Two versions of Ni‘matallah Haravi’s book on the history of Afghans

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St. Petersburg State University

Two Versions of Ni`matallah Haravi's Book on the History of Afghans

M.S. Pelevin

St. Petersburg, Russian Federation

Abstract

The book by Ni'matallah Haravi, the Mughal chronicler of the early seventeenth century, was the first and the only attempt to recount the entire history of Afghans (Pashtuns) in the vein of Persian medieval historiography. The text of the book has survived in two versions which strongly vary in its content, volume and structure. An opinion prevails that the book's extended version (Tarlkh-i Khanjahanl va Makhzan-i Afghani) is the original author's edition, while its smaller variant (Makhzan-i Afghani) is a later revised edition, probably compiled by another person. The article offers a correction of this view through the rereading of the author's introduction and afterword to the book, and the analysis of the work's structure and occasional editorial remarks. It is very likely that the book's extant versions were different editions of its first preliminary variant (1610-1611) which bore the title Makhzan-i Afghani (“The Afghan Treasury”) and contained mainly mythologized stories about Afghans' poorly known origins and remote past. The book's extended version (1612-1615), supplemented with data from authoritative written sources on the history of the Afghans in North India in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern times, was bound to meet the standards of professional historiographical literature. Besides, this version was supposed to gain official endorsement of the book's dedicatee, the Afghan general Khanjahan Lodi, whose name appeared in its title (Tarlkh-i Khanjahanl). An unknown compiler of the third edition, which was translated into Pashto in the beginning of the eighteenth century, took as a basis the original short variant of the book, having added to it selected material from the extended second edition.

Keywords: Pashtuns, Pashtun history, Persian historiography, Mughal India, Ni'matallah Haravi,

Аннотация

Две версии книги Ни'маталлаха Харави по истории афганцев

М. С. Пелевин

Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет,

Российская Федерация, Санкт-Петербург

Книга Ни'маталлаха Харави, могольского хрониста начала XVII в., была первой и фактически единственной попыткой изложить общую историю афганцев (пашут- нов) в традициях персидской средневековой историографии. Текст книги сохранился в двух версиях, существенно различающихся объемом и структурой содержания. В настоящее время преобладает мнение о том, что расширенная версия («Тарих-и ханджа- хани ва махзан-и афгани») является оригинальной авторской, а меньшая по объему («Махзан-и афгани») -- ее сокращение, сделанное позднее, возможно, не самим автором. В статье предлагается корректировка этого мнения на основе нового прочтения предисловия и заключения к книге, а также анализа структуры сочинения и имеющихся в его тексте редакционных ремарок. Есть основания считать, что две сохранившиеся версии книги были разными редакциями ее первого варианта (1610-1611 гг.), носившего название «Махзан-и афгани» («Афганская сокровищница») и включавшего в себя в основном мифологизованные сведения о древнем происхождении афганцев и малоизвестном раннем периоде их истории. В расширенной редакции 1612-1615 гг. книга была приближена к стандартам профессиональной историографической литературы посредством добавления компилятивных документальных материалов из авторитетных источников по истории афганцев в Северной Индии c середины XV в. Кроме того, книга была авторизована посвящением афганскому генералу Ханджахану Лоди, чье имя отразилось в ее названии («История Ханджахана...»). Автор третьей редакции книги, переведенной в начале XVIII в. на язык пашто, очевидно, вернулся к ее первоначальному варианту, дополнив его некоторыми материалами из второй редакции. Ключевые слова: история афганцев, персидская историография, могольская Индия, Ни'маталлах Харави, текстология, функциональность текста.

The Author and His Literary Work

Ni'matallah Haravi, the Mughal chronicler of the early seventeenth century was the first and the only author who attempted to recount the history of Afghans (Pashtuns) in line with Persian medieval historiography. His book is based on materials of various origins and represents a compilation of heterogeneous texts lacking conceptual integrity. This partly explains significant textual discrepancies between the survived manuscripts of the book. From a textological point of view, any complements and interpolations, as well as numerous local discrepancies, including varying wordings and spellings of proper names, minor omissions and insertions, are less important than the mere fact that Ni'ma- tallah's book has two different versions.

