Rahman Baba: the Pashto Sufi poet

The best-loved poet of Pashto

Abdul Rahman Mohmand, known as Rahman Baba (رحمان بابا), is one of the most celebrated poets in the Pashto language. The Afghan literary critic Mohammad Zarin Anzor has said that no other classical Pashto poet has won as much affection, and that the title Baba, meaning grandfather or elder, is given only to elders worthy of honour. [2]

His fame rests on a single book of poems, his Diwan. A 2020 profile in The News on Sunday describes it as the all-time bestseller of Pashto literature, and calls him the Rumi of Pashto literature for his message of humanity, peace, love and tolerance. [1]

Life: what is known and what is uncertain

Few facts about Rahman Baba's life are certain. According to the 2020 profile, he was born in Bahadur village in Hazarkhwani, near Peshawar, into the Ghoryakhel branch of the Mohmand tribe, a family that had moved from Ghazni in Afghanistan. The same account says he studied in Kohat and later travelled to central India for further study. [1]

His dates are disputed. The 2020 profile gives his birth as 1632 and says the year of his death is unknown, though he is believed to have been alive around 1710. Dawn has given his dates as 1653 to 1711. A 2021 study by Mikhail Pelevin in the Bulletin of SOAS examines an elegy by Abd al-Rahman Momand written in response to an armed clash within the Mohmand tribe in 1711, which suggests he was still writing in that year. [1] [5] [3]

He lived in the Mughal period, as did his contemporary Khushal Khan Khattak. Anzor contrasts the two: Khushal fought the Mughals, while Rahman neither submitted to rulers nor wrote under their patronage, but commented critically on the social questions of his time. [2]

The Diwan and its forms

Most of the poems in the Diwan are ghazals, the short rhymed lyric that is central to Persian and Pashto poetry. Anzor notes that Rahman almost always kept to this form, with a few mukhammas (five-line stanzas) and qasidas, longer odes. [2]

The Diwan circulated widely in manuscript. The 2020 profile reports Zalmi Hiwadmal's count of at least 38 manuscripts in libraries in several countries, including the British Library, Indian libraries, the French National Library and the National Archive of Afghanistan. [1]

Themes: divine love, humility and conduct

Rahman Baba's poetry belongs to the Sufi tradition. Anzor describes it as devoted to the awareness of God, which Rahman treats as part of human growth, and as strongly moral, offering examples for daily life. Its language and images are simple, but the poems taken as a whole carry a complex view of the world. Anzor also notes that Rahman wrote about social questions, not only the inner life. Anzor quotes lines from the Diwan saying that healing another person's wounded heart is greater than building the Kaaba. [2]

He also set love above tribe. In a frequently quoted couplet he describes himself as a lover, and not a Khalil, a Daudzai or a Mohmand. The 2020 profile notes that his verse draws on Pashto proverbs, which helps explain why scholars, clerics and ordinary readers alike can follow it. [2] [1]

Place in Pashto literature and translation

Rahman Baba is often compared with his contemporary Khushal Khan Khattak, the other towering classical poet of Pashto; one critic quoted in the 2020 profile argues that Rahman's poetry came to overshadow Khushal's for many readers. According to the 2020 profile, his style was followed by contemporaries including Younas Khyberi and Akhund Gadai, and by many poets in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [1]

His work reached European readers early. Henry George Raverty included selections in A Selection from the Poetry of the Afghans (1862), Annemarie Schimmel later translated him, and Jens Enevoldsen published an English translation of the Diwan as The Nightingale of Peshawar in 1977. Amir Hamza Shinwari translated the whole Diwan into Urdu in 1963. [1] [2]

The shrine at Hazarkhwani and the 2009 bombing

Rahman Baba is buried at Hazarkhwani, on the outskirts of Peshawar. The shrine complex was completed in 1994, and an urs, an annual commemoration with poetry readings and music, is held there each year. [4] [1]

In the early hours of 5 March 2009, explosives were detonated at the shrine. Dawn reported that the charges had been tied to the pillars of the mausoleum and that the blast badly damaged the building and the grave. No one was killed. The shrine's watchman had received a threatening call three days earlier, and the attack was reported to be aimed at stopping women from visiting the shrine. Police said the matter was under investigation. [4]

The complex was rebuilt at a cost of Rs39 million and reopened in 2012, with the mausoleum, a library hall, an auditorium, a mosque and a cafeteria. Dawn reported in 2015 that attendance at the urs had fallen from between 30,000 and 50,000 before the attack to about 3,000. [5]