Pashto religious literature: from the Khair al-Bayan to Pashto tafsirs

At a glance

• Pashto religious writing begins in the sixteenth century with two books that answer each other: Bayazid Ansari's Khair al-Bayan and Akhund Darweza's Makhzan. Mikhail Pelevin calls the Khair al-Bayan "the oldest of all the works in Pashto preserved up to the present day". [4]

• Raverty, who had not seen the Khair al-Bayan in 1860, called the Makhzan "the oldest work in the language now procurable". [1]

• Pelevin counted 61 copies of the Makhzan. Tariq Rahman writes that it is said to have been taught in madrasas and at home, and read aloud to people who could not read. [4, 5]

• Dawn reports a Pashto commentary on the Quran written in 1794, kept in manuscript at the Pashto Academy. A bibliography lists a complete Pashto translation printed at Bhopal in 1861. [8, 9]

• Rahman Baba's Diwan opens with praise of God. Pelevin counted 32 manuscripts of it, more than any other Pashto poet's, and more than ten lithographed editions. [3, 4]

• In Pashto-speaking madrasas the teaching is in Pashto, but examinations are set in Urdu and Arabic. [5]

Two books that answer each other

The lives of the two founders are told in Pir Roshan and Akhund Darweza.

Raverty's order of discovery is worth keeping. When he edited his Pashto reader, the Gulshan-i-Roh, in 1860, he chose the Makhzan of Akhund Darweza as "the oldest work in the language now procurable". [1] He wrote in 1867 that copies had been burned wherever the mullahs found them, and that followers who still held some did not dare to produce them. [2] A copy turned up in Berlin, after passing through the hands of the linguist Georg Morgenstierne in 1926 or 1927. It was found again at Tübingen in 1959, and the text was printed at Peshawar in 1967, with notes by Abd ul-Quddus Qasimi. [4]

Tariq Rahman notes that the Khair al-Bayan has "passages about the rudiments of Islam which may be understood by ordinary people", and thinks it likely that it was used in madrasas, though Darweza thought its author's opinions heretical. [5] Pelevin dates the Berlin copy to 1651 by its colophon. Rahman mentions a manuscript dated 1611 at Tübingen, and Pelevin does not, so the two cannot both be right about the same book. [4, 5]

The Makhzan was written for a different reader. Pelevin says that at least a third of it is Pashto translation of classical Arabic works, and that it carries what an ordinary Muslim needs: the duties of a believer, the rules of law, how to pray and wash. It also contains alphabet books of religious terms, one term for every Arabic letter, and in later copies a good deal of verse. [4] One copy in Berlin opens with a Pashto version of a treatise by Umar al-Nasafi on twelve heretical sects. Another carries a shortened Pashto translation of Lutfullah Kaydani's Khulasa. [4] The work grew by accretion. Darweza wrote it with his son Abd al-Karim (Karimdad), and Pelevin sees a grandson, Abd al-Halim, adding questions and poems. [4]

Copies are many. Pelevin counted 21 in Britain, 18 in India, 10 at Peshawar University and three each in Kabul, St Petersburg and Berlin. [4] The Pashto scholar Zalmai Hewadmal, he says, thought the true total near a hundred, and says the book is still used as a manual of Muslim theology. [4] The oldest dated copy Pelevin knew is in the Salar Jung Museum at Hyderabad, finished on 5 March 1649. Rahman mentions one of 1592 in the Pashto Academy at Peshawar. [4, 5] The complete modern edition came out at Peshawar in 1969, with an introduction by Sayyid Taqwim ul-Haq Kakakhel. [4]

Teaching books after the founders

Darweza's circle kept writing. Akhund Qasim wrote the Fawa'id-i Shari'at, "Benefits of the law". Raverty calls him the chief prelate and head of the Muslim clergy of Hashtnagar and Peshawar, and dates the book to 1713. [2] Pelevin describes the Berlin copy: 81 chapters on belief, law, ritual and manners, the last twelve on the life of the Prophet, and a preamble praising Pir Baba (Sayyid Ali Tirmizi) and Darweza, the author's spiritual guide. [4] The same copy bears the seal of Shah Alam, Aurangzeb's eldest son, with the year 1116 (1704/05). Pelevin concludes that the book is older than Raverty's date. [4] Raverty also chose passages of it for the Gulshan-i-Roh, beside passages of the Makhzan. [1]

Plainer books followed for readers who knew less. Raverty lists the Rashid-ul-Bayan of Akhund Rashid as "a sort of religious Text-book and Catechism for women and children". [2] Rahman dates it 1717, and says women read it at home. He prints a couplet on God, here in his Latin spelling: Na e naqs shta pa zat ke / Na e aeb shta pa sifat ke, "neither has He any defect in His Being nor has He any fault in His qualities". [5]

Rahman names others, none of them old by the standard of the Makhzan. There is the Nafe al-Muslimeen of Sheikh Akhwan Gada (1874), the Rabqat ul-Islam of Maulana Moizuddin, and the Majmua tul-Khutab, a collection of sermons in verse said to have been read at the Eid after Ramadan. [5] The Rabqat ul-Islam tells readers to begin every act with bismillah. [5] Booklets called Nur Nama, Jang Nama and Lahad Nama told of Karbala and of questioning in the grave. [5] Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi's Urdu Bahishti Zewar was put into Pashto in parts as Da Jannati Kale, and later in full. [5]

The Roshani side wrote verse. Raverty says Bayazid was helped in his writing by Mulla Arzani, whose pen "was a very sharp one", and describes the odes of Mirza Khan, a descendant of Bayazid, as "highly metaphysical" and in keeping with the mystical teaching of the sect. [2] Their poems are in Arzani Khweshki, Mirza Khan Ansari, Daulat Lawanai and Wasil Roshani. The diwans of Daulat Lawanai and Wasil Roshani were printed only in 1974, at Kabul.