These versions diverge considerably from each other by their volume and content structure. At present, the prevailing opinion is that the extended version represents the original author's text, while the short version is its abridged variant made later, possibly by another person [1]. In the book's manuscripts, the full title of its extended version appears to be Tarikh-i Khanjahani va Makhzan-i Afghani. The short version is known as Makhzan-i Afghani. The question of why Ni'matallah's book circulated in two different versions remains open. It is noteworthy that in the “History of India” by Elliot and Dowson Makhzan-i Afghani is conversely identified as the original, while Tarikh-i Khan- jahani -- as its subsequent extended version, but this opinion is not supported by arguments [2, p. 67-71].

Ni'matallah's book was introduced into scientific discourse in the first half of the nineteenth century by Bernhard Dorn, who translated into English its short version upon the manuscript of 1718 from the library of the Royal Asiatic Society [3]. For his detailed commentaries Dorn also used the texts of the extended version from the manuscripts currently kept in the British Library and the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford. On the correlation between the book's two versions Dorn remarked rather discreetly, “It (the short version. -- M. P.) bears the title of “Makhzen Afghani;” and appears to be a different and, in some parts, abridged edition of the original work of Neamet Ullah” [3 (1), p. ix]. Dorn's publication is still used by scholars as the primary source of information about the content of Ni'matallah's work (cf. [4; 5]).

The complete critical text of the book's extended version with all supplements and appendices was published in 1960-1962 by S. M. Imamuddin [6]. This publication was based on four manuscripts from Indian libraries, dated 1629, 1679, 1717 and 1724. The original Persian text of Tarikh-i Khanjahani is accompanied here by the study of the history of Ni'matallah's work, a meticulous comparative description of its two versions and a brief narration of the content of all its parts. While in the foreword Imamuddin speaks of Makhzan-i Afghani as of an abridged author's edition, he concludes in the study that Makhzan is the product of editorship of “an unknown compiler” of a more recent period [7, p. viii-ix, 14-17].

In his study, Imamuddin collected from the available catalogues the data on more than thirty manuscripts of the book's both versions. Of these, six copies of the full version and a copy of the short one go back to the seventeenth century. The earliest copy of the full version from the Rampur Raza Library is dated 1629; the seventeenth century manuscript of the short version from the British Library dates from 1670 (cf. [8 (1), p. 210-212; 8 (3), p. 903-904]). For various reasons, the original text of Tarikh-i Khanjahani published by Imamuddin has been referenced less often than the English translation of Makhzan-i Afghani by B. Dorn. A rare example of an inquiry into the original content of Tarikh-i Khanjahani is N. Green's survey of a selected hagiographical material from this book [9; 10, p. 183-197].

Little is known about the author of Tarikh-i Khanjahani va Makhzan-i Afghani; the only facts are those he mentioned about himself in the foreword and other parts of his book. Ni'matallah was born into the family of Khvaja Habiballah Haravi, an official in the administration of state landholdings (khalisa) under the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1605). In 1576, Ni'matallah was registered as a librarian with `Abd al-Rahim Khan-i Khanan (1556-1627), a major officer from Akbar's entourage. Apparently, at that time he met and closely communicated with the Afghan sheikh Bustan Barich (Barets) (d. ca. 1593/94). In his book, Ni`matallah reports in passing that he spent about a year and a half in communication with this sheikh and even traveled with him to Goa. A particularly interesting fact told by Ni`matallah is that “sometimes [the sheikh] recited Pashto verses in such a sad and dolorous voice that could have made a stone cry” [6 (2), p. 744; 3 (2), p. 14]. Thus, it can be assumed that his interest in the Pashtun culture emerged long before writing a book about their history.

Around 1597/98, he entered the service of the future Emperor Jahangir (r. 1605-1628) as a chronicler and secretary (vaqi 'anavis), but was dismissed for some unknown reason in 1608/09. After 1609, Ni`matallah was at service (apparently in the same position) with Khanjahan Lodi (ca. 1587-1631), the Mughal General of Pashtun origin, with whom he took part in a military campaign in Deccan against the rebel governor Malik `Anbar (cf. [11, p. 502-506]). During this campaign, launched in January 1610, Ni`matallah involuntarily found himself among the Pashtuns who also served Khanjahan Lodi. In his book, he mentions about communicating with another Afghan sheikh named Ahmad Shun, who had been imprisoned earlier by Jahangir for contempt of the Emperor's power, but was released at Khanjahan's pleading. Ni`matallah tells that the sheikh always carried prison shackles with him and put them under his head during sleep [6 (2), p. 810-811]. According to Ni`matallah, his close friend Haybat Khan Kakar, a subordinate of Khanjahan Lodi, was the one who convinced him to write a book on the history of Afghans. The final version of the book appeared in early 1613, but then it was updated several times. The date of last addition, July 01, 1615, is also the last known date of Ni`matallah's biography.

The book by Ni`matallah Haravi had an obvious ideological understatement. First, it was intended to prove that the Pashtun people had ancient history, allegedly going back to pre-Islamic epoch. Second, it emphasized the ancientness of Pashtuns' Islamic traditions by tracing them back as far as to the times of the Prophet Muhammad. Third, the book aimed at highlighting the military and political successes of the Lodis (1451-1526) and the Suris (1540-1555), two Afghan dynasties (and the related Pashtun tribes) who had ruled the Delhi Sultanate almost a hundred years. Since Ni`matallah's book was formally ordered by a top-rank representative of the Lodi tribe, it could be perceived as a document legitimizing the power claims of the Pashtun elite in North India.

Discrepancies in the Foreword

Following the tradition, Ni`matallah relates in the foreword the story of writing his book [3 (1), p. 1-4; 6 (1), p. 1-9]. In both versions, the texts of the forewords coincide completely in the part where the author explains extensively (and somewhat pretentiously) the reasons that incited him to write the history of Afghans. He states that the main reason was the absence of other books and reliable knowledge about the origin of Afghans and their history before the Lodi dynasty came to power in the Delhi Sultanate, “In no book or chronicle it has been written anything about the meritorious deeds of the Afghan people (guruh-i afghaniya) amply and minutely, as befits”; “Until the reign of Sultan Lodi, no one of this people ever became a ruler (farmanravan) nor acquired the royal power (saltanat)” [6 (1), p. 3-4]. Further, Ni'matallah lists the works on the rule of the Lodi and Suri dynasties in India, emphasizing once again that none of the books has information about the antecedent history of Afghans.

Thus, he separates his own original “research” part of the book outlining the mythologized ancient history of Afghans from the compilative part, where the events in the Delhi Sultanate under the reign of two Afghan dynasties are described upon the available Persian sources.

The same fragment of the foreword contains a short passage, which appears to be a later insertion, for its content deviates slightly from the narration logic. After the words that Afghans had lived in their “mountain gorges and deserts” since the time of Musa (bibl. Moses) and Bakhtnasr (bibl. Nebuchadnezzar), the phrase follows that they had no knowledge other than “laws of Islam” (shara 'i '-i islam), and that holy men and spiritual mentors (fuqara '-i sahib-i vilayat va arbab-i hidayat), about whom the author is going to tell in the afterword (khatima) to his book, always resided among this people, assiduously defending the Islamic faith. This inserted remark is continued by the interrupted explaining that the history of Afghans, both in the time of King Talut (bibl. Saul), from whom they supposedly originate, and in the early days of Islam, remains unknown. The remark indicates that the foreword to the book was edited after introducing amendments to its content and structure.

The succeeding fragments in the forewords to the full and short versions reveal important discrepancies. The full version states that in 1018 A. H. (1609/10) Ni'matallah entered the service of Khanjahan Lodi and during the campaign (safar) in Deccan he became closely acquainted with Haybat Khan Kakar, who encouraged him to write a book about Afghans. Then the author indicates the place and exact date of starting work on the draft (taswtd) of his book: the city of Malkapur (present-day Indian state of Maharashtra), zu 'l-hijja 20, 1020 A. H. (February 23, 1612). The date is followed by a short list of books on general history. It begins with the canonical “History” by Tabari (d. 923) and ends with the lesser known work Ma 'dan-i akhbar-i Ahmadt by Ahmad b. Bahbal Kanbu, which is described as the best in its genre (majma' at-tavartkh) and the main reference source for Ni'matallah. Besides, this work is dated the same 1020 A. H. (1611/12), though some of its manuscripts indicate other years -- 1021, 1022 and 1023 A. H. (1612-1615) [8 (3), p. 888]. This complimentary note about Ahmad b. Bahbal's work is likely a later insert made in 1615 together with additions to the biography of Khanjahan Lodi. The last passage in the introduction to the full version (preceding the table of contents) is a brief praise of Khan- jahan. The purpose of the book (gharaz az ta 'ltf va tasntf-i tn tartkh) is defined here as a “description of his (Khanjahans) merits and worthy deeds”. The book title is worded as Tartkh-i Khanjahant va Makhzan-i Afghani.

The respective fragments in the foreword to the short version bear indication of 1018 A. H. as the year of starting the work on its compilation under the patronage of

Khanjahan Lodi. Obviously, it refers to 1610, when the military campaign in Deccan was launched and Ni'matallah met with Haybat Khan Kakar. It is also said here that Haybat Khan not only initiated writing the book, but also provided its author, Ni'matallah, with the required materials he had already collected, i.e. systemized genealogies of the Pash- tun tribes [3 (1), p. 3]. Such statement is missing in the full version. The work Ma 'dan-i akhbar-i Ahmadi by Ahmad Kanbu is mentioned in the foreword to the short version with the similar date (1020 A. H.) and the same high evaluation, but the passage praising Khanjahan Lodi is fully absent. The book is entitled Makhzan-i Afghani.

In both versions, the foreword ends with the table of contents. In the full version, it includes an introduction (muqaddima), seven chapters (bab) and a conclusion (khatima); in the short one -- three chapters (bab) and three fascicles (daftar). The short version also contains conclusion (khatima), but for some reason it is not mentioned in the table of contents in known copies. A comparison of forewords see in Table 1.

Table 1. Comparison of forewords

Structural Discrepancies

The full version of the book has a short afterword with an authorial colophon, missing in the short version. The first passage in the afterword contains a prayer to God with a plea for mercy on the Judgment Day for Ni`matallah, “responsible for compiling this work” (mutasaddi-yi jam '-i in ta If), and Haybat Khan Kakar, “the cause of writing this History” (ba'is-i tahrir-i/ta'lif-i in tarikh) [6 (2), p. 831]. Earlier, in the book's hagiog- raphic section, Haybat Khan was already mentioned with a similar epithet, “the cause of compiling the draft of this History” (ba 'is-i tasvid-i in tarikh) [6 (2), p. 828].

In one of the manuscripts, used by S. M. Imamuddin, the book title is worded as Tarikh-i Khanjahani al-mushtahar Makhzan-i Afghani [6 (2), p. 832]. The prayer is followed by a chronogram in verse (qit'a) with the date of book completion, zu 1-hijja 10, 1021 A. H. (February 01, 1613). The chronogram is composed of four distiches, but in some copies eleven more distiches praising Khanjahan Lodi are added. The colophon reads that “the draft of this work, final writing and editing of this History” (tasvid-i in ta lif va tahrir-i avakhir va tashih-i in tarikh) were done in the shikasta script by Ni`matallah in the city of Burhanpur (present-day Indian state of Madhya Pradesh) [6 (2), p. 833].

Most early manuscripts of the full version, starting with the Rampur copy of 1629, contain two appendices (zamima) next to the author's afterword. The first narrates the family history (silsila-yi ansab) of Haybat Khan Kakar after his ancestors migrated to India at the time of Sultan Bahlul Lodi (r. 1451-1489). A semi-legendary family tree, given at the end of the appendix, includes the names of Haybat Khan's four sons. It appears from the text of this appendix that it was authored by Haybat Khan himself, who, according to his words, wished to preserve the glorious history of the ancestors for future generations [6 (2), p. 883-889; 3 (2), p. iv-viii]. In some manuscripts, this appendix concludes with a phrase about the completion of the book, which in a copy of 1679 is entitled Kanz al-Afghani (“Afghan Treasure”), an obvious variation of Makhzan-i Afghani (“Afghan Treasury”).

