Khyber Literary

Literary Heritage of Khyber; Past and Present
Professor Dr. Qabil Khan Afridi
A UGC research project submitted to the University of Peshawar

25 April 1998
Reproduced at Khyber.ORG from Author’s Homepage

drqabilkhan.com
2
1
Prof. Dr. Qabil Khan Afridi is ex-chairman,

Department of English and Modern European
Languages, University of Peshawar. The author at
present heads the Department of English Language
& Literature and has repeatedly acted as Dean,
Faculty of Languages and Literature (FLL),
International Islamic University, Islamabad. Born in
Khyber Agency, he was educated at Islamia College
and the University of Peshawar. Beginning his career
as lecturer in English at Islamia College, he retired
as Chairman at Department of English, University of
Peshawar. In the mean time, he also worked ona
Pashto-English dictionary at both Pashto Academy
Peshawar and the University of Pennsylvania, USA.
The dictionary was a USG project. Having published
“Sifgint the Sands of Sahara”, an english translation
of a modern Pashto novel, this Literary Heritage of
Khyber is his second book. At present, he renders
Pashto romances in English and also tries to shape
up a concise history of Pashto literature in English.
Introduction
When I was faced with the prospect of taking up a research project in Liter-
ature my instant and natural reaction was to investigate the literary heritage
of Khyber. Khyber is my native land and my home and the milk of Khy-
ber still circulates in my veins , although I have turned my back on it, as
it were, for the last about twenty years, to have settled in Peshawar. But
this physical migration has hardly affected my spiritual attachment to Khy-
ber, and I have always felt strongly drown towards it by the ties of strong
tribal instincts, which I feel to be my second if not the first nature. The
occasional social events of births and deaths take me back to my ancestral
village, in the lap of the bleak but imposing mountains, on the Khyber high-
way, near Landi Kotal, the focal point of the Khyber pass. I still mingle
and rub shoulders with my villagers and cousins, without the least hint of
alienation, although life has put us on divergent paths on the road for sur-
vival . I still slip back into their idiom with delightful ease, and to articulate
their distinctive dialect is a real pleasure. And with this I am once again
a part and parcel of their social paradigm. Their culture is also rich in lit-
erature. I was associated with the Khyber School of literature right from
my school days, back in the fifties. What if not a poet or writer myself, I
attended their literary gatherings with religious regularity. It was back in
the heady days of the nineteen-thirties, long before I was even born, that
a group of local poets and writers agreed to be meeting on regular basis,
in a tea shop of the then Landi Kotal Sarai, to be listening to the fresh
kalam of each other. (this brings to mind the London coffee House literary
gatherings of the eighteenth century writers like Addison, steel, Dr. Johnson
and Goldsmith). The moving spirit behind the formation of this group was
Amir Hamza Khan Shinwari, by then a recognized poet, playwright, prose
writer and a Pir of sorts. The other poets or writers of this group were Malik
Saida Khan Shinwari, Akram Farooq, Basir Shinwari and Haji Maruf Khan.
2
3
These are now being looked upon as the founding fathers of the Khyber
Literary Movement. They started holding proper Mushairas at Landi Kotal
or at each others villages. Apart from providing ample entertainment and
intellectual and aesthetic awareness, these Mushairas attracted a younger
generation of poets and writers like Lal Zada Nazer Shinwari, Abdul Akbar
Shinwari, Shahzad Khan Jauhar and Muhammad Umar Seemab Shinwari.
They used to hold occasional literary sessions or Mushairas, with sometimes
writing poetry an a given line ( Tarhi Mushaira). By 1953, the literary
consciousness was awakened to the extent to organize a permanent literary
circle called Da Khyber Adabi Jarga, under the patronage of Ostad Hamza
Shinwari. Nazer Shinwari and Murad Shinwari were selected as its president
and General Secretary respectively. With this was usheres in a golden period
of Khyber literature, when this literature was given due recognition outside
Khyber also. Its reverberations soon were heard all over Pakhtoonkhwa or
from the Indus to the Oxus. The Jarga held regular weekly sessions of crit-
icism, apart from occasionally organizing grand Mushairas to which poets
were also invited from all over Pakhtoonkhwa. Among the younger gen-
eration of poets and writers who were inspired and groomed by the Jarga
were: Amir Muhammad Saghir Afridi, Noor Muhammad Zigar Afridi, Azam
Shinwari, Khatir Afridi, Khyber Afridi, Sadbar Shinwari, Ahmadzai, Qasir
Afridi, Mir Ahmad Akhtar Afridi, Syed Insha, Maulana Muhammad and
Ashur Khan. Out of these, Murad Shinwari and Saghir Afridi also wrote
prose, particularly short stories and essays. Yet a third generation of writers
of the Ulasi Adabi Jarga was fast coming up. They included; Abdul Qayum
Kausar Afridi, Zabita Khan Afridi, Munir Khan Afridi, Ihsan Zaheer Afridi,
Shakir Shinwari and Miskin. From time to time proper elections of for the
cabinet of the Jarga were held. With the passage of time the membership
of the Jarga also swelled to a fairly large number of poets and writers. Its
written constitution was passed from the General Body, held in 1986. The
constitution was further amended in 1996 and elections were held which ap-
proved the following cabinet:When I was faced with the prospect of taking
up a research project in Literature my instant and natural reaction was to
investigate the literary heritage of Khyber. Khyber is my native land and my
home and the milk of Khyber still circulates in my veins , although I have
turned my back on it, as it were, for the last about twenty years, to have
settled in Peshawar. But this physical migration has hardly affected my spir-
itual attachment to Khyber, and I have always felt strongly drown towards
it by the ties of strong tribal instincts, which I feel to be my second if not
4
the first nature. The occasional social events of births and deaths take me
back to my ancestral village, in the lap of the bleak but imposing mountains,
on the Khyber highway, near Landi Kotal, the focal point of the Khyber
pass. I still mingle and rub shoulders with my villagers and cousins, without
the least hint of alienation, although life has put us on divergent paths on
the road for survival . I still slip back into their idiom with delightful ease,
and to articulate their distinctive dialect is a real pleasure. And with this I
am once again a part and parcel of their social paradigm. Their culture is
also rich in literature. I was associated with the Khyber School of literature
right from my school days, back in the fifties. What if not a poet or writer
myself, I attended their literary gatherings with religious regularity. It was
back in the heady days of the nineteen-thirties, long before I was even born,
that a group of local poets and writers agreed to be meeting on regular ba-
sis, in a tea shop of the then Landi Kotal Sarai, to be listening to the fresh
kalam of each other. (this brings to mind the London coffee House literary
gatherings of the eighteenth century writers like Addison, steel, Dr. Johnson
and Goldsmith). The moving spirit behind the formation of this group was
Amir Hamza Khan Shinwari, by then a recognized poet, playwright, prose
writer and a Pir of sorts. The other poets or writers of this group were Malik
Saida Khan Shinwari, Akram Farooq, Basir Shinwari and Haji Maruf Khan.
These are now being looked upon as the founding fathers of the Khyber
Literary Movement. They started holding proper Mushairas at Landi Kotal
or at each others villages. Apart from providing ample entertainment and
intellectual and aesthetic awareness, these Mushairas attracted a younger
generation of poets and writers like Lal Zada Nazer Shinwari, Abdul Akbar
Shinwari, Shahzad Khan Jauhar and Muhammad Umar Seemab Shinwari.
They used to hold occasional literary sessions or Mushairas, with sometimes
writing poetry an a given line ( Tarhi Mushaira). By 1953, the literary
consciousness was awakened to the extent to organize a permanent literary
circle called Da Khyber Adabi Jarga, under the patronage of Ostad Hamza
Shinwari. Nazer Shinwari and Murad Shinwari were selected as its president
and General Secretary respectively. With this was usheres in a golden period
of Khyber literature, when this literature was given due recognition outside
Khyber also. Its reverberations soon were heard all over Pakhtoonkhwa or
from the Indus to the Oxus. The Jarga held regular weekly sessions of crit-
icism, apart from occasionally organizing grand Mushairas to which poets
were also invited from all over Pakhtoonkhwa. Among the younger gen-
eration of poets and writers who were inspired and groomed by the Jarga
5
were: Amir Muhammad Saghir Afridi, Noor Muhammad Zigar Afridi, Azam
Shinwari, Khatir Afridi, Khyber Afridi, Sadbar Shinwari, Ahmadzai, Qasir
Afridi, Mir Ahmad Akhtar Afridi, Syed Insha, Maulana Muhammad and
Ashur Khan. Out of these, Murad Shinwari and Saghir Afridi also wrote
prose, particularly short stories and essays. Yet a third generation of writers
of the Ulasi Adabi Jarga was fast coming up. They included; Abdul Qayum
Kausar Afridi, Zabita Khan Afridi, Munir Khan Afridi, Ihsan Zaheer Afridi,
Shakir Shinwari and Miskin. From time to time proper elections of for the
cabinet of the Jarga were held. With the passage of time the membership
of the Jarga also swelled to a fairly large number of poets and writers. Its
written constitution was passed from the General Body, held in 1986. The
constitution was further amended in 1996 and elections were held which ap-
proved the following cabinet:When I was faced with the prospect of taking
up a research project in Literature my instant and natural reaction was to
investigate the literary heritage of Khyber. Khyber is my native land and my
home and the milk of Khyber still circulates in my veins , although I have
turned my back on it, as it were, for the last about twenty years, to have
settled in Peshawar. But this physical migration has hardly affected my spir-
itual attachment to Khyber, and I have always felt strongly drown towards
it by the ties of strong tribal instincts, which I feel to be my second if not the
first nature. The occasional social events of births and deaths take me back
to my ancestral village, in the lap of the bleak but imposing mountains, on
the Khyber highway, near Landi Kotal, the focal point of the Khyber pass.
I still mingle and rub shoulders with my villagers and cousins, without the
least hint of alienation, although life has put us on divergent paths on the
road for survival . I still slip back into their idiom with delightful ease, and
to articulate their distinctive dialect is a real pleasure. And with this I am
once again a part and parcel of their social paradigm.
Their culture is also rich in literature. I was associated with the Khyber
School of literature right from my school days, back in the fifties. What if
not a poet or writer myself, I attended their literary gatherings with religious
regularity. It was back in the heady days of the nineteen-thirties, long before
I was even born, that a group of local poets and writers agreed to be meeting
on regular basis, in a tea shop of the then Landi Kotal Sarai, to be listening to
the fresh kalam of each other. (this brings to mind the London coffee House
literary gatherings of the eighteenth century writers like Addison, steel, Dr.
Johnson and Goldsmith). The moving spirit behind the formation of this
group was Amir Hamza Khan Shinwari, by then a recognized poet, play-
6
wright, prose writer and a Pir of sorts. The other poets or writers of this
group were Malik Saida Khan Shinwari, Akram Farooq, Basir Shinwari and
Haji Maruf Khan. These are now being looked upon as the founding fathers
of the Khyber Literary Movement. They started holding proper Mushairas
at Landi Kotal or at each others villages. Apart from providing ample enter-
tainment and intellectual and aesthetic awareness, these Mushairas attracted
a younger generation of poets and writers like Lal Zada Nazer Shinwari, Ab-
dul Akbar Shinwari, Shahzad Khan Jauhar and Muhammad Umar Seemab
Shinwari. They used to hold occasional literary sessions or Mushairas, with
sometimes writing poetry an a given line ( Tarhi Mushaira).
By 1953, the literary consciousness was awakened to the extent to or-
ganize a permanent literary circle called Da Khyber Adabi Jarga, under
the patronage of Ostad Hamza Shinwari. Nazer Shinwari and Murad Shin-
wari were selected as its president and General Secretary respectively. With
this was usheres in a golden period of Khyber literature, when this litera-
ture was given due recognition outside Khyber also. Its reverberations soon
were heard all over Pakhtoonkhwa or from the Indus to the Oxus. The
Jarga held regular weekly sessions of criticism, apart from occasionally or-
ganizing grand Mushairas to which poets were also invited from all over
Pakhtoonkhwa. Among the younger generation of poets and writers who
were inspired and groomed by the Jarga were: Amir Muhammad Saghir
Afridi, Noor Muhammad Zigar Afridi, Azam Shinwari, Khatir Afridi, Khy-
ber Afridi, Sadbar Shinwari, Ahmadzai, Qasir Afridi, Mir Ahmad Akhtar
Afridi, Syed Insha, Maulana Muhammad and Ashur Khan. Out of these,
Murad Shinwari and Saghir Afridi also wrote prose, particularly short sto-
ries and essays. Yet a third generation of writers of the Ulasi Adabi Jarga
was fast coming up. They included; Abdul Qayum Kausar Afridi, Zabita
Khan Afridi, Munir Khan Afridi, Ihsan Zaheer Afridi, Shakir Shinwari and
Miskin.
From time to time proper elections of for the cabinet of the Jarga were
held. With the passage of time the membership of the Jarga also swelled to a
fairly large number of poets and writers. Its written constitution was passed
from the General Body, held in 1986. The constitution was further amended
in 1996 and elections were held which approved the following cabinet:
President: Lalazada Nazer Shinwari.
Vice-President: Murad Shinwari.