Pashto commentaries and translations of the Quran

Raverty's list of 1867 includes a Pashto "Tafsir, a commentary and paraphrase of the Kur'an", and credits Afzal Khan Khattak with a Tafsir-i-Kur'an. [2] Reports from Peshawar go further back. Dawn reported in 2023 that the Pashto Academy at the University of Peshawar holds a manuscript of the Tafsir-i-Afzalia, written in 1794 by Maulvi Ruknuddin of Hazarkhwani, a Dawezai Mohmand who lived in the reign of Ahmad Shah. It says two copies are in the archives library at Rampur, and that the Academy published the book in 1989. [9] Experts quoted in the report asked for old manuscripts like it to be preserved. [9]

A different list begins later. The bibliography of printed Quran translations built on the IRCICA survey (to 1980) names Mawlana Murad Ali's commentary, finished in 1867 (1284 AH) and printed at Lahore in 1906, as the earliest known Pashto commentary. It adds that an earlier complete Pashto translation is reported, printed at Bhopal in 1278 AH (1861), in two volumes of 1,739 pages with the Urdu translation of Shah Abd al-Qadir. [8] The two accounts differ in dates and in what each counts, and neither list is complete. Dawn dates what it calls Murad Ali's Tafseer-i-Yaseer to 1893. [9]

Printed Pashto Quran work grew through the twentieth century. The IRCICA list, which runs to 1980, gives eleven Pashto works. They include a Pashto version of Shah Wali Allah's Persian translation (Peshawar, Rahman Gul Publishers, 1926), a Pashto version of the Urdu translation and commentary of Mahmud al-Hasan and Shabbir Ahmad Uthmani (three volumes, Kabul, 1944), a translation by Abd al-Haqq Darbangwi (Hamidiyah Press, Peshawar, 1961) and Muhammad Idris's Kashf al-Quran, translation and commentary in two volumes (Peshawar, 1961 to 1976). [8] Dawn adds the Tafsir-i-Badr al-Munir of Dost Mohammad Khattak (1896), the Tafsir-i-Afghani of Abdul Rauf Kakar (1942) and the Zahir al-Tafsir of Abdul Wadood Sarhadi (1943). [9]

Jafar Hussain Shah Rekhtuni turned the Quran into Pashto verse, 12,134 couplets in Dawn's count, published at Peshawar in 1968 according to Dawn, in 1964 according to the IRCICA list. [8, 9] Noor Muhammad Danish Bettani of the Pashto Academy and Ashfaq Ali of Islamia College write in 2018 that Pashto has many translations and commentaries of the Quran and Hadith, some of them in verse. [7] Dawn adds that the Academy handed out its published Tafsir-i-Afzalia to religious seminaries, which is why it keeps only two or three copies. [9]

During the war of the 1980s, Pashto readers also received new translations of Urdu and Arabic revivalist writing. Rahman lists Abul Ala Maududi's Tafheem ul-Quran and works of the Muslim Brotherhood among them, with pamphlets and a monthly magazine published at Peshawar for the Afghan camps. [5]

Rahman Baba and the Sufi verse

Raverty found Rahman "one of the most popular, and probably the best known, of all the Afghan poets". His poems were "of a religious or moral character, and chiefly on the subject of divine love", with "a fiery energy in his style, and a natural simplicity". [3] Raverty says envious mullahs accused him of heresy because he stayed away from the mosque, and that he escaped by agreeing to pray with the congregation again. [3] Rahman Baba has his life. His book is a religious one, and Pashtuns read it so.

The Diwan opens with praise of God, as many classical diwans do. [3, 11] Raverty's Pashto text in the Gulshan-i-Roh and a 2020 study in the Peshawar journal Al-Idah both give the couplet:

شریک نه لري په خپله بادشاهۍ کښې

Sharik na lari pa khpala badshahi kkhe,

بې شریکه شهریار دے رب زما

be sharika shahryar day rab zma.