The second appendix is a collection of hagiographic stories about the sheikh Yahya Bakhtiyar (Khvaja Yahya Kabir, d. 1430). The largest narrative in the book's hagiographic section, i.e. in the conclusion of Tarikh-i Khanjahani and in the third fascicle of Makhzan-i Afghani, is also dedicated to this sheikh. The appendix contains stories that are absent from the main body of Tarikh-i Khanjahani, though some of them are present in the sheikh's hagiography in Makhzan-i Afghani, which in its turn lacks many other stories available in the book's full version. This suggests that the appendix in Tarikh-i Khanjahani is a draft of Yahya Bakhtiyar's hagiography, differently used in two versions of the book.

Textological analysis of Ni`matallah's book is largely complicated by the fact that copies of the short version contain a postscript at the end of the second fascicle, which recounts the story of the Suri dynasty and the subsequent struggle of Afghan generals with the Mughals during the reign of the emperors Akbar and Jahangir (up to 1612). In John Dowson's translation this passage runs as follows: “The original author of this Tarikh-i Sher Shahi is `Abbas Sarwani. But as this work is deficient in some particulars, such as the affairs of Baz Bahadur, the memoirs of the Kiranis and Lohanis, and in some other matters, the history was incomplete. So in these days the humble servant Ibrahim Batni has made extracts from the Tarikh-i Nizami, which also contains the history of Sher Shah and Islam Shah, and he has selected sundry matters from the Makhzan-i Afghani, written by Ni`matallah, and having introduced them into this history, has made it complete” [2, p. 68; cf. 3 (1), p. 184; 7, p. 12].

It implies that this postscript was related to another work, viz. to an edition of Tartkh-i Shtrshaht (originally Tuhfat-i Akbarshaht) by `Abbas Sarvani (ca. 1580) [8 (1), p. 242-243; 12, p. 301-304]. A certain Ibrahim Batni (Bitani), while editing this work after 1612, made additions to it from the fundamental historiographical work Tabaqat-i Akbarshaht by Nizam al-Din Ahmad (1593), also widely known as Tartkh-i Nizamt, and Ni`matallah's Makhzan-i Afghani. The presence of Ibrahim Bitani's remark in all copies of Makhzan-i Afghani, i.e. in its protograph, can hardly be explained by an accidental mistake (cf. [2, p. 69]). Perhaps, the second fascicle of Makhzan has reached us not in its original version, but as `Abbas Sarvani's work revised by Ibrahim Bitani. It is unclear, why this substitution occurred, but it is noteworthy that the most significant textual differences between the short and full versions of Ni`matallah's book are observed exactly in this section [7, p. 1516, 25]. It should be noted also that the respective part (chapter 4) in the full version is based on the same sources, Tartkh-i Shlrshahl and Tabaqat-i Akbarshaht, but here Nizam al-Din's work is apparently the core source, while the same part in the short version (fascicle 2) is based primarily on `Abbas Sarvani's work, as evidenced by the postscript.

Structural correlations between the short and full versions are shown in Table 2. tradition essay editorial remark

Table 2. Structural correlations between the short and full versions

Commentary on Discrepancies

The foreword to the book, despite textual differences in its two versions, allows for an unambiguous conclusion that initially the author's primary goal was to provide information on the origin of Afghans and their history before the Lodi dynasty came to power in India in the mid-fifteenth century. According to the author, no written works on the early history of the Afghan people existed in his time and his objective was to fill this gap. The outcome of the author's innovative “research” on this topic is offered in three chapters (bab) of the short version, Makhzan-i Afghani. For obscure reasons, the first chapter in the full version, Tarikh-i Khanjahani, is defined as “introduction” (muqaddima), albeit the foreword (dibacha) is also present in the book.

When listing the writings on the history of the Afghan ruling dynasties in India, the author does not directly relate them as his sources (“reference literature”), but mentions merely as books already written on this topic. This list includes three well-known works, Tabaqat-i Akbarshahi (Tarikh-i Nizami, 1593) by Nizam al-Din Ahmad, Tarikh-i Shir- shahi (ca. 1580) by `Abbas Sarvani, Vaqi 'at-i mushtaqi (1581) by Rizqallah, and one lesser known, Tarikh-i Sultan Ibrahim by Mahmud Katvani. At the end of the list, Ni`matallah emphasizes once again that these books do not contain information about the origin of Afghans (sharh-i ansab va silsila-yi in ta 'ifa).

Quite oppositely, works on general history, including Tarikh-i Tabari (922/23), Guzi- da (1329/30) by Hamdallah Mustavfi, Majma' al-ansab (1342/43) by Muhammad b. `Ali Shabangarayi and others are directly named as the sources from which the author extracted (istikhraj farmuda) the information he needed.

Dedicating the book to Khanjahan Lodi is verbally expressed in the full version only -- in a short passage at the end of the foreword before the table of contents. The preceding text does not suppose this dedication to follow. Also, there is a poetic praise of Khanjahan in the afterword, artificially attached to the chronogram with the date of completing the book.

A more pronounced emphasis in both the foreword and afterword is made on the person of Haybat Khan Kakar. The idea of writing a book is repeatedly attributed to him, and in the foreword to its short version he is said to have provided Ni`matallah with materials on the Afghan genealogies and hagiographies. The hagiographic data are arranged by the genealogical principle and are recited upon the genealogies, so that their content is partially overlapped. For example, the stories about Shaykh Bayt, the legendary ancestor of the Bitani branch within Pashtun tribes, complement each other in the genealogical and hagiographic sections.

Besides, the earliest surviving manuscript of the full version already had an appendix (zamima), added undoubtedly by Haybat Khan himself. It contains Haybat Khan's family genealogy and a number of texts supplementing the hagiographic section of the book. Obviously, the protograph of this manuscript was a copy from Haybat Khan's personal library, and this copy was used for subsequent editing of the hagiographic section. As already mentioned above, the hagiographic part in the book's short version, Makhzan-i Afghani, contains stories about the sheikh Yahya Bakhtiyar from the appendix to the full version.

The exact start and finish dates of writing are given in the full version of the book, 23.02.1612 and 01.02.1613, respectively. However, in 1615 a section with information about the life and endeavors of Khanjahan Lodi in the preceding two years was added to the book. Thus, it is clear that the book was edited in 1615, and very probably this was not its final revision. Another noteworthy fact is that in the full version the first four sections (fasl) of the fourth chapter are enumerated, while the next four sections, describing military and political activities of the Afghan commanders after the Mughals came to power in India, have no numeration, as well as consistency in the narration structure. These sections relate to the events that occurred during Ni'matallah's lifetime and reflect conflicting political ideologies of the Mughal rulers and the overthrown Afghans. There is every reason to assume that these sections could have undergone certain editorial revision. In the book's short version the fourth chapter is likely to have been revised entirely.

The title of the full version seems to indicate straightforwardly that the book consists of two essays, e.i. Tarikh-i Khanjahani and (va) Makhzan-i Afghani. The existence of Makhzan-i Afghani prior to the full version is confirmed by the phrase preceding the poetic chronogram and informing that the book's title is “Tarikh-i Khanjahani, known as (al-mushtahar) Makhzan-i Afghani” The copyist of the above-mentioned earliest manuscript (1629) names it Makhzan-i Afghani (!) [7, p. 32]. One of the other early manuscripts taken by S. M. ImamuddIn as a basis for the critical edition is lacking the fifth chapter with Khanjahan Lodi's biography [7, p. 33]. In two other manuscripts (1629 and 1723/24) the fourth chapter concludes with the phrase that the author proceeds to the “draft biography” (tasvid-i jarayid-i halat) of Khanjahan Lodi [6 (1), p. 434]. Obviously, this phrase is a leftover of the draft full version. It suggests that initially the section about Khanjahan was intended not as a separate chapter, but as a continuation of the stories in the fourth chapter (the second fascicle of Makhzan-i Afghani) about the prominent Afghan military leaders of the early Mughal period. Therefore, we can assume that the full version of Ni'matallah's book was perceived by his contemporaries as Makhzan-i Afghani complemented with Tarikh-i Khanjahani, i.e. the detailed history of the life and activities of Khanjahan Lodi.

With view of the above, a prima facie odd division of the short version into three chapters (bab) and three fascicles (daftar), which in the full version are also designated as chapters, can be explained by the following reasons. The three chapters of Makhzan-i Afghani composed the first version of Ni'matallah's book which had the same title and was based on the popular Persian works on general history and some Pashtun oral traditions. These chapters contain predominantly pseudo-historical or semi-historical narratives, i.e. either entirely fictitious or mixed with historical facts. Partially or completely veritable information is related to the history of the Ghaznavids (the eleventh and twelfth centuries) and the Ghurids (the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries), as well as of the early period of the Delhi Sultanate (from the thirteenth to the first half of the fourteenth century), but this information occupies only a few pages at the end of the third chapter. These three chapters are the result of the “research” that was originally intended by the author and he clearly formulated his objectives in the foreword to the book.

The first two fascicles represent a rendering or plain compilation of texts from historical works on Muslim India and the Lodi and Suri dynasties. The third fascicle includes the hagiographies of Afghan sheikhs that for the most part also refer to the history of Muslim India, rather than Pashtun ancestral territories in the South-East Hindu Kush. The hagiographies were written with the help of Haybat Khan Kakar, who also had prepared the draft of the Afghan genealogies attached to Makhzan-i Afghani as a concluding section (khatima). As already mentioned, the content, structure and ideological concept in the genealogies and the hagiographies are much more related to each other than to other parts of the book. The genealogies and the hagiographies contain not only references to the Pashto language, but also examples of Pashto words, phrases, and even verses. Of course, it is these parts that were mentioned by Ni'matallah in the foreword to the short version of Makhzan-i Afghani as the materials provided by Haybat Khan Kakar.

Thus, the fascicles in Makhzan, unlike the chapters, incorporated compilations of mostly genuine historical data (excluding hagiographic stories of folk origin) and apparently were considered unfinished parts of the book, open for additions, corrections and other editing. Probably, this is why they were called fascicles, rather than chapters.

Conclusion: A Hypothesized History of the Text

Few remarks in Ni'matallah Haravi 's book suggest that for many years the author maintained close contacts with Indo-Afghans of various social strata and showed persistent interest in their history and culture. Somewhere in the 1580s, for example,, he regularly communicated with the Afghan sheikh Bustan Barets, from whom he heard poems in Pashto. When Ni'matallah entered the service of the Afghan general Khanjahan Lodi in 1609, he was already familiar with books on the history of the Afghan rulers of India. In 1610, Ni'matallah befriended Haybat Khan Kakar, an educated Pashtun from Khan- jahan's entourage. Haybat Khan induced Ni'matallah to write a book on the history of Afghans before the rise of the Lodi dynasty in the mid-fifteenth century and supplied him with notes on Afghan genealogies and legends about his people's past. It followed from these records that the turn of the eleventh and the twelfth centuries was the lowermost chronological borderline of the historical data stored in the collective memory of Afghans in the early seventeenth century. The genealogies indicate that the legendary Qays 'Abd al-Rashid Pathan, a common ancestor of the Afghans, could live no earlier than in the first half of the twelfth century, i.e. only several decades before the Delhi Sultanate was established in the beginning of the thirteenth century. However, it is very likely that fantastic stories about the Afghans' descent from the Israeli patriarchs Talut (bibl. Saul) and Ya'qub (bibl. Jacob) had circulated among Indo-Afghans already in the Lodi times.

For various reasons, primarily ideological, but probably also related to personal ambitions of a mediocre court chronicler, Ni'matallah agrees to write a groundbreaking book about the ancient origin of Afghans, their pre-Islamic history and their adoption of Islam in the time of the Prophet Muhammad. Relying on canonical Muslim works on general history and the stories heard from of his Afghans friends, Ni'matallah actually builds a myth, shaping it in the traditional format of a historiographical composition. He writes this work in 1610-1611 with the help of Hayb at Khan Kakar and gives it a self-explanatory title Makhzan-i Afghani (“Afghan Treasury”). The first version of this book supposedly included only three chapters, corresponding to three babs in the extant version of Makhzan, and an appendix with the Pashtun tribes' genealogies compiled by Haybat Khan Kakar.

This unprecedented book immediately became popular among the Indian Afghans. To reach a broader readership as a professional historiographical work, rather than a fascinating home reading for educated people only, Ni'matallah's book needed an endorsement by a high-ranking government official and a full adjustment to the standards of the Mughal historiographical literature. In February 1612, having secured the patronage of Khanjahan Lodi, Ni'matallah started his work on the extended version of the book. A year later, this work resulted in a book entitled Tarikh-i Khanjahani va Makhzan-i Afghani. The mythical part of the Afghan history received a documentary complement based on a compilation of well-known and authoritative works, primarily Tabaqat-i Akbarshahi by Nizam al-Din. To get it endorsed, the book was supplemented with a dedication to Khanjahan Lodi and a special chapter on his life and activities, while to avoid adverse political consequences a chapter on the ruling emperor Jahangir was also added. The somewhat illogical structure of Tarikh-i Khanjahani va Makhzan-i Afghani nevertheless clearly reflects the sequence of introduced changes. The last written part was the hagiography of Afghan sheikhs based upon Haybat Khan's materials. Hagiographic part, in no way related to the historiography genre, was placed in the appendix (conclusion) instead of the genealogies, which made the sixth chapter, and the respective explanatory remark was inserted into the foreword. In addition, Haybat Khan included in his personal copy an appendix with the genealogy of his own family and a collection of stories about the much revered sheikh Yahya Bakhtiyar omitted from the hagiography section.

The official version of the book, titled Tarikh-i Khanjahani, did not entirely replace its earlier draft, Makhzan-i Afghani. By the time Tarikh-i Khanjahani appeared, Makhzan-i Afghani copies had apparently spread among Indo-Afghans far beyond Khanjahan Lodi's circle. It is not unlikely that this first variant of Makhzan-i Afghani became quickly known among the Pashtun tribes living in their ancestral lands to the west of the Indus.

Needless to say that the Afghans were primarily interested in their own history. A “ceremonial” version of the popular book under the new confusing title with a detailed biography of the general, whose subsequent career was not very successful, and a totally out of place narrative about the ruling Mughal emperor could only attract bibliophiles from the Indo-Afghan elite. However, this “ceremonial” version also contained materials of great importance for the history of Afghans, viz. the narratives about the Afghan rulers of India and the Afghan spiritual guides. The respective sections of Tarikh-i Khanjahani were added then to the book's first version, Makhzan-i Afghani, as additional chapters -- fascicles, which later were subjected to editorship, as evidenced by the occasionally preserved postscript at the end of the second fascicle made by a certain Ibrahim Bitani. We do not know exactly who (and when) made this new revision of Makhzan-i Afghani upon its extended “ceremonial” version. This could be done either by Ni'matallah, or Haybat Khan Kakar, or anybody else from their inner circle who had all the necessary manuscripts at his disposal. In any case, Ni'matallah's book continued its life in two independent versions, the second and third editions.

For obvious reasons, it was the third edition of the book that became most widespread among educated Pashtuns in tribal areas. And it is this edition that was translated into Pashto in the second decade of the eighteenth century by Afzal Khan Khatak (1665/66-1740/41) who preserved its “odd” division into chapters and fascicles. In the foreword to his translation, Afzal Khan says: “During a long time an idea repeatedly came to my mind to translate one book from the Persian language into Pashto so that Pashtuns might read it easily. I thought that no any [book on] history did exist in the language of this people. And I translated from Persian the book on the history of Pashtun kings which Ni'matallah Haravi had written in the times of Padishah Jahangir under the order of Khanjahan Lodi, known as Farzand Khan” [13, p. 14-15]. Translation of Ni'matallah's book into Pashto has unequivocally underpinned its importance for Pashtuns as the most authoritative written source, testifying to the deep antiquity of their origin and primordial belonging to the Islamic religious tradition. Enclosed in the historiographical work of the early seventeenth century, this largely mythical concept provided and still provides a great impact on the ethnic consciousness of the Pashtun people.

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