کلتور
Culture
Pashtunwali
The code of honour and its core values.
Articles on pashtunwali
- Badal: Pashtun redress, feud and settlementBadal (بدل) is the Pashtunwali duty to answer an injury in kind. Raverty's 1860 dictionary defines it as "exchange, substitution, retaliation", and feuds over it ran between cousins for generations until jirgas, truces or marriage settled them.
- Chalweshti, arbakai and lashkar: the tribe's own enforcersA jirga has no police, so Pashtun tribes use a band of about forty, the arbakai of Loya Paktia and, in war, the lashkar. Tariq found the arbakai unpaid and answerable to the jirga; the Afghan Local Police of 2010 was paid by the state.
- Ghayrat and tura: Pashtun self-respect, zeal and courageGhayrat (غیرت) is the Pashto word for the pride, zeal and courage with which a man defends his honour, and tura (توره), "sword", is the fighting side of it. Ethnographers disagree on whether ghayrat is a value of its own or part of nang.
- Melmastia: Pashtun hospitality and the guest's protectionMelmastia (مېلمستیا) is the Pashtun duty to feed, house and protect any guest, even an enemy. The host's protection held only on his own land, so travellers once needed an escort, the badragga, to pass from one tribe's country to the next.
- Namus: the honour of women and land in PashtunwaliNamus (ناموس) is the Pashtun honour of a man's women and household, glossed by Raverty in 1867 as "the female part of a family". Ethnographers tie it to land through the saying "women, gold, land", and Pakistan has punished honour killing by statute since 2016.
- Nanawatai: refuge and forgiveness in Pashtun customNanawatai (ننواتې), "going in", is the Pashtun custom of going to another man's house to ask shelter or pardon, which the householder is bound to honour. It sheltered fugitives and ended feuds.
- Nang (ننګ): Pashtun honour and the nang and qalang divideNang (ننګ) is the Pashto word for honour and also for its loss: Raverty's dictionary of 1867 gives "honor, reputation" and "disgrace, infamy" in one entry. Akbar S. Ahmed (1980) used it to sort Pashtun societies into nang hill tribes and qalang plains societies.
- Pashtunwali: the Pashtun code of honour and conductPashtunwali (پښتونولي), "the way of the Pashtuns", is the unwritten code by which Pashtuns judge conduct: guarding honour (nang), feeding guests, sheltering a suppliant (nanawatai) and answering injury (badal), with disputes settled by a jirga.
- Tarburwali: rivalry between cousinsA tarbur is a father's brother's son, and in Pashto the word also means rival. Tarburwali, the cousin rivalry over land, honour and leadership, has been argued to be the root of Pashtun feuds, though the same cousin is the first ally against outsiders.
- Teega: the truce stone and how feuds are pausedA teega is a truce a jirga places between feuding sides for a set time, with fines for breaking it. Ahmed translates the word as "stone"; a Kurram agreement used it in 2023 for a one-year truce.