The Pathans: 550 B.C - A.D. 1957

Abstract

This is a book I was bound some time to write, having had the fortune to spend half a lifetime among Pathans. But with the numbering of the years from 1 947, memories receded and the purpose weakened. That the purpose revived is owing to the initiative and courtesy of the Government of Pakistan who made it possible for me after nine years' absence to revisit familiar scenes, meet old friends and make new ones, and put in order against the new foreground a store of knowledge and impressions acquired over more than thirty years. The result presented is wholly mine; the responsibility for each conclusion, for every emphasis, individual and unshared. The voyage is long and the seas for the most part uncharted. For example, I have sought to cover more centuries before the Pathans embraced Islam than those which have since elapsed. If sometimes the touch may seem uncertain, the answer is that it is not easy for one navigator to encompass all the techniques, or indeed all the languages, needed to fit together a chart, or manage a crew, over a space of z,500 years . For the pre-Islamic period and the earlier Islamic centuries I have enjoyed the devoted help of Dr. A. D . H. Bivar, formerly my aide-de-camp, sometime scholar of Corpus, and lately Research Lecturer in Ancient History at Christ Church, Oxford . Without his enthusiasm and expert scholarship this part of the book could never have taken so distinct a shape. With his aid I have been able to interpret many original texts, Greek, Arabic and Persian, and to apply the results of specialized numismatic and epigraphical studies. But here too - he will wish me to affirm - the conclusions are my own and may not always stand up to academic assault. If that be so, I must plead the licence of the non-specialist, and a determination not to permit the wood to be obscured by the trees. Much more than formal acknowledgment is due to my friends, Evelyn Howell, on whose earlier work hangs my picture of the tribes of Waziristan, Ralph Griffith who knew the meaning of Pathan honour, and George Cunningham, ten years Governor i n Peshawar, who has read the whole work in manuscript and blessed it with the criticism which does not confound. From Pathans I have received countless i mpressions of tradition and wisdom; memorable among these are Sayyid Abdul Jabbar Shah of Sitana, who died in 1 9 5 6, and that grand old man, Muhammad Zaman Khan of Akora, descended from the most famous of Pathan poets. To Mr. Zuberi, Commissioner of Peshawar, and to Roger Bacon and his staff at Mardan, I am in debt for contributions to the study of that same poet, and to Mr. Ikramullah, High Commissioner for Pakistan in London, both for light shed on some dark corners of history and for his unfailing encouragement in moments of doubt and difficulty. In some sense this book is planned as the spark struck off by a century of clash and contact between Pathan and Englishman; if it should please, and stimulate Pathan writers to follow suit, it will have achieved a real purpose.