Wasil Roshani: poet of the Roshani circle, seventeenth century

At a glance

• Wasil, called Roshani ("of the Roshani movement"), was a Pashto poet of the circle that formed round Bayazid Ansari, Pir Roshan. He signs his poems Wasil. [2, 3]

• Nothing is recorded of his birth, tribe, birthplace or death. His modern editor, Abdul Shakoor Rashad, shows from the Persian book Dabistan-i Mazahib that he was alive between 1057 and 1063 AH (about 1647 to 1652). Zalmai Hewadmal gives the last certain year as 1058 AH (1648). [2, 3]

• Rashad prints one qasida and fifteen ghazals of his, found in a Kandahar notebook and published at Kabul in 1974. Hewadmal says a diwan and an alifnama (a poem with a verse for each letter) of his have also been printed. [2, 3]

• Khushal Khan Khattak and his son Ashraf Khan Hijri name him among the poets of their time. [2]

What the sources say about the man

The sources give almost no biography. Rashad's short life of Wasil, printed at the front of the 1974 booklet, spends most of its length on who mentions him and when he can have lived. It opens with Bayazid Ansari, born in 931 AH (1525), and says that among Bayazid's followers who taught his doctrine of the unity of being, Wasil is the one known among Pashtuns as a poet of real standing. [2] For the movement itself, see Pir Roshan (Bayazid Ansari).

Hewadmal's history of Pashto literature lists Wasil among the Roshani poets who left a diwan, beside Mirza Khan Ansari, Arzani and Daulat Lawani. [3] A 2025 article from Kunduz University names him in the same company and says that Wasil and Daulat wrote alifnamas. It credits that remark to Hewadmal. [4]

The man in the Dabistan

The clearest evidence for his dates is a book he did not write. The Dabistan-i Mazahib, a Persian survey of the religions of the East, has a chapter on the Roshanis. Rashad, followed by Hewadmal, holds that its author met Wasil and took most of what he writes about the Roshanis from him. [2, 3] Rashad quotes a sentence from the Persian, in the Nawal Kishore printing of 1321 AH, that names "Miyan Wasil Roshani" when the author addresses him. [2] Rashad adds that the copy of the Halnama, Bayazid's own account of his life, from which the author drew had belonged to Wasil, who had written notes in its margins. [2]

The English translation of 1843 by David Shea and Anthony Troyer tells the same scene without the name. The author talks with "Miyan, who was attached to the Roshinian persuasion" about a remark of Bayazid's, and "the Miyan wrote down upon the margin of the Halnameh" that this too was the lord Miyan's speech. [1] Rashad's reading of the Persian is what puts Wasil in that passage.

Who wrote the Dabistan is itself disputed. Rashad notes that Sir William Jones thought the author was Muhsin Fani, who died in 1082 AH, while the Ma'athir al-Umara names Dhu'l-Fiqar Ali, who wrote under the pen name Mobed. [2] Rashad adds that the work was begun before 1055 AH and kept up until 1062 AH, and that its Roshani chapter was written after 1058 AH, since it records the death of Ilhdad, a grandson of Bayazid, in 1058 AH. He concludes that the meeting took place after 1057 AH and before 1063 AH. [2] Hewadmal, writing more briefly, says only that Wasil's life is certain to 1058 AH. [3]

Named by Khushal and Hijri

Rashad also lists the poets who mention Wasil. Khushal Khan Khattak, born in 1022 AH (1613), names him in a poem that rates poets by weight, with Daulat. He mocks the verse of Daulat and Wasil in another qasida, and Rashad takes the past tense in that poem to mean that both men were already dead when Khushal wrote. [2] Khushal's son Ashraf Khan Hijri, in a poem on the poets of his day, lists Wasil with Mirza, Qalandar, Rahman, Arzani and Dawlat. [2] For the poets, see Khushal Khan Khattak, Rahman Baba and Ashraf Khan Hijri.

A much later poet, Mirza Hannan Barakzai, who finished his own diwan in 1292 AH, writes in it that "Wasil has spoken very sweet words". [2] Rashad adds that the Kabul anthology Pashtana Shu'ara gave Wasil's name alone, with no verse, and that even Abdul Hai Habibi had found none of his poems when it was printed. Rashad quotes another scholar, Qiyamuddin Khadim, as writing that among the old poets "we know one by the name of Wasil" whose verse had not reached them. [2]

Where his poems turned up

Rashad says that Abdul Ahad Akhundzada of Kandahar, a calligrapher who also signed himself Gharibak, kept a large library and died in 1329 solar (1950). In 1336 (1957) it was dispersed, and Rashad bought a manuscript notebook of Mulla Akhtar Kandahari for ten afghanis and gave it to the Pashto Tolana, the Pashto society at Kabul. [2] It held one qasida and fifteen ghazals of Wasil. Rashad put four of the ghazals into the Pashto readers for the eleventh and twelfth classes in 1340 solar (1961). The whole set was published in 1974 as Da Wasil Roshani tso she'rona ("A few poems of Wasil Roshani"), for the international seminar marking four hundred years since Bayazid's death. [2]

Hewadmal says a diwan and an alifnama of Wasil are in his hands and have been printed, and that the diwan holds qasidas, ghazals, ruba'is, a mukhammas and a qit'a. [3] He does not say which edition, and none is named in the pages read here.

The verse

Hewadmal calls the poetry mystical in the Roshani way, but easier than Mirza Khan's, with firm, mature lines that give a reader a particular stir. [3] He quotes Wasil's own line on his craft:

د واصل کلام رموز د معرفت دی

da Wasil kalām remūz da maʿrifat dī

Wasil's words are the symbols of knowledge of God. [3]

One of the ghazals in Rashad's booklet begins:

جهان روغ دی له سوده هم له زیانه

د باطن پرېشاني مه ګڼه اسانه

jahān rogh dī la sūda ham la ziyāna

da bāṭin pareshānī ma gaṇa asāna

The world is free of both gain and loss;

do not think the heart's inner trouble light. (translated by Pashtunxwa, for a Pashto reader to check) [2]

Further on, the poem turns to mercy and to the discipline of the soul:

د حکمت داهل زړونه رحمتي دي

قیاس که د بل عذاب له خپله ځانه

da hikmat da ahl zṛūna rahmatī dī

qiyās ka da bal ʿazāb la khpala dzāna

The hearts of the people of wisdom are full of mercy;

judge another's torment by your own. (translated by Pashtunxwa, for a Pashto reader to check) [2]

تل داوسپنو له زنګ ملاحظه شي

که هر څو اصلي جوهر لري له کانه

tal da aspano la zang mulāhiza shī

ka har tso aslī jawhar larī la kāna

Iron is always watched for rust,

however fine the true metal it has from the mine. (translated by Pashtunxwa, for a Pashto reader to check) [2]

The whole ghazal is in the poetry section of the site.

What remains uncertain

Rashad doubts that a Persian Diwan-i Wasil, held in a Tashkent library and copied by Khizr Khan in 1096 AH, is by this Wasil. The catalogue calls its author an Indian poet who wrote in Persian, and Rashad says the question needs more study. [2] Of Wasil's life nothing else can be given: no tribe, no place, no teacher and no death. Rashad's booklet is the main source for the poems, and what Hewadmal calls the printed diwan has not been compared with it here.