal Khān repeatedly blames Sarfarāz-Gul and other sheikhs for incessant intrigues against him throughout his rule (from 1692) and affirms that their clandestine or sometimes undisguised activities were always aimed at usurping the supreme administrative power in the Khatak tribe. It is noteworthy that Afzal insists on intrinsic differences in legal and social status, competences and duties of tribal chiefs and men of religion, pointing also to the property privileges of the sheikhs and their exclusive user rights over vast serəy lands.Footnote ¹⁷

Supported by a number of other leading Khatak clans, which were habitually at odds with the Afzal ruling family, the sheikhs instituted their control at first over the southern parts of the Khatak lands.Footnote ¹⁸ Accusing Afzal of tyranny and wrongdoing, they appealed to the Mughal administration and Muslim religious authorities of Peshawar for official sanctioning of the change of leadership in the tribe. Afzal Khān states that the Mughal officials took the sheikhs’ side after Sarfarāz-Gul bribed them by promising increased payments from large profits brought by the Khataks’ salt-mines.Footnote ¹⁹ After his position grew considerably weaker, at the end of February 1724 Afzal Khān secured official permission from the tribal assembly (jirga) to leave his post and withdraw from the Khatak lands to the territories of the Yusufzay tribe, neighboring the Khataks to the north. Immediately the sheikhs occupied the town of Sarāy-Akora (now Akora Khattak), administrative center of the Khataks’ dominion and the Khatak chiefs’ ancestral residence, and held there another assembly which appointed the sheikh Muhammad Ghiyās as the new tribal leader, a “Khan” in Afzal’s own words.Footnote ²⁰

Naturally, Afzal Khān had no intention of abandoning his homeland and high status for long, and as early as in the end of March 1724, reinforced by the friendly Yusufzay clans, he won back the khan’s power from the sheikhs. In the fierce fight which took place on the banks of the Kabul river, his rivals suffered a defeat. Many of the sheikhs escaped to Nowshahr (now Nowshera), a town controlled by the Mughal administration. Suspicious about the ever-ambiguous and double-faced policy of the Mughal imperial establishment and fearing to be discredited in the eyes of Muslim religious authorities of Peshawar and Nowshahr, Afzal Khān refrained from returning to the Khatak lands in person, but marked his presence in Sarāy-Akora by sending his eldest son Muhammad ʿAli Khān there.Footnote ²¹

Some sheikhs, including Muhammad Ghiyās, the formerly elected khan, publicly renounced their claim to power, but Sarfarāz-Gul, deprived of his status and estates, initiated a lawsuit against Afzal Khān. Obviously, he was mainly unhappy about the loss of income from his serəy lands and regular donations (shokrāneh).Footnote ²² According to Afzal, Sarfarāz-Gul started his involvement with backstage intrigues by holding unofficial consultations with both administrative and religious authorities of Peshawar. His activities may have had a certain success since in May 1724 Afzal Khān joined the game and began to correspond with influential persons in Peshawar and Nowshahr. He included five letters from this correspondence in The Khataks’ Chronicle.

Afzal Khān’s Persian Letters on the Conflict: Texts and their Historical Background

The first letter is addressed to the Afzal’s brother (or uncle?) Malik Bāz Khān, who lived in Nowshahr and was in close touch with the Mughal officials. In this letter Afzal Khān declares the necessity of official examination of Sarfarāz-Gul’s petition in the High Court of Peshawar. He expresses his eagerness to participate in open court proceedings, grounded on a legal claim (daʿvā-ye sharʿi), in the capacity of defendant; not personally, however, but through his agent (vakil). Noteworthy are his passing words about “the court of Akora (jā-ye ʿadālat-e Akura),” for it is a clear indication of the fact that a local Sharia court did exist in this small Afghan town, but had not enough competence to investigate such a complicated and politically biased lawsuit as the one brought by the Khatak sheikh. The letter reveals Afzal Khān’s calculated rhetoric aimed at depicting him as a man who is much concerned about the priority of the law:

The next letter was written by Afzal in response to a message from Akhund Muhammad Qāsim, the distinguished Sunni theologian and religious teacher of Peshawar.Footnote ²⁴ Afzal Khān calls him “the leader (moqtadā) of the Peshawar theologians” and speaks of his very intimate relations and regular exchange of visits with the Khatak sheikhs. It may be guessed from the text of this letter and Afzal’s other passing remarks that Akhund Qāsim wished to act as an unofficial arbitrator and settle the conflict to the benefit of the sheikhs without any formal procedures, especially court inquiries. The general tenor of Afzal’s letter addressed to Akhund is distinctly high-flown, though not devoid of sarcastic overtones. It is his only Persian letter where he quotes the Koran (2:250/249, 14:4, 48:10) with no other purpose than to demonstrate his learning and piety to a prominent religious scholar. With pompous honorific salutations the Khatak chief expresses his deep gratitude to Akhund Qāsim for the latter’s intervention in the conflict: “qadam-e mobārak-e ān movarras al-nabi dar meyān-ast …” (“the blessed steps of this Heir of the Prophet are in between … ”). On the other hand, Afzal subtly reproaches Akhund Qāsim, remembering that the latter avoided meeting with him in person while visiting the Khatak territories. The main objective of the letter is to dissuade Akhund Qāsim from siding with the sheikhs in view of the illegitimacy of their intrusion into a sphere other than what is prescribed to them by their social status, i.e. into the affairs of tribal administration. Thus, Afzal Khān obliquely raises the issue of separation of secular and spiritual powers:

By “hiding away all these disorders” Afzal obviously meant the same procedure as had been conceived by Akhund Qāsim: a kind of offstage reconciliation between him and the sheikhs under the patronage of the Muslim authorities of Peshawar—though, of course, without any concessions to the claimants. In other words, Afzal Khān sought an agreement that would retain status quo by legitimizing it through the arbitration of religious scholars. His second solution, literally “splitting” (shaqq), implied official legal proceedings in the court. Thus, Afzal Khān blackmailed Akhund Qāsim, inviting him to choose between refusal to advocate the interests of the sheikhs in an unofficial arbitration and open involvement in a public scandal. At the end of his letter Afzal charges Akhund Qāsim with responsibility to select any of possible solutions emphasizing the decisive role of his personal opinion and will:

Apparently neither Akhund Muhammad Qāsim nor any other Muslim scholar from his entourage replied to this message, which caused Afzal Khān to then appeal to the Mughal officials for administrative arbitration. In his next letter Afzal wrote to a certain Muhiballāh, a high-ranking Mughal officer (arbāb) in Peshawar, whom Sarfarāz-Gul had also petitioned earlier asking for the restitution of his right. In this new letter Afzal Khān unrestrainedly criticizes his opponent and explicitly insists on a separation of powers, denying the administrative competences of religious authorities who are rather contemptuously called “the beggars” (gadāyān):

In the second part of the letter Afzal Khān directly invites Muhiballāh to perform the duties of an arbitrator in order to avoid open court proceedings. He also recommends some formal procedures, such as writing down the plaintiff’s claims and the defendant’s objections. Afzal stresses that only in case the sides are not able to reach an agreement via administrative arbitration is the suit to be investigated in the Sharia court. In Afzal’s opinion, such arbitration was necessitated by the fact that the conflict took the shape of an armed confrontation and the question was of criminal responsibility for “disturbances” (hangāmeh-ārāyi), “murders” (khun-hā) and “robberies” (tārāj-hā):Footnote ²⁸

Contrary to Afzal Khān’s aspirations, no administrative arbitration took place. Finally, Sarfarāz-Gul formulated his claims in a legal document which he submitted to some high-ranking religious scholars in Peshawar. Afzal asserts that his opponent even made an official oath of calumny (qasam). However, it appears that the religious and judicial authorities of Peshawar also were not disposed to start open proceedings related to such a dangerous case which involved military actions with homicide and robbery. So, trying to prevent investigations in the court, they sent an emissary to Afzal to inform him about the subject-matter of the suit and to request satisfaction of the lawful claims of the Khatak sheikhs. In his verbal message to religious scholars Afzal Khān rejected all claims as being groundless and accused the sheikhs of avarice and instigation of mutiny. However, in his letter addressed to “all men of learning and Islam” (kāffeh-ye ahl-e ʿelm va eslām) Afzal was much less offensive and accepted the legitimacy of the claims and the oath of Sarfarāz-Gul. Nevertheless, he refused to satisfy any claim and again insisted on court proceedings:

These statements were more likely warnings than actual propositions for launching the Sharia court trial since through his negotiators Afzal Khān sought other ways of settling the conflict. In passing Afzal mentions in his records that he suggested settling the conflict by means of nənawāte—a widely used custom of Pashtun tribal law which provides for reconciliation of conflicting parties via intercession, accomplished mostly by religious authorities, and a special ritual of pardon begging.Footnote ³¹ In Afzal’s opinion, it was Sarfarāz-Gul who had to plead for forgiveness and protection by sending to him a ceremonial deputation-nənawāte composed of religious scholars. Of course, this initiative was doomed to failure at the very outset for it meant that the sheikhs would have been obliged to admit their guilt and waive their property claims.