He has no partner in his own kingdom; my Lord is a king without a partner. [1, 6]

Raverty's English of the same lines reads "He hath neither partner nor associate". It also has "Wherefore then the occasion that I should seek Him elsewhere, since, in mine own dwelling, my God is ever at my side?" [3] Khan and Yousafzai, both of the Pashto department at Islamia College Peshawar, set the poem's lines on God's unity beside the surah al-Ikhlas. They call Rahman a poet who upholds tawhid "like none else in Pashto poetry". [6] Bettani and Ali quote a couplet in which Rahman says that what he tells the reader will be found plain in the verses and the hadith. [7]

How the book travelled is clearer than the poet's dates. Raverty says friends collected his odes during his life and, after his death, two collections, "Rahman's first and second", had to be purged of lines forged under his name. He compared about sixty copies. [3] Pelevin counted 32 manuscripts of the Diwan in India, Britain, Afghanistan, St Petersburg, Paris, Princeton and Berlin, and more than ten lithographed editions in India and Pakistan. He cites a Peshawar edition of 1960 by Maulana Abd ul-Qadir, with a glossary by Dost Muhammad Kamil Mohmand. [4] Dawn adds that the first printed edition was assembled by the missionary T. P. Hughes and published at Lahore in 1877, and is still the commonest. [10] Raverty says the odes of Rahman and Hamid were sung everywhere in Afghanistan, as popular songs were in Europe, though the singers often missed the meaning. [3]

Naat and verse in praise of the Prophet

A Pashto essay in the newspaper Wahdat defines a naat as praise of the Prophet's person, character and struggle, in no fixed form, and says its structure lies in its spirit and not in a genre. [11] The essay's author calls Khushal Khan Khattak the first regular naat poet in Pashto, and prints this as the opening of one of his naats: [11]

د خدائې عرفان مې وشو په عرفان د محمد

Da Khuday irfan me washo pa irfan da Muhammad,

پاک دے محمد پاک دے سبحان د محمد

pak day Muhammad pak day subhan da Muhammad.

I came to know God through knowing Muhammad; pure is Muhammad, glorified is Muhammad. [11]

The essay prints a naat of Rahman Baba as well:

که صورت د محمد نه وے پیدا

Ka surat da Muhammad na we paida,

پیدا کړې به خدائې نه وه دا دنیا

paida kre ba Khuday na wa da dunya.

Had the form of Muhammad not come to be, God would not have made this world. [11]

It adds that classical poets made it a custom to open each diwan with a hamd and a naat, and names Kazim Khan Shaida, Muazullah Khan Mohmand, Khwaja Muhammad Bangash, Ali Khan and Kamgar Khattak among them. [11] Raverty lists two Pashto versions of the Arabic Qasida Burda, one by Shah Sharf of Jalalabad and one by Akhund Darweza. [2] Later, it says, the folk poets Abdullah Ustad and Haji Muhammad Amin gave their whole lives to the naat, writing hundreds. [11]

When modern Pashto literature arose in the twentieth century, the essay says, the naat declined. Religious and scholarly poets went on writing it, notably Amir Hamza Shinwari, who put many naats in his first collection Da Zra Awaz, and Samandar Khan Samandar. [11]

In the madrasa

Tariq Rahman visited madrasas at Mingora in Swat, at Akora Khattak and in Peshawar for a paper of 1999. He found very few books in Pashto, but teachers who lectured in Pashto to students sitting on mats and carpets, and explained every religious text in Pashto. [5] The central examining body for madrasas, the Wafaq ul-Madaris, allows only Urdu and Arabic in examinations, so students learn both. Maulana Mahbub Ilahi of the Mazharul Uloom madrasa at Mingora told Rahman this on 20 June 1998. [5]

That is an old pattern. Rahman writes that Pashto "has been the language of the madrassas even before Pakistan was created", although the public in Pakistan has linked Pashto with Pashtun identity and Urdu with Islam. [5] Women learned the Quran and the rudiments of religion from an older woman, the Bibi, who used a Pashto textbook, often versified. [5] Dawn's report says the Academy's edition of the Tafsir-i-Afzalia went to religious seminaries. [9] The wider history of schooling is in Education in the Pashtun lands.

Printing

Raverty wrote in 1867 that all books "have to be copied by the professional scribes chiefly" and that "the charge for transcribing is high", so only those in comfortable circumstances could afford them. [2] In the preface to the Gulshan-i-Roh he says copyists were mostly not Afghans and wrote badly, and that his own book was set in Pashto type at Hertford in 1860, at less than a copyist would charge. [1]

In India, the Diwan of Rahman Baba was lithographed more than ten times, and the 1877 Lahore edition of Hughes is still the one in use. [4, 10] Peshawar presses took over in the twentieth century. They printed the Quran of 1926, the Hamidiyah Press editions of 1961 and 1964, and the Peshawar editions of the Diwan (1960), the Khair al-Bayan (1967) and the Makhzan (1969). [4, 8] The cheap Pashto booklets of the older trade sold for pennies, according to the Pashto writer Sayedul Abrar, whom Rahman quotes. When the poet Samandar Khan Samandar printed his own book Da Quran Jara on good paper in 1947, it did not sell. [5]

The printing quarter today is Mohalla Jangi, in the lanes near Qissa Khwani Bazaar. Dawn counted about 1,800 presses there in 2014 and the Express Tribune over 2,000 in 2017, many working for clients in Afghanistan. Their work includes school and religious books. [12, 13] Printers told the Tribune that business from Afghanistan fell by more than half in 2016, and blamed the new Torkham border rules, police checks and the growth of Afghanistan's own printing trade. [12]