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History
Genetics and population history
What genetic and demographic research says, and its limits.
Articles on genetics and population history
- How many Pashtuns live in Afghanistan: estimates and disputesAfghanistan has never counted its people by ethnic group: its one census (1979) was incomplete and dropped the ethnic question. Estimates of the Pashtun share run from about 38 to 63 per cent, with every figure disputed.
- Kuchi and powinda nomads of AfghanistanThe Kuchis, called powindas in the south, are the Pashtun herders and traders who moved between lowland winter camps and highland summer pastures. Counts range from under one million to over two million, and Hazarajat's pastures are still disputed.
- Origins of the Pashtuns: tradition and evidencePashtun tradition, written down at the Mughal court in 1609–1611, traces every tribe to Qais Abdur Rashid and his sons Sarban, Bitan and Ghurghusht. Language places Pashto among the north-eastern Iranian languages. The name Afghan appears as Avagāṇa in an Indian work of the early sixth century, and in a Persian geography of 982.
- Pashto speakers in Pakistan's censuses, 1951–2023Pakistan's census counts mother tongue, not ethnicity: 43,633,946 people gave Pashto in 2023, 18.15 per cent, against 18.24 per cent in 2017 and 15.42 per cent in 1998. Pashtun and Baloch parties dispute the counts in Balochistan, the tribal districts and Karachi.
- The Afghan cameleers of Australia, 1860 to the 1930sFrom 1860 camel men from the Pashtun country, Baluchistan, Sind and the Punjab, all called "Afghans", carried the Australian interior's freight and built its first mosques; the Ghan train is named for them.
- The naqilin: Pashtun settlers of northern AfghanistanFrom the 1880s Abdur Rahman and later governments settled Pashtun families north of the Hindu Kush, in Kunduz, Baghlan, Balkh and beyond. The settlements left lasting disputes over land and water, and the northern Pashtuns were attacked and displaced in 2001–02.
- The Pashtuns of Balochistan: districts, tribes and a province in disputeAbout a third of Balochistan's people gave Pashto as their mother tongue in 2023 (4,955,245, or 34.03 per cent), most of them in a belt of districts north and east of Quetta. Pashtun and Baloch parties dispute their numbers and the province's shape.
- The Pathans of India: Pashtun families and statesIn India the Pashtuns are called Pathans. Afghan soldiers in Mughal service founded Bhopal, Tonk, Farrukhabad and Maler Kotla, and peopled towns such as Shahjahanpur; Pathans were 41,137 of Shahjahanpur's Muslims in 1901.
- The Rohillas of Rohilkhand: Pashtuns in northern IndiaThe Rohillas were Pashtuns, named for Roh, the Afghan hill country, who settled in Katehr and made it Rohilkhand. Their regent Hafiz Rahmat Khan was killed at Miranpur Katra on 23 April 1774; Faizullah Khan kept Rampur.
- What genetic studies say about the PashtunsPublished Y-chromosome and ancient-DNA studies put the most common Pashtun paternal line, R1a, on its Asian branch (Z93), and find no large Greek or Jewish component. Y-DNA follows only fathers' lines, and the samples are small.