7
G.Secretary: Aslam Tasir Afridi.
J.secretary: Rahmat Shah Lihaz.
Press Secretary: Kalim Shinwari.
Treasurer: Jehanzeb Majboor.
Propaganda-Secretary: Ayub Irshad Afridi.
Another election of the Jarga in 1998 selected the following cabinet:
Patron: Lalzada Nazer Shinwari.
President: Murad Shinwari.
Vice-president: Riaz Shah Afridi.
G.Secretary: Aslam Tasir Afridi.
J.Secretary: Kalim Shinwari and Amir Haidar Shabgir Afridi.
Press Secretary: Hashim Khan Hashim Afridi.
Treasurer: Manzoor Cheshti Afridi.
Executive-Members: Mir Ahmad Akhtar Afridi. Rahmat Shah Lihaz

Afridi. Sharafat Khan Zamir Afridi. Mustaqim Atif Afridi.
The general body of the Jarga consist of the following also:

Ahmadzai Qasir Afridi, Hikmat Gul Hikmat Shinwari, Lalmadar Zakhmi
Shinwari, Kohat Khan Zakir Afridi, Hazrat Islam Gharqab Shinwari, Zahoor
Shinwari, Sher Alam Shinwari, Faiz Ahmad Nasir Afridi, Niazuddin Niaz
Afridi, Amir Haidar Shabgir Afridi, Sikandar Mahtab Afridi, Sharafat Khan
Zamir Afridi, Abdur Rahim Afridi, Amanullah Bawar Shinwari, Yar Hussain
Sahil Afridi, Abdur Rahim Shaugir Shinwari, Adil Rishtim Afridi, Saghir
Afridi, Abdul Ghafoor Ihrar Afridi and Alamzeb Masroor.
The progenitor of this School, Hamza Shinwari, was also the subject of
the Ph.D. thesis that I had submitted to the University of Peshawar in 1990
and had got it approved and obtained my degree on it. Many scattered pages
of that thesis also thread the story of that School. In this connection I have
met almost all the poets and writers of this school and have interviewed most
8
of them - some of the present research was but a review of my findings of