When all negotiations on potential extrajudicial ways of settling the conflict reached a deadlock, it became clear that neither side was actually prepared to raise the lawsuit in the Sharia court. According to Afzal, the sheikhs finally took sides with a few religious teachers of Peshawar who disagreed with the abovementioned Akhund Muhammad Qāsim and stood for the restitution of the sheikhs’ rights, including their recently acquired and then quickly lost administrative powers, by force of arms. Afzal Khān asserts that after his conflict with Sarfarāz-Gul again drifted into military confrontation, Akhund Qāsim and the majority of other Muslim scholars reassessed the sheikhs’ claims as being invalid (bātel) and expressed their apologies to him.

In the meantime the Khatak sheikhs and their new allies managed to recruit a large army of mercenaries from the neighboring Pashtun tribes, such as the Khalils, the Momands and the Afridays. Afzal estimated the strength of this military coalition, unsurprisingly labeled by him “a band of robbers, rogues, ruffians and scoundrels,” at 7,000‒8,000 fighters.Footnote ³² Two authoritative mullahs, Mullā Muhammad Jamāl and Mullā Wali, who exercised a kind of spiritual leadership of this army, sent their envoy to Afzal with a request to satisfy all the claims of Sarfarāz-Gul without delay. Afzal Khān answered this ultimatum with a short letter in which he restated his opinion about the necessity for only judicial settlement of the conflict in the court of Peshawar and warned his opponents against any military actions:

Such was Afzal’s rhetoric in his written message. However, according to his own cursory notes, he proposed to the sheikhs’ deputy Mullā Jānbāz, called khān də tālibāno (“the chief of learners”), another extrajudicial solution. Afzal Khān suggested convening an assembly (jirga) of religious authorities who were to perform the functions of a jury applying both religious and customary laws. The following events proved that neither of the variants considered by Afzal Khān was accepted by his opponents since the conflict rapidly escalated into a war. The sheikhs’ joint military forces invaded the Khatak lands and after a number of brutal armed clashes with Afzal’s troops were defeated on 14 July 1724.Footnote ³⁴ It is with this episode that The Chronicle’s records abruptly break off, thus leaving the account of the conflict between Afzal Khān and the sheikhs unfinished and the question of its final settlement unanswered.

Implications of the Letters’ Legal Rhetoric

Afzal Khān’s account undoubtedly suggests that neither of opposing sides of the reported political confrontation, and none of the religious and administrative officials involved in it, really did wish to settle the internal tribal conflict, which entailed a range of proprietary, administrative and criminal offences, within the strict frames of Sharia jurisdiction. Suffice it to say that in the course of several months of back-stage intrigues, negotiation and correspondence neither Sarfarāz-Gul nor Afzal Khān officially brought their legal claims to the High Sharia Court of Peshawar according to prescribed procedures. Being for obvious reasons tendentious and extremely subjective, Afzal Khān’s account of the conflict leaves little doubt that his five Persian letters with straight appeal for legal Sharia proceedings in the court were nothing more than public declarations used as instruments of his political struggle against the Khatak sheikhs. With these letters Afzal proclaimed his adherence to Muslim laws and his eagerness to secure social order by legal means, and at the same time implicitly warned both his opponent and potential arbitrators of the imminent danger of a public trial in case of any infringement upon his status and rights. In other words, while insisting on the priority of the Sharia court adjudication, Afzal Khān actually strove to leave his opponent without the support of religious and administrative authorities, such as Akhund Muhammad Qāsim or Muhiballāh, who wished to avoid open court inquiries. At the same time, in his oral messages to all high-ranking persons, the Khatak chief sought for extrajudicial ways of conflict settlement via administrative arbitration or through tribal conciliatory procedures (nənawāte, jirga) according to the Pashtun customary law (Pashtunwali).

It should be stressed again that probably the most important idea persistently verbalized by Afzal Khān in his Persian letters and contextual statements in Pashto is that of the delimitation of the competences of tribal secular and spiritual elite, the chiefs and the sheikhs. Afzal firmly rejected the claim of tribal religious leaders to administrative and political power which, in his opinion, was an exclusive prerogative of tribal chiefs, members of his own social stratum. He considered the seizure of the supreme political power in the Khatak tribe by its spiritual clan an act of blatant law-breaking.

The unprecedented armed confrontation with the Khatak sheikhs in 1724 greatly increased Afzal Khān’s inherently negative attitude towards tribal spiritual guides. Despite his formal due reverence for religious authorities in general and the family of the Khatak Sheikh Rahmkār in particular, Afzal Khān every now and then designated his political opponents with such pejorative appellations as “beggars” and “mendicants” (darvezgarān, gadāyān), or even “pseudo-sheikhs” (nā-mashāyekh, nā-shaykhān).Footnote ³⁵ In this matter Afzal echoed his grandfather Khushhāl Khān, who was always open and unequivocal in expression of his disrespect and antipathy towards any kind of “home-bred” spiritual masters, except for Sheikh Rahmkār. Among Khushhāl’s numerous critical verses targeted predominantly against the followers of mystical traditions of popular Islam there is a short satirical ghazal where the author disparages “the sheikhs of this epoch” for choosing alms (shokrāneh) instead of lawful occupation (halāl kasb) and robbing the people with “loud invocations” (jali zekr), and in the final distich proclaims his determined adherence to the caste of tribal military elite: “To the art of those who fight openly with blades risking their heads Khushhāl Khatak is ever faithful.”Footnote ³⁶

On the other hand, the account and letters of Afzal Khān confirm the fact that in the seventeenth‒eighteenth centuries Muslim religious authorities already exercised control in the spheres of administration and jurisdiction over the Pashtun tribal territories, and Sharia courts represented a certain if mostly nominal balance to traditional institutes of the Pashtun customary law. The very public declarations of both Afzal Khān and his opponent to apply to the Sharia court for judicial settlement of a multifaceted conflict indicate at least the formal potency of Muslim jurisdiction in local affairs. The letters of Afzal Khān bear clear evidence that an educated Pashtun chief was well aware of the Muslim court procedure and competent in juridical terminology, such as sharʿ (“religious law”), qānun (“administrative statute”), daʿvā-ye sharʿi (“legal claim”), haqq (“legal right”), moddaʿi (“claimant”), moddaʿā ʿaleyhi (“defendant”), vakil (“authorized agent”), qasam (“oath of calumny”), etc. Referring to Akhund Darweza, who described the situation among Pashtun tribes in the last decades of the sixteenth century, Afzal Khān points to the fact that “at that time there was not much religious learning (‘elm) among Pashtuns” and “the dominance of judges (ghalaba də hokkāmo) did not exist at all.”Footnote ³⁷ About fifteen decades later this situation drastically changed, and, characterizing the social status of spiritual authorities in his own times, Afzal Khān wrote that “now religious scholars of Peshawar had strong power (khə tasallot)” and “participated in jurisdiction (hokkāmi) and transactions (moʿāmalāt).”Footnote ³⁸ In his first Persian letter Afzal mentions the High Sharia Court of Peshawar, a local Sharia court in his hometown of Sarāy-Akora, the posts of “the king’s judge” and the mufti (see above).

Included in the large corpus of The Khataks’ Chronicle and supplemented with five “judicial” letters in Persian, the notes of Afzal Khān on his conflict with the Khatak sheikhs contain the earliest description of such a constant in the historical evolution of the Pashtun tribal society as the opposition between its military-administrative and spiritual authorities. Dealing with a particular case of this continuing political confrontation, The Chronicle’s narratives, and especially the letters, as official documents with open statements and more precise assessments of the key points in a series of intricate events, offer a pattern of a typical conflict between Pashtun elites in the medieval and pre-modern times. This pattern may be applicable for better understanding of grounds, dynamics and mechanisms of legal settlement of other similar conflicts in later periods of the Pashtun history as well as for deeper analysis of recent and contemporary developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan, having in mind political frictions between the Taliban with their rigid religious rhetoric and local tribal leaders, or the so-called warlords. Besides, the documents discussed in this paper well display subtle correlation of verbal and written forms of the negotiation process within a political conflict and illustrate both the stylistics and ideology of official correspondence and diplomacy in the Pashtun tribal territories at the beginning of the eighteenth century.