زموږ تاریخ، په پاملرنې لیکل شوی.

Religion and thought

Most Pashtuns are Hanafi Sunni Muslims, with Shia communities in areas such as Kurram and Orakzai. This article covers Sufi orders and shrines, and the 16th-century debate between Bayazid Ansari (Pir Roshan) and his critics.

Genetics and population history

How Pashtun origins are explained: the genealogy from Qais Abdur Rashid, the Bani Israel tradition, the Pactyes of Herodotus, the evidence of the Pashto language and what genetic studies can and cannot show.

Politics and movements

Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, founded the nonviolent Khudai Khidmatgar movement in 1929. This article traces its origins, the 1930 Qissa Khwani Bazaar killings, its ties to Congress, and his life after 1947.

Dialects and varieties

Why Pashto is also called Pakhto: how ښ and ږ are pronounced across Kandahari, Peshawari, Quetta and central varieties, the distinctive vowels of Waziri, the outlying Wanetsi dialect, and the Kandahar-based written standard.

Literature and poetry

Rahman Baba, the seventeenth-century Mohmand poet of Peshawar, left a single Diwan of mostly ghazals that remains the best-loved book of Pashto poetry. What is known of his life, his themes, his translators and his shrine at Hazarkhwani.

Pashto linguistics

How Pashto adapts the Arabic script with extra letters such as ټ, ډ, ړ, ڼ, ښ and ږ, what those letters sound like, and the grammar that sets the language apart: two genders, case endings, ergative past tenses and verb-final word order.

Modern Pashtun life

Pashtun life beyond the home valleys: Karachi's large Pashtun population, labour migration to the Gulf, Afghan refugee movements since 1979, Pashto speakers in Britain, and Pashto broadcasting and websites. All figures are estimates.

Notable people

Malalai of Maiwand is remembered for rallying Afghan fighters with a landay at the Battle of Maiwand on 27 July 1880. This article sets out what is documented, what rests on tradition, and how her name lives on.

خلک

A short biography of the seventeenth-century Pashtun poet whose writing connects literature, leadership, and changing relations with the Mughal Empire.

Historical places and regions

Peshawar, ancient Purushapura, was a Kushan capital and stands at the approach to the Khyber Pass. Learn about the Kanishka stupa, Gor Khuttree, Bala Hisar, the Mahabat Khan Mosque and the Qissa Khwani Bazaar.

Geography

A guide to the physical geography of the Pashtun lands: the Hindu Kush, Spin Ghar and Sulaiman ranges, the Kabul, Swat and Indus rivers, the Khyber and other passes, and the region's sharp climate contrasts.

ځایونه

The geography of a route linking the Peshawar and Kabul regions, and its place in the history of movement through Pashtun lands.

Traditions and customs

The jirga is the Pashtun assembly of elders that settles disputes by discussion and consensus. This article explains how it works, the smaller maraka, Afghanistan's Loya Jirga, and debates over women's exclusion and state courts.

Food

Bread and green tea, palaw, kababs, Peshawar's Namak Mandi and the winter dried meat called landi: an introduction to food widely associated with Pashtuns and its place in hospitality.

Music

The rabab (rubab), a short-necked lute carved from mulberry wood with sympathetic strings, is central to Pashtun music. Its construction, its 2024 UNESCO inscription, the attan dance, and the sung two-line landay or tappa.

قومونه

An introduction to a Pashtun confederation, its major groupings, and the distinction between recorded political organization and genealogical tradition.