Ghilzai

The Makhzan-i Afghani, compiled in 1609–11, tells the story that most Ghilzai genealogies follow. Bibi Matu, daughter of Shaikh Bitan, became pregnant by Shah Husain, a fugitive who said his ancestors had been princes of Ghor. A messenger confirmed his descent, and the two were married. Their first son was called Ghilzye because he was "the fruit of a clandestine amour": ghal means thief in Pashto, and zoy a son. The Makhzan gives Ghilzai three sons, Ibrahim, Toor and Poor. The Khulasat al-Ansab gives Ibrahim, Turani and Bular, and Encyclopaedia Iranica, following the Gazetteer of Afghanistan, two: Borhan (also called Ibrahim), ancestor of the eastern Ghilzai, and Turan, ancestor of the western. Rose records that the official spelling at Kabul and Kandahar was Ghaleji.

A second line of argument, found in Ibbetson and Bellew and in part in Caroe, makes the Ghilzai Turkish in origin, from the Khalaj known near Ghazni and Kandahar in the tenth century, or from the Hephthalites. Ibbetson calls the Ghilzai "probably of mixed Turkish and Persian extraction". M. J. Hanifi, writing in Iranica in 2001, rejects this: the Ghilzai speak Pashto and share no known cultural or linguistic features with the Khalaj, and there is no systematic evidence for the link. The first historical mention of the Ghilzai is in the Baburnama, in the early sixteenth century.^1,2,4,6,8

Elphinstone described the Ghilzai country in 1815 as a block about 180 miles long and 85 miles wide, running from the Kandahar country north-east past Ghazni to both banks of the Kabul river as far as the heights above Jalalabad, with the Sulaiman range on the east. Iranica gives the same area in modern terms: between the Durand Line and a line from Kandahar through Ghazni to Kabul, and east to Jalalabad. After the rising of the 1880s the Afghan government forced many Ghilzai to settle in the north of the country.

Elphinstone divides the Ghilzai into Turan and Burhan and eight clans. To Turan belong the Hotak, who gave the Ghilzai their kings, and the Tokhi, who gave their viziers. To Burhan belong the Sulaiman Khel, much the largest, the Ali Khel, Sahak, Andar and Taraki; he was told that even the Ghilzai disagreed over whether the Kharoti were Turan or Burhan. The Makhzan instead puts Taraki and Andar under Toor, and Iranica places the Kharoti in the west. Elphinstone found that the western Ghilzai lived much like their Durrani neighbours, while the eastern clans had weak chiefs and lived in small, largely self-governing village communities.^3,1,4,5

Iranica dates the long rivalry between the Ghilzai and the Abdali (later Durrani) to the Safavid and Mughal contest for Kandahar, when the Abdali generally supported Persia and the Ghilzai opposed it. In 1709 the Hotak chief Mir Wais took Kandahar from its Safavid governor. His son Mahmud captured Isfahan in 1722, and Hotak rulers held Persia until 1729 and Kandahar until Nadir Shah took it in 1738 and deported many Ghilzai to Mazandaran. Elphinstone adds that Azad Khan of the Sulaiman Khel later set himself up as a claimant to the Persian throne against Karim Khan Zand.

From 1747 the throne was held by Durrani families. Iranica lists large Ghilzai risings in 1801, 1803, 1839–42 and 1886. Elphinstone describes the first: in 1801 the Ghilzai chiefs offered the crown to Abdur Rahim Khan Hotak, and after defeats near Kabul in November 1801 and in March 1802, their last force was beaten at Mulla Shadi on 11 May 1802. In the First Anglo-Afghan War the Jabar Khel, a Sulaiman Khel clan, inflicted the heaviest losses on the British army retreating from Kabul to Jalalabad in the winter of 1842.^4,7,9,3

Ibbetson wrote that nearly all the warrior-trader tribes known as pawindahs belonged to the Ghilzai and the Lodi. Each autumn they gathered with their families, flocks and camels on the plains east of Ghazni and marched in large caravans through the Kakar and Wazir country to the Gomal and Zhob passes. They left their families and herds in the grazing grounds on both sides of the Indus in Dera Ismail Khan district and took their goods on to Multan, Lahore, Delhi and as far as Patna. In spring they returned to the hills around Ghazni and Kalat-i Ghilzai, and in summer carried Indian and European goods to Kandahar, Herat and Bukhara. The Imperial Gazetteer of 1908 names the Dotani, Sulaiman Khel, Nasir and Kharoti among the Ghilzai who used the Gomal route.^10,11

In 1929 the Ahmadzai supported Muhammad Nadir when he took Kabul and declared himself king. The revolution of 1978 ended Durrani rule, and three of the four presidents who followed were Ghilzai: Nur Muhammad Taraki of the Taraki, Hafizullah Amin of the Kharoti and Najibullah of the Ahmadzai. Iranica, writing in 2001, also notes that Ghilzai were prominent in the leadership of the Taliban movement, which then held most of Afghanistan.⁴