some ten to fifteen years ago when I had to properly pigeonhole all those vary
many writers and their works. However, it was now felt that in the mean time
much water had flown under the Bridges, also eroding much fertile soil from
the hills. Hams Chinaware died in 1994, leaving the School to his successors.
He was closely followed by the untimely death of Khyber Afraid, a promising
poet of the future. The older generation of the School is already on the
wane, overtaken by senility and a sense of withdrawing into their shells for
the ultimate hibernation. However, their place is being taken by a shoal of
young fry, forever on their swift, restless fins. Whether they will keep up the
dignity and prestige of the School is yet to be seen. It is, however, highly
gratifying to see that some of the younger upholders of this School are deeply
committed and keenly devoted to the cause of literature and the preservation
and advancement of this now almost sixty-years old School. And among the
very many poets and writers of this School, there are also some playwrits
and prose writers, trying to maintain the tradition of Hams Chinaware, who
has tried almost every genre of literature.
In connection with the present research I also ventured in the Valley of
Tirah in July the year before last, in the hope of digging up some material
for the project. On this tour I was accompanied by three or four of my
ex-students from as many Afridi clans. They were actually my escorts to
conduct me through the land of my forefathers, for going alone would be
foolhardy on my part to take the risk. The next problem was trudging the
rough terrain for miles on foot for which the only alternative was to hire and
ride a pony, a more repulsive proposition. However, we landed in the Aka
Khel area, which lies on the south-east of the Tirah Valley proper, where
we stayed for three or four days and nights to take off our fatigue. The
only redeeming feature of the life or culture of the are is the self-less and
unobtrusive hospitality of those people. They never get fad up with any
number of guests for any duration of time, whom they will have no stone
unturned to entertain with-better food and better accommodation than they
will enjoy themselves.
In Aka Khel area there were two very old Madrassas, now moribund, but
whose stock of books were ill-preserved in crumbling, moth-eaten racks. We
took out all the rusty, crumbling manuscripts. They were mostly theological
treatises in Arabic or Persian. Some were positively written in Tirah by the
heads or some teachers of the Madrassas. The people whom we met were
the grandchildren of the founders of those Madrassas. In one Madrassa, we
9
were told that students came to study there from as far away as Bokhara
in Turkistan and Delhi in Hindustan and that there would be a number of
students, studying there all the time. In another Madrassa we were told that
some students would also have befriended gins, who would play with them
in off times. Along with old Persian-Arabic manuscripts the Madrassas had
also preserved some exquisite illuminated manuscripts of the Holy Quran.
Whether they were written at Tirah or brought from outside could not be
ascertained. But their preservation was sadly inadequate. They were already
partly devoured by the moths or white ants and in another decade or so they
would be a heap of dust. And the idea of giving them to some library to
preserve on scientific lines would not be acceptable to the owners.
However, we trudged the Tirah Maidan for nearly a month, discovering
one or two other collection of books of this or that Alim or Maulvi Sahib, they
being books of the same nature and description. We decided that we should
leave them to some religious scholar to sift and benefit from. Our concern
was literature, whether Pashto or even Persian and not religious literature
of the sort that we came across there. We were, however, pointed out one
or two poets in some remote corner of Maidan. But how to contact them
was the question. But then had they been poets of any repute their fame
would already have trickled down to Landi Kotal, a sort of cultural centre
for the entire Khyber. Since they were anonymous was decided to leave them
anonymous.
And with this I will concentrate on the exploration of the subject i.e. the
literary heritage of Khyber, on which there is more than enough sources and
material. I only hope that I will do justice to it in the process of documen-
tation, interpretations and execution.
Professor Dr. Qabil Khan
English Department.
Peshawar University.
Dated: 25/04/1998.
Contents
1 The Khyber 12
1.1 The Geographical Features Of Khyber . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.2 The Khyber Pass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.3 The Literary Pespective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
1.3.1 Bayazid Ansari (Pir Roshan) In Tirah . . . . . . . . . 34
1.3.2 Khushal Khan Khattak At Tirah . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
1.3.3 Josh Malihabadi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
1.3.4 Qasim Ali Khan Afridi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
1.3.5 The Poets Called Akhuds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
1.3.6 The Nineteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
1.3.7 Amir Hamza Khan Shinwari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
1.3.7.1 Initiation In Mysticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
1.3.7.2 Poetry And Kindered Literary Activities . . . 43
1.3.7.3 Contribution To Pashto Prose . . . . . . . . . 45
1.3.7.4 Transalations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
1.3.7.5 Contribution To Pashto Drama . . . . . . . . 46
1.3.7.6 POETRY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
1.3.7.7 PROSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
1.3.8 Mohammad Akram Khan Farooq Shinwari . . . . . . . 50
1.3.9 Nazer Shinwawri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
1.3.10 Murad Ali Shinwari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
1.3.11 Khyber Afridi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
1.3.12 Khatir Afridi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
1.3.13 Sahir Afridi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
1.3.14 Noor Mohammad Zigar Afridi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
1.3.15 Qayyum Kausar Afridi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
1.3.16 Ihsan Zaheer Afridi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
10
CONTENTS 11
1.3.17 Jadran Muntazir Afridi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

1.3.18 Engineer Shahzad Khan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
1.3.19 Kalim Shinwari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
1.3.20 Riaz Afridi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
1.3.21 Shafiq Shinwari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
1.3.22 Kohat Khan Zakir Afridi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
1.3.23 Manzoor Afridi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
1.3.24 Abdul Azim Nazar Shinwari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
1.3.25 Fazle Rabi Qais . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
1.3.26 Qandahar Afridi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
1.3.27 Jamal Khan Nasir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
1.3.28 Mohammad Aslam Taseer Afridi . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
1.3.29 Zahoor Shinwari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
1.3.30 Nisar Ahmad Nisar Afridi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
1.3.31 Yar Hussain Sahil Afridi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
2 CONCLUSION 74
Bibliography 78
Chapter 1
The Khyber
Colourful flowers have blossomed

On the moor of Pashto literature;
It is time to look around
And enjoy the colours and smells
The spring lingers on in Khyber Hamza,
Many a bud seem to be flowering.
——– Amir Hamza Shinwari
With the advent of Hamza Shinwari (907-1994), as a poet, prose writer and
playwright, around nineteen thirties 1 , the Khyber became the epicentre of
Pashto literary activities. There gradually emerged a galaxy of budding po-
ets, prose writers and playwrights all over the Khyber, all groomed by Hamza
Shinwari. A healthy and honourable literary tradition ultimately took deep
roots, acknowledged all over Pakistan and Afghanistan.. Its reverberations
could be heard from the Oxus to the Abasin, giving a sense of pride to some
while mothers simply envied it. The literature produced in the Khyber since
then has its own distinctive features or a flavour of its own. This literary
movement ultimately crystallized into the School of Hamza, after its founder
1
To be exact it was in 1936, when, on the direction of his Murshid, Syed Abdul Sattar
Shah, Bacha Jan, the Budding Hamza gave up writing in Urdu in favour of Pashto soon
to be acclaimed the greatest living Pashto poet.
12
CHAPTER 1. THE KHYBER 13
and guru, or The School of Khyber Literature, as it blossomed there. The

following distinctive features of the School might be mentioned at the outset.2
• Adoption of the Ghazal form.
• Pakhtoonwali; reflection of the Pashto code of life.
• New and ingenious constructions.
• Full of conceits, paradoxes and quibbles.
• Clever and subtle use of comparison and contrast.
• Use of repetitions and refrains.
• Novel figures of speech

3
• Tassawuf
• Dynamic and moving rhythms and refrains.
• Fewer but effective meters.
• Originality of style and substance.
• Simplicity, ease, flow, freshness, spontaneity, sweetness and sustained

appeal
• Strong affinity to music and an overall musical tone.
• Temperate and mild in nature; free from extreme or wild emotionalism.
• Use of comparatively purer and idiomatic Pact; free from Persianization

and Arabacization.
• Deep philosophical and mystical problems wrapped in apparent sim-

plicity and straightforwardness.
• Deep adherence to the seventeenth-century pioneering tradition with

hardly any experimentation or renovation.
2
This list, with slight modifications, has been copied from my own Ph.D. Thesis on
Hamza Shinwari: Life and Works, Peshawar University, 1990.
3
Islamic mysticism
• Mainly poetry-oriented with scant attention paid to non-poetic forms

of literature, like prose, dramas4
• Entirely uninfluenced by Urdu, Persian, English or any other foreign

language or literature.
• Strong universal appeal despite clear cut local touch.
• Still a living and a creative entity despite the demise of Hamza Shinwari
for quite some time now.
But this does not mean that Hamza Shinwari was the only luminary on the
horizon of Pashto literature and Khyber the only place in Pakhtoonkhwa
where Pashto literature found this unique flowering. The same period gave
mushroom growth to equally great writers, elsewhere in Pakhtoonkhawa. As
pointed out by Javed khalil, there sprouted more than a hundred literary
societies (Jargas or Tolanas)5 in the Frontier Province alone while extensive
Pashto literature was being simultaneously produced all over Baluchistan
and Afghanistan as well. In this way, the number of contemporary Pashto
writers would literally run into hundreds, with some of them equally great
in their own right. In fact, the Khyber School can be looked upon as a
part (thought an important and leading part) of this twentieth-century re-
naissance in Pashto literature. This renaissance was preceded by a general
decadence and degeneration of about three hundred years, of the “The Dark
Ages” of Pashto literature, during which poor Pashto was relegated to the
language of hell and its speakers were pushed into the inaccessible mountains.
Rahman Baba has summed up the plight of the poor Pakhtoons in the
following couplet :
(Due to the callous oppressive officials,
The home, the tomb and Peshawar are all equal) (Rahman)
But some three hundred years later Hamza felt bold enough to declare:
(The enemy brand it the language of hell,
To heaven will I go with Pashto) (Hamza)
4
Except for Hamza Shinwari and a couple of his followers, no other Khyber poet has
written any prose or drama.
5
Pakhto Adabi Tolane Au Jarge” (Pashto literary circles and Societies), Nov-Dec, 1988,
p.43.
This period needs to be probed to visualize what preceded the twentieth

century renaissance and why did there fall the dark curtain to eclipse the
course of Pashto literature and culture for about three hundred years .
In order to see this period in its proper perspective we must turn to
an earlier religion-political controversy called “The Roshanite Movement”.
The founder of this movement was Bayazid Ansari (1535-1609) also called
Pir Roshan (the enlightened Pir) but branded Pir Tarik (the dark Pir) by
his vehement adversary Syed Ali Tarmezi (called Pir Baba), with a strong
antagonism and animosity towards each other.6 The Roshanite Movement
gave impetus to mystic poetry in Pashto literature on the one hand and a
conscious urge for freedom from the Moghuls on the other. The Movement
produced a number of creative works in both prose and poetry.
Pir Roshan was basically a Sufi (mystic) and his creed clashed with that
of Akhun Darweza (circa 1570), a vice-regent of Hazrat Ali Tarmezi (Pir
Baba), now his shrine in Buner). The former stressed the esoteric aspect of
religion (or Tariqat), while the latter insisted on exoteric aspect (or Shariyat).
Although partly political, this movement was given mainly a religious colour
and the two equally powerful religious leaders carried on a war of wits are bet-
ter still, a battle of books. The gauntlet was thrown by Bayazid Ansari with
his book, Khairul Bayan (a useful account), which was promptly answered
with Makhzan - ul - Islam (treasure of Islam ) by Akhun Darweza.
This spiritual as well as intellectual feud was taken up by others, the
disciples and family members of the two accomplished Pirs, even long after
they were dead themselves. But the Roshanites seems to have provided a far
superior array of poets and prose writers than their worthy adversaries. In
this process Pashto literature was enriched beyond expectations.
Among this gallery of distinguished poets and writers we may mention
Murza Khan Ansari (died 1617) He was a grandson of Pir Roshan and the
first poet to consciously sing of Sufism in Pashto poetry. It is from him that
mysticism in Pashto poetry is actually traced. Mirza Khan was living in
Tirah as indeed Bayazid Ansari himself had taken refuge there and the family
seems to have stayed there when Pir Roshan would leave it occasionally for
6
Bayazid Ansari was called ‘Pir Roshan’ (the illuminated or enlightened Pir or Spiritual
guide) by his disciples. In opposition, Syed Ali Tarmezi (Pir Baba) and his disciple,
Akhun Darweza, called him ‘Pir Tarik’ (The dark Pir). In a rejoinder to Pir Roshan’s
Khairul Bayan (a tract on mysticism) Syed Ali Tarmezi wrote “Makhzanul Islam” (also
on mysticism. This way they attacked each other’s creed. However their books are their
earliest examples of Pashto prose.
seeking converts among the other tribes.

The other adherents of this School were: Arzani (lived in the middle of
the seventeenth century), Qadar Dad (a young man in the middle of the
seventeenth century), Mukhlis (birth -and death untraceable), Mian Dad
(lived towards the end of the seventeenth century), Warakzai (lived towards
the end of the eighteenth century ) . They were all great poets in their own
right and each has left a Diwan (collected works). They have written in the
mystic tradition of their illustrious forebear, Pir Roshan.
This School or Movement was the culmination or climax of an historical
evolution when the centuries-old oral and folk literature was gradually su-
perseded by a written literature of a very high and everlasting calibre. It was
during this period that Pashto was heavily Persianized and Arabicized with
wholesale borrowings from both there “classical languages”.7 Not only was
Sufism properly introduced into Pashto literature for the first time, but at
the same time, the most suitable verse form, Ghazal was also greatly polished
and perfected.8 “This mixture of patriotism and Sufism in Pashto literature
starting with the advent of Islam and flowering through the Roshinite period,
gradually filtered through the evolutionary stages and when it reached per-
fect, it gave birth to Khushal Khattak on the one hand and Rahman Baba,
Abdul Hamid and Ali Khan, on the other”.9
With Khushal Khan Khattak (1613-689) we step into a raging renaissance
in Pashto literature. It would be no exaggeration to call Khushal Khan
a whole period in Pashto literature, with a typical style and a distinctive
school of thought. He stands at crucial cross-roads. From this turning point
Pashto literature has been given a new direction and an entirely new outlook
and a local orientation to be the guidance and inspiration of the subsequent
generations of Pashto poets and prose writers. “with his poetic effusion he
gave light and vigour to an otherwise dormant and dark age, not withstanding
the illumination of Pir Roshan and his followers”.10 the Pashto language had
7
Persian was not only the official language but also the language of learning and schol-
arship while Arabic was the language of religion and liturgy. Together they have left the
deepest imprint on Pashto language and literature.
8
This Ghazal form was borrowed from Persian by both Urdu and Pashto. But with the
passage of time and shift in taste in became so naturalized that most of the indigenous
forms were virtually replaced by it. It was also adopted to Pashto music and was associated
with a sign of culture.
9
Roohi Adab, Nawaz Tair, pp 290-91.
10
My own Ph.D. Thesis, Ibid, p.117.
hardly been touched before him, as be claims himself:

(Nobody lifted the veil from her face.
Pashto still stays a virgin) (Khushal).
Khushal khan was not only a poet but most of his life he was also fighting
against the mighty Moghul Empire in India. In the war of succession among
the sons of Shah Jehan be fought on the side of Aurangzeb against Dara
Shikoh. Aurangzeb was, however, defeated by his brother at Samugarh. He
withdrew the Jagir granted to Khushal Khan by Aurangzeb.
Unlike his predecessors, Khushal Khan chose Pashto and Pashto alone for
the transmission of his powerful thoughts in both prose and poetry although
he was equally, if not more, at home in Persian, in which he has also done
some poetry. He seems to have consciously turned to Pashto to give it a
lustre and splendour of its own to make it more than worth the attention of
subsequent poets and writers to help it hold its own against the onslaught of
the all-pervading Persian. However, this Persian influence is not easily and
entirely shaken by his close contemporaries or successors like Rahman Baba
(1651 - 1710) and Abdul Hameed (1671-1732).
With Rahman Baba we arrive at the perfection of Pashto Ghazal so much
so that he can be compared to the great Persians like Hafiz and Saudi.11
Rahman Baba can be said to have lift the deepest imprint on Pakhtoon
psyche, social, intellectual as well as spiritual life. His verses have acquired
proverbial currency and a universal appeal to both the initiate and the novice
or the scholar and the lay man, at the same time. “ His effusions are of a
religious or moral character, and chiefly on the subject of Divine Love. But
there is a fiery energy in his style, and a simplicity which will be vainly
sought for amongst the flowery and bombastic Persians.” 12 The following
couplet with give a glimpse of the delicacy of his art :
(silent with a hundred tongues of a bouquet
I am vocal sans words like fragrance . (Rahman).
Abdul Hameed, like Rahman Baba, was a Mohmand by origin but of a
different élan . According to Raverty : “ He is a typical poet of the Afghans
11
Persian masters like Hafiz and Saadi. This has been shown by Dost Muhammad Kamil
in his study of Rahman Baba. However, he is a typical Pakhtoon with proverbial purity
of diction, with all the Persian influence on his thoughts and imagery.
12
Selections from Pashto Poetry, Raverty, p.1.
- the Shaikh Saadi of Pashto language and literature and the beauty of his
compositions is fully acknowledged, even among a nation so rich in poets as
the Pathans, by whom he is styled “Hameed Mushigaf” (Hameed the hair-
splitter). His poetry though generally of a moral tendency, and breathing
contempt of the world and its vanities, and tinged with -Sufi doctrines, still
abound in deep sensuous pleasure”.13 Unlike Rahman Baba, he is sometimes
strongly drawn to the corporeal love which borders on undisguised eroticism.
In this strain he resembles the spirit of Khushal Khan Khattak. However, it
is the flight of his imagination , the delicacy of his art, along with the natural
flow of his diction that has given him a unique place among the masters of
Pashto literature. Like Khushal Khan and Rahman before him, Hameed too
is considered the leader of a distinctive School of Pashto poetry.
Most of Abdul Hameed’s poetic paraphernalia like metaphors, similes and
symbolism seem to have been borrowed from Persian and Arabic, but at the
same time, he has affixed to it his own peculiar stamp of Pashto usage and
Pakhtoon culture. It would not be out of place here to quote Hamza Shinwari
on Pashto Ghazal. He maintains : “Perhaps our poets did not merely imitate
Persian Ghazal but they molded it into Pashto spirit or image. Because
Persian Ghazal is just poetic effusion, there is no touch of a local colour in
it. If Persian Ghazal is translated into another language then no reader can
easily guess the language in which it was originally written. On the contrary,
although Pashto poets have been inspired by Persian literature, they have
added the Pakhtoon spirit or colour to their creations. They have coloured
Ghazal according to their own peculiar environment and temper. Now, if
Pashto Ghazal is translated in any other language, any reader can easily not
only feel but positively see it to be the work of some Pashto poet. (Roohi
Adab, 85). Lets look at the following couplet from the point of view of the
above assertion:
(I will not bear the Moghal attitude of your rival
If I am truly engendered by a Pakhtoon mother). (Hameed)
Another feature of this period was a feudal system which was superimposed
upon the essentially democratic spirit of the Pakhtoon tribes by the impe-
rialist Moghuls. This system was effectively introduced among the tribes
of the plains, under the pragmatic policy of Divide and Rule. The hills-
men were however, peripheral to this unnatural stratification of the highly
13
Selections from Pashto Poetry, Raverty, p.85.
individualistic and egalitarian spirit of the Pakhtoons. For the orderly and
peaceful management of the Pakhtoon areas, the Moghuls had created Khans,
Nawabs, Arbabs, Sardars and powerful feudal lords of various hues and de-
scriptions. This class was make the intermediary between the peasants on
the lower rung of the ladder, on the one hand, and the ruling overlords, on
the other. This arrangement, in turn, gave rise to an incessant class strug-
gle, the echoes of which can be heard in all the poets of this period. The
half-religious Roshanite Movement was the first to raise its voice against the
oppressions and injustices of this degrading, repressive system.
In this dark period of turmoil and confusion it was but natural for the
sentient Pashto poets to withdraw into their shells and turn to renunciation,
resignation, asceticism, pessimism, escapism and fatalism. They were all
haunted by the sinister shadows of a bleak future. This strain is common,
without exception, to all the poets of this period, including Khushal Khan
Khattak, notwithstanding his forceful, revolutionary disposition and his life-
long courageous struggle against the mighty Moghul Raj of the time. This
couplet of his shows his indomitable resolve to fight it out with the Moghuls:
(I girded my loins for the honour of the Afghan,

I am the chivalrous Khushal Khan of the time). (Khushal)
Yet this period of wild commotion and confused life-patterns and continually
shifting values has given to Pashto literature not only a revival and a hazy
heritage but also a fully blossoming renaissance which is yet to be equaled or
even fully explored. This renaissance which had started with Khushal Khan
Khattak can be said to have terminated with Ahmad Shah Abdali (1712-
1773),14 when Pashto literature was overtaken by a progressive degeneration
till it lost every vestige of its former glory. More than a hundred poets can be
listed between Ahmad Shah Abdali and the end of the nineteenth century;
but all this point to the fact that the latter poets have not been able to
maintain the florescence and freshness, the originality and richness, simplicity
and directness, vigour and flow and the inexorable speed and tempo of their
worthy predecessors. There is a gradual decline in which the poetic sublimity
has been imperceptibly replaced by a pathetic mediocrity. The Ghazal form
which had shouldered the best poetry of the renaissance period, although
14
On the death of Nadir Shah Afshar in 1747, Ahmad Shah Abdali (a soldier in Afshar’s
army) declared Afghan independence at Qandahar. He was also a great Pashto poet in
his own right, with a Diwan (collected works) to his credit.
somehow kept alive and kicking, was once again effectively edged aside by
the popular musical and ageless folklore forms like “Tappa,” “Charbaita,”
“Nemakai,” and “Badalla”. The sun appears to have set on the high mountains
of a great age, while the down of another, an equally respectable age, is
nowhere in sight. It is yet to arise and reveal the tattered and mutilated
poverty of Pashto literature.
It was Hamza Shinwari, from Khyber, who bridged with a mighty imagi-
native stride the yawning centuries of Pashto literature. He successfully cap-
tured the sparkling originality, the unbounded exuberance and the unyielding
vigour of Khushal Khattak ; the ease and flow, directness and lucidity, moral
order and divine Love of Rahman Baba; the delicacy of thought, sensuous
tendency, and hair- splitting ingenuity of Abdul Hameed ; the deep parochial
verve and typical Pashto imagery and symbolism of Ali Khan and the down
-right humility and phenomenal patriotism of Ahmad Shah Abdali. He also
has encompassed and scaled the entire panorama and pageant of this past
Pashto literature and has captured and depicted the Zeitgeist i.e. the spirit
of that classical age which badly needed a revival and a poet like Hamza,
with all his literary and spiritual trappings to give it a powerful impetus and
a flowering future.
Being born there, although living most of the time in Peshawar and under-
taking a number of journeys through the vast Indian subcontinent, Hamza
Shinwari reared his roost in Khyber . But looking at the historical and
geographical features of the area the question will always beg an effective
and convincing answer as to why this flowering of Pashto literature should
take place in a barren, craggy and physically inhospitable Khyber instead of
some culturally and agriculturally more fertile part of Pakhtoonkhwa. Per-
haps there may simply be no logical answer to such a question although the
question will still stay very pertinent and relevant. It may be that perhaps
literary tides follow their own inexorable laws like those of the rise and fall
or great civilizations. If not to be accounted for as a freak of nature, if not
a joke, and if an answer must be found for the question, then the geography,
history, sociology, anthropology, mythology and folklore of Khyber must be
closely reviewed together for a possible answer to this million-dollar question.
Somewhere, there may be some hint to this effect yet buried deep under the
debris of ignorance and superstition. It will need careful investigation, if not
actual excavation here and there to unearth the facts.
1.1 The Geographical Features Of Khyber

The Khyber is bounded on the north by the Kabul River and the Sufaid
Koh; on the east by the Peshawar Valley; on the south by the Aka Khel Ter-
ritory and Orakzai Agency; and on the West by Afghanistan. Its total area
is approximately 545 km and population 4,500,000 15 (although no proper
census has been held there at all). Its terrain is most rugged, barren and
arid. If the hills had any forestation in the past, today they are completely
denuded by their reckless use and the subsequent soil erosion and adverse
climatic changes.16 Interspersed among these dry and parched hills are nar-
row and shallow valleys inhabited by the local population, some of them
living there from time immemorial while most of them would be subject to
seasonal migrations to the more temperate plains in the unbearable winter.
These valleys are irrigated by scant, intermittent rains and snow fall , and
cultivated for food and fodder.17
On the north-west of the Khyber lies the larger and more fertile valley of
Tirah, the original home of all the Khyber tribes. Cut off from the rest of
the civilized world by any road, railway or air link, and without any vestige
of modern civilization it is a sort of no main’s land ruled (or misruled) by the
indigenous people themselves, under the age-less law called Pakhtoonwali
(the Pakhtoon code of conduct), effected by Sharishta or a Jarga system,
involving the tribal elders as the judges as well as executioners of their rulings.
This vast and at places extensively cultivated area, bounded by pock-
ets of alpine forests, utterly lacks any internal communication system either.
At best it is cress-crossed by mule-tracks, and pack animals are used for
the transport of goods from place to place, and long and tedious journeys
are trusted to the power and perseverance of human feet and their support-
ing muscles. The indigenous people lead the most primitive life under pa-
thetic poverty, inhuman ignorance and biblical simplicity. They live in strong
and well-fortified mud-houses, built at respectable distances from each other,
with high towers (incidentally called Tarai in Pashto) to defend themselves
not only from the vagaries of nature and ferocity of wild life, but also the
15
These figures may be far from being exact and at best, just approximations because
so far, the Khyber has neither been mapped nor measured nor any census held there.
16
Khyber is described as a thickly forested area, a little earlier than living memory.
Baber is said to have hunted a Rhino there.
17
Agriculture is fast disappearing from all over Khyber, due to scanty precipitation and
lack of snow fall, even on the high hills.
treachery of the Tarbur (cousin).18 The whole tribal set up suffers from a
centuries-old tradition of internecine feuds, in which the cousin is usually
the worst enemy. An oft-quoted proverb says: “ Even if your cousin is your
right hand, chop it off.” The valley has thick alpine forestation on the higher
reaches and fertile plains in the laps of hills irrigated by natural springs or
seasonal floods or the Bara River, which is a perennial source of irrigation
in its delta. With the passage of time, the pressure of population gradually
increases there and together with the economic significance of timber trade
they pose a serious threat to the remaining, meagre forestation there. How-
ever, due to sheer physical hardships, the valley is still thinly populated, also
necessitating seasonal migrations to the warmer and more fertile Peshawar
Plains.19 Back at home also they depend for supply of articles of daily ne-
cessity mainly on Peshawar, which they carry on their mules, all the way
through the rugged hills. Their economy depends upon agriculture, timber
trade, live-stock and dry fruit. They grow their own food and vegetables but
for tea, sugar and cloth etc, they depend on external supply. The people of
the valley have also recently taken to transport and business in both Pakistan
And Afghanistan.20
They Khyber is inhabited by the Afridi, Shinwari, Shillmani and Mul-
lagori tribes. The Afridi is a more preponderant tribe occupying 80% of the
Khyber area. Their original habitat was the Tirah valley but they have also
spelled over into the Khyber Pass, Jamrud, Bara and Darra Adam Khel ar-
eas. It is sub-divided into eight clans (called Qaum by themselves), with each
of these clans bigger than some of the other Khyber tribes. The Shinwari is
a smaller tribe living around Landi Kotal and Landi Khana and straddling
the Pak-Afghan border (or the Durand Line). It is originally an Afghanistan
tribe, living in eastern Ningarhar, the Khyber Shinwaris being a spell over
of that tribe from Ningarhar. The Shilmanis and Mullagoris are still smaller
tribes, living on the northern tip of the Khyber plateau. While the Shilma-
nis live in the foothills of the famous Tatara peak, on the Kabul River, the
Mullagoris live in the hills beyond the Warsak.. The Mullagoris have also
18
Tarbour literally means cousin but due to a long tradition of inter-family feuds, it has
acquired the connotation of ‘enemy. Another noun of the same root is ‘trabgani’ (enmity).
As a second nature, a Pakhtoon never trusts a cousin and considers him as a potential
enemy, if not really one already.
19
In the process many families have succumbed to the strong attraction of the Peshawar
valley and have permanently shifted there.
20
Economically, it is still the most backward area.
started exploiting the marble deposits of their hills which are fed to a number
of marble factories not only in and around Peshawar but as far as Karachi.
This has boosted their standard of living and they are comparatively much
better off.
There is usually inter-tribal and intra-tribal animosities and feuds but
they always find themselves united against a common foe. Their strong
preservation instinct always prevail over their primitive tribal savagery. They
are also always armed to the teeth , not only for self protection but also
for instant aggression if necessary. Traditionally, there is no check on their
keeping and carrying arms. They are not subject to any arms license from any
authority. In this regard, as in almost every legal sense, they are an authority
unto themselves. Inter-tribal marriages are not also uncommon although
clan or sub-clan or inter-family marriages are normally preferred. They are
in favour of as many male children as they can beget; and joint family living
is still the rule rather than the exception. There is growing interaction and
integration among these tribes and clans with the passage of time. They no
more look upon each other as aliens or usurpers of each other’s pieces of lands
or cattle, or denying each other passage through their respective territories,
or being simply foes and Dushmans. The modern economic imperatives and
communication facilities and an over-all pragmatic approach to life have made
them respect each other’s existence.
All these tribes speak different but mutually easily understandable di-
alects of the same language- Pashto or Pakhto. Their Pakhto is akin to the
hard, eastern Yousafzai Pakhto rather than the soft, western Pashto of Kan-
dahar; the two main dialects being separated by the hard [kh] and the soft
[sh] sounds. These people are mostly illiterate but they enjoy music and
literature. The musician and the poet are often confused.21 Perhaps in the
beginning there was no clear demarcation between the two- the person who
composed songs and the one who sang them. This would, according to their
21
It was Ghani Khan (a versatile elder poet and philosopher and an octogenarian con-
temporary of Hamza Shinwari) who said that the Pakhtoon loves music but hates the
musician. This hatred might have its roots in the social class differences of the Aryan
ancestors of these tribes. All the artisans, including the musician (who also devised or
improvised poetry to go with his music) were not the blue-blooded Pakhtoons (who were
the landed gentry). The artisans were given fixed share in the seasonal produce. However,
the Pakhtoons also play their Rabab and Mangai (the clay pitcher) in their Hujra (Com-
mon House). Even the strong Islamic taboo or injunction has not mitigated their love of
music.
elemental logic, amount to one and the same thing. It was Ghani Khan, a
prolific poet from Hashtnagar, who said: “The Pathan loves music but hates
the musician”. As the musician was associated with social inferiority and
an object of hatred, the poet cleverly distanced himself from his despicable
cousin and thus the existence of poet on his own right, enjoying social equal-
ity, if not actual superiority by dent of his art and craft, among his other and
vastly superior cousins.
1.2 The Khyber Pass

Shafi Sabir has maintained that: “No one knows when Khyber got its present
name, but this much is certain that “Khyber or Khaiber” is a word of the
Hebrew language and it means a palace or a castle. One view is that it got
its present name in the past because it enjoyed a strategic importance as a
fort. But usually by Khyber is meant the Khyber Pass. It starts at Jamrud
and, leading via Landi Kotal, terminates at Landi Khana and Torkham.
The stretch is 32 miles”.22 However, there is also a place called “Khyber”
in Saudi Arabia and halfway through the Khyber Pass there is a charming
little mosque, in a deep gorge, by the side of a perennial stream of clear,
sweet water, called Ali Masjid. And a local legend maintains that the fourth
caliph of Islam, Hazrat Ali, had visited this spot and fought against a pagan
woman called, “Khyberai Bibi.” There is a huge bolder perched precariously
in the middle of a steep incline. They say that this rock was thrown at him
as he was praying, but he caught hold of it and tucked it up there. This may
be an incredible legend but the question remains as to why there should be
two Khybers at such a distance apart. Either the Jews, to whose language,
Hebrew, Shafi Sabir has traced the term Khyber, originated here and took
the name with them to the Middle East or vice-versa. The local legend also
corroborates the theory that the Pakhtoons are Israelites, and that they may
be the lost tribe of the Jews. As far as the local language Pashto is concerned,
the word or term “Khyber” carries no clear cut meaning it. Khyber is just
a meaningless, if not colourless, abstraction and a name and nothing more.
Perhaps with the actual meaning may be associated the prehistory of this
area and the people now living in it, which is not actually our concern here.
We will leave it to a more competent historian or archeologist to unravel the
mystery or dig out the truth. Perhaps time will take care of such an inquiry.
22
The Story of Khyber, Muhammed Shafi Sabir, p.6.
The Khyber is one of the most important passes of the world. Its history
is the history of the India-Pakistan subcontinent and Central Asia. For cen-
turies it served as a convenient gateway to India, right from the Aryan hordes
to the Greeks, the Parathions, the Mongols, the Iranians, the Cushions, the
Huns, the Persians, the Moghuls and the Afghans. All through the past in-
terminable centuries the Khyber has seen the dust raised by the armies of
successive, invading and marauding races, passing through its gorges and de-
files, with its granite crags resounding with the clangs of their arms and the
thunder of their horses’ hooves. It would only revert again to its majestic
and mysterious calm and peace when the din would be over and the dust
would settle on their tracks. Perhaps there would hardly be any worthwhile
local resistance against such mighty, imperial forces surging ahead in their
blind pursuit of conquest and destruction, or simply plunder and loot. The
local people would simply disappear among the high inaccessible mountains
only to climb down again when the last soldier would have turned the bend.
But it is also on record that at times they would levy tolls in lieu of safe
passage through the treacherous Pass which many invaders preferred to pay
instead of entangling with these wild, guerrilla tribes.
There have also been backward movements through the Khyber Pass by
the Mauria Dynasty of India (327-190 BC), when their zealous monarchs like
Kanishka and Ashoka made it a mission of their life to spread the teachings
of Buddhism as far as Bamyan, Balkh, Bokhara and Samarqand. The Khy-
ber still has its due share of Buddhist monuments and relics.23 The stone
foundations of a vanished stupa are still there near Ali Masjid, on a low
hillock by a stream, very much visible from the road. Now somebody has
raised a mud-house structure on the top of it, preferring the open and sunny
hill top to the suffocation of the nearby caves from where he ultimately must
have come out, like some wild burrowing animal. A little ahead, there is a
partially damaged but still very imposing stupa at the village Sultan Khel.
Around this stupa there are a number of archaeological sites exploited by
the local people for statues, coins and all kinds of other relics. Opposite the
stupa and across the road, part of the village Mabi Khel seems to be raised in
places on the stone foundations of Buddhist times. In and around Landi Ko-
tal and Landi Khana also there are traces of unexplored archeological sites.
23
About 20 percent of the Buddhist statues and other relics in Peshawar museum have
been excavated from the village Sultan Khel in Khyber. That is where the famous Buddhist
Stupa is also situated which is still partly intact.
So far the local people were not interested in the excavation and exploration
of such archeological sites. They were rather averse to even thinking of them
as these were pagan relics. But with the increasing commercial importance
of Gandhara artifacts and other archeological relics, the religious prejudice
has been toned down by pragmatic considerations. Hence such sites are no
more safe from pelfriges if not outright plunder.
The north-westward march through the Khyber was also repeated or at-
tempted by the Sikhs from the Punjab. A one-time tributaries of the throne
of Kabul, they were marching on Afghanistan itself, like the Maurian Emper-
ors of more than two thousand years ago. They too were imperialists of sorts
if not propagating any particular religious or spiritual doctrine. They, how-
ever, faced a tough resistance from the local tribes who ultimately crushed
them at Jamrud, at the mouth of the Khyber Pass.24 The last Sikh outpost
in the shape of an imposing fort at Jamrud, with high and strong mud-walls,
still stands there to bear a silent witness to their demoralizing defeat at the
hands of the Afghan army.25 The commander-in-chief of their advancing
armies, Hurri Singh Nalva, is buried there in the fort, because he would have
been killed there. This defeat also weakened their position in Peshawar and
back at home in Punjab and precipitated their ultimate elimination from the
scene by the British Indian forces which brought the short-lived Sikh rule in
the Punjab and parts of the present NWFP (which was then an insignificant
appendage of the Punjab province) to an abrupt end.
After annihilating the Sikhs from the scene, the British Indian Empire
was practically on the threshold of Afghanistan and the Pakhtoon tribes of
the present NWFP (this are was declared a province in 1901). Nervous at
the Franco-Russian intrigues in Persia and their siege of Heart (1836), the
British Indian forces of the Indus Army marched on Kandahar via the Bolan
24
There is a Sikh fort at Jamrud, founded by a general of Ranjit Singh, Hari Singh
Nalwa in 1834. According to Shafi Sabir, “He intended the fort to be a guardian of the
Khyber Pass but soon it became his grave”. The Sikhs called it ‘Fateh Garh’ (victory fort)
but it stayed as a mocking symbol of their defeat at Jamrud.
25
The British had two expeditions to Kabul. The first, in 1836, proved a complete dis-
aster, in which the entire retreating British army was annihilated. The second expedition,
in 1878, was in revenge of the first one. They triumphantly made it to Kabul once again.
They replaced the fugitive ruler, Sher Ali Khan, by his weakling son, Yaqub Khan, who
was made to cede certain strategic Afghan territories to British India, under an unequal
treaty at Gandumak. These territories were, later on, demarcated in the Durand Line
in 1893, The Khyber Pass, as almost all the strategic passes from Chitral to Balochistan
(2250 kms) happened to be on the wrong side of Afghanistan.
Pass, to replace Amir Dost Muhammad Khan by a more faithful ally, Shah
Shujaul Mulk (1803-1809 and 1839-1841), as “the rightful heir to the throne
of his ancestors. With the capture of Ghazni and Kabul, he was proclaimed
the king of Afghanistan. This out-right British invasion of the country (1839)
only reinforced the Afghan sense of unity and cohesion. Within months a
revolt broke out at Kabul, and the entire British Indian Army of some 8000
strong was put to the sword and completely wiped out. This was put down to
“Aukland’s Folly.” This was followed by a punitive expedition in 1942, under
general Pollock, when Afghanistan was once again invaded by the British
Indian Army, this time with a far more formidable might. This attack was
simultaneously carried out through both the Bolan and the Khyber Passes
and the two columns ultimately converged on Kabul. In the wake of this
conquest Dost Muhammad Khan (1842-1863) was reinstated as the Amir
and the country was evacuated in the same month.
As a result of Lord Curzon’s “Forward Policy”, the British insisted on
three broad principles in relation to Afghanistan and her eastern strategic
passes:
• The foreign relations of Afghanistan must be submitted to the British
control.
• The eastern and southern strategic passes must be controlled by the
British Indian Army.
• British India must have a permanent mission at Kabul.
Since these were repulsive conditions for the people as well as Afghan monar-
chs, they were constantly resisted at the cost of not only a throne and crown
but incalculable human and material sacrifices. Once again the country was
invaded by the British Indian Army to overthrow an allegedly pro-Russian
Amir, Sher Ali Khan (1863-1879). His son and heir, Yaqub Khan, was com-
pelled to sign a treaty with British India at Gandumak(1879), ceding all the
principles of the “Forward Policy”. The country was then left in the hands
of Amir Abdur Rahman (1880-1901) and the British forces retreated. How-
ever, by 1919 the situation had undergone such a dramatic change that Amir
Amanullah Khan (1919-1929), a grandson of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan, was
in a position to go to open war against British India for the restoration of
completely sovereignty. The tottering British India concluded a treaty with
him at Rawalpindi in August,1919, under which Afghanistan was recognized
as an absolute sovereign state.
The clamour and termoil of the Anglo-Afghan war had to adversely af-
fect life at Khyber as it was the only strategic Pass constantly used for the
forward and backward movements of the invading and retreating British In-
dian Armies. Charles Miller in his book Khyber maintains:”The Indian Gov-
ernment and Whitehall thought that if the Pathans fell short of expected
standards as a British subject, the Frontier itself loomed large in imperial
geopolitics because, for at least seven decades during the nineteenth century,
it was seen as a vestibule for a Russian invasion of India via Afghanistan.
For this reason alone, the Khyber and other trans-Indus passes shared equal
strategic importance with Gibraltar and the Suez Canal. Thus to leave the
Pathan destiny in other hands was unthinkable.” [p.119]. It appeared that
unlike the numerous other invaders of the subcontinent, the British meant
business. They were not easily thwarted but then the Pass and the territories
around it were not to be presented to them on a silver platter either. The
active forward move of the mighty British Empire into the tribal belt alarmed
the tribesmen, who feared that the British were out to destroy their cherished
independence. Their reaction took the form of a great tribal uprising in 1897,
involving the entire tribal belt from Malakand in the north to Waziristan in
the south. A series of sporadic battles were fought throughout the tribal
belt between the ill-equipped tribesmen and the well-disciplined, seasoned
British Indian Army. But despite the colossal British Imperial might and
its myth of invincibility, they failed to subjugate the primitive tribal people
with all their carrot and stick approach. They remained at loggerheads with
these tenacious tribesmen for quite a long time and led quite a number of
expeditions against them.
For the local tribes however, it would be life as usual, a semi-settled, semi-
nomadic life, unmindful of economic imperatives and disregarding social or
even cultural considerations as long as their survival and their independence
were in jeopardy, they could put up with any hardship of life. They would be
tending their herds, cultivating their terraces or patches of clearings in the
plains, in the lap of valleys, irrigated by natural springs or intermittent rains.
Their staple crop would be wheat, barley and potato ; they would hardly be
growing any vegetables, as they would never be vegetarians. Diary products
would be in abundance to supplement their meagre food resources. Their
other occupation would be cutting wood for fuel and particularly burning for
heat during the severe winter months, and the surplus would be taken down
to the market at Peshawar, to sell for a handful of coins, to be spent on some
other domestic necessity. Their next most perpetual occupation would be
making ropes, baskets and even shoes from the wild dwarf- palm, growing
abundantly on the hills. The more adventurous and daring among them
would occasionally accompany a caravan either bound for Kabul or down
to the mysterious depth of Hindustan. Their own ponies would be packed
with - something to sell there and bring back some much-needed articles of
domestic use. A few would now and them try their luck and trust to their
mettle to carry out either a covert or even broad day-light docoity in down-
county cities and towns, whose prosperity would beg this treatment at the
hands of the starving tribesmen from the hills. This would be corroborated
by the story of Ajab Khan which is only too well known to repeat here. And,
of course, lifting of each others cattle would be a common routine among
most of the tribesmen.
In this way they maintained their grudging independence and the perpet-
ual guardianship of the historic Khyber Pass.26 Wherever possible, however,
they have put up strong resistance against any intruding, alien army, and
have fought with religious zeal. While effectively blocking the Sikhs at Jam-
rud, they gave a tough time to the British Indian Army, on its way to and
back from the repeated Afghan expeditions. Their most effective strategy, in
absence of deterrent weapons, would be to roll down huge boulders from the
hill tops to crush the armies passing through the gorges bellow. Of course,
that would be at the time when the ultimate weapons of war were the rusty
sword and the cumbersome shield and sometimes the ineffective arrows shot
from wooden bows., Also throughout the British administration of the Khy-
ber, what with the strong fortification of the levy, the militia, the army and
the powerful political paraphernalia, the tribesmen never lost an opportu-
nity to attack the weak spots of the administration here and there; whether
it was to block a road for dacoity, stop and loot a train, or ambush a small
army detachment and attack it for the rifles, or even storm a piquet or the
quarter-guard of the camp for the capture of magazine.
Similarly, they never allowed a Moghul caravan or convoy to pass through
the Khyber in peace. It was invariably attacked and hellishly harassed and,
at times, utterly routed and defeated.27 The Khyber provided not only occa-
26
They still enjoy this internal independence. Even the writ of Pakistan does not apply
there. However, the guardianship of the Khyber Pass has now been relegated to the
Pakistan army, over and above the Khyber Rifles. With the passage of time, there is more
reliance on and integration with Pakistan.
27
There are at least two famous defeats of the Moghul convoys at the hands of the local
Khyber tribes: one at Ali Masjid and another at Landi Khana. Both were crushing defeats
sional refuge and safe haven to Pakhtoon rebel leaders, like Bayazid Ansari
and Khushal Khan Khattak, fighting against the mighty Moghul Empire;
they were readily provided with strong tribal lashkars to make it a common
cause against a common foe. Whenever Khushal Khan was cornered by the
Moghul hordes, he took to Tirah to call on the reliable support of Aimal Khan
and Darya Khan and their ever-ready lashkar to fall back on the pursuing
Moghul armies. And similar was the case of Bayazid Ansari, long before
Khushal Khan Khattak. In Tirah he found a large number of converts to
his mystic creed. These enthusiastic disciples would leave no stone unturned
to help their leader in adversity and take arms against the forces of bigotry
and slavery. His family was provided a permanent home in Tirah and his
progeny was subsequently looked upon as bonafide Tirahwals if not Afridis
too. That is why we count his grandson, Mirza Khan Ansari, among the
earliest Khyber poets, because he lived and wrote his poetry there.
However, the dying decades of the nineteenth century had confronted the
tribals with the threat of an outright British onslaught followed by a stern
administration. They had tenaciously resisted the Moghul Imperialism so far
and the succeeding British Imperialism was not to be allowed to snatch away
their centuries-old independence. Having crushed the Sikhs at Jamrud, they
were in turn to be crushed by the much superior British might. The tribals
were unwittingly caught in the web of the Anglo-Russian rivalry in the sub-
continent. They were in the heart of the area where the tragic drama of the
Great Game had to be inevitably staged. The mounted columns of the British
Forward Policy had to trample them down in order to subdue Afghanistan
and the weakling Muslim principalities beyond Oxus. This Forward Policy
and its occupational imperatives caused a simultaneous and universal up-
rising in the entire tribal belt from Malakand in the north to Waziristan in
the south. In the process of quelling this uprising the British Army also at
last “lifted the veil” of the so far unmolested and inaccessible Tirah Valley
in 1897. Tirah was as it still is, the common home and the ultimate refuge
of all the Khyber tribes. It was also used as a base for the incursions in the
settled territories of the plains, not only to terrorize the plain-dwellers but
also to plunder their property. To teach these unruly tribes a lesson, Tirah
itself was attacked and invaded from the south where some Orakzai areas had
already been occupied in Hangu and the Samana mountain top. From there
the British expedition reached the Aka Khel area in Tirah proper where a
of the Moghul Imperial Armies. Their echoes still resound in folk songs.
number of houses were demolished and herds of cattle and pack animals and
other household property confiscated.. Of course the expedition would have
faced scant opposition from the ill-equipped tribals, who would simply have
vacated their houses and disappear in the alpine jungles around. However,
it is interesting to record the atement of Col.Younghusband who recalls the
Tirah skirmishes. He says: “The Afridis may be driven all day like mountain
sheep but when the night begins to fall and their tired pursuers commence of
necessity to draw back to lower levels for food and rest, these redoubtable foe
rises in all his strength, with sword and gun and huge boulder hurls himself
like a demon on his retiring enemy”. Beyond the Serhai Kandaw (literally the
oak hillock), on the northwest of Aka Khel area, there lay the heartland of
the Tirah Valley, called Maidan (or plain), the original home and habitat of
all the Afridi clans. It is from there that they have ultimately fanned out into
the other territories like Landi Kotal, Jamrud, Bara, and Darra Adam Khel,
of their present occupation. The British forces pursued the fleeing Afridis
right upto their doorstep, in their ancestral habitat, beyond the bleak chain
of inaccessible mountains. After quite some destruction and an ample show
of strength, they retreated back to their base in the plains, perhaps to take
up another such expedition against some other rebel tribe. Although this
devastating expedition seriously injured their tribal pride, but whether it
crushed the tenacity and resolve of the Afridis is a million dollar question.
Unlike the rest of the invaders of India and Central Asia, who used the
Khyber Pass as a convenient passage and a short cut, at times paying meager
tolls to appease the local tribes, the British, however, meant business. Real-
izing the geo-strategic importance of the Pass, they were bent upon annexing
it at all cost. For this purpose they made permanent roads, railways and lines
of communications to facilitate the movement of their armies. They also built
cantonments, forts, towers and piquets for the permanent stationing of their
multiple forces to guard the Pass. During the Second Afghan War (1878),
the Khyber was the first to be declared an Agency, with the appointment
of a political agent, directly responsible to the Viceroy at Delhi, and with
offices at Peshawar and Landi Kotal.28
With these developments, the British followed a general policy of pacifi-
cation and appeasement towards the tribes. An internal malitia—The Khy-
ber Rifles— was raised from among the tribes for keeping local peace and
28
Peshawar was the winter while Landi Kotal was the summer headquarters of the
Khyber Agency as they still are. Both these offices are in their respective cantonments.
guarding the Khyber Pass. Also for the purpose of policing the area, a local
levy—The Khasadar Force—was established. Only the Khasadars and not
the army or militia, could directly deal with the tribes and go to the vil-
lages for sommons etc. At the same time, for the purpose of dealing with
the local tribes, a representative class called Maliks, was also created . Even
village elders were recognized as intermediaries between the government and
the affairs of their villages or clans. Recruitment in these multiple forces,
the roads and railways contracts and construction works offered tremendous
employment opportunities to the poor and penniless local tribal. The Ma-
liks and elders were given handsome annual and even quarterly subsidies
(Majib). The lands requisitioned for roads and railways and other govern-
ment concerns were taken against cash annual payments. In this way, the
British brought about a socio-economic transformation of the local tribes.29
Settled and subjugated to some extent, they were not completely tamed,
whether it was desirable or not. They were left with a real sense of internal
independence and their centuries- old Pakhtoonwali or Riwaj or Sharishta
(traditional tribal law) intact. It was not tried to be replaced by the in-
troduction of the English or Roman law, as was done all over the rest of
the Indian sub-continent. They were spared the agonies of litigations, trials,
convictions, imprisonment and even executions. Their own Jarga system was
considered a better dispensation.
This period also coincided with a general prosperity particularly among
the tribes living in Khyber, Jamrud, Bara and Darra Adam Khel. There was
a gradual increase in the volume of trade between the then British India and
Afghanistan, mostly carried out by these tribal. Transport was mechanized
and instead of pack animals, lumbering trucks were plied between the two
countries. It facilitated the quick movement of trade and a fair means of
income from it to the tribesmen. In this way, the tribals were provided
hundred present employment opportunities. While on the one hand their
standard of living improved tremendously, on the other hand they started
interacting with the outside world and this also improved their standard of
life or living. Their dress manners, living conditions and social manners
were drastically changed for better. They evolved a better culture. While
29
It will require a separate article to review this socio-economic transformation. The
tribes gradually gave up a primitive, medieval life for a fairly modern one. They left
behind a centuries-old barter system and got involved in money economy. Collective
labour (Ashar) was replaced by paid labour (Ojrat). The old feudal system was being
Shaken to the foundation in a slow, evolutionary process.
previously they would be hundred present illiterate, now they started schools
in their areas. These schools gradually grew into high schools and even
colleges, with the result that a fair percentage of their children became not
only literate but some of them turned into scholars and writers. They also
developed a taste for literature not only in Pashto but also in Urdu and
Persian. And they ultimately started creating their own literature in Pashto
most of which was set to music (to the ubiquitous Rabab and Mange), to be
sung in their Hujras, on the celebrations of social occasions like marriages,
Kozhda (engagement), births, Sunat (circumcision), or just for entertainment
and refreshment. This combination with the living traditional music of their
poetry popularized and even glorified the poets. It gave them a pride and
urge to improve and polish their poetry. With this some poets soon crossed
the folklore or romantic threshold of popular taste or appeal to inter the
domain of high philosophy or the mysterious world of mysticism. Such poets
can now be classified with our classical antiquity.
1.3 The Literary Pespective

In order to understand the emergence of the Khyber School of literature, at
the dawn of the twentieth century, we must delve deeper in the hoary past
in order to arrive at the genesis of Pashto literature itself and then follow
its ups and downs and its ultimate flourishing in Khyber. However, it must
be made clear at the outset that one should never begin at the beginning,
for the beginning invariably leads into the merky territories of Oral or Folk
literature, without any sharp boundaries drawn between literature, music,
rituals, riddles, proverbs and a hotchpotch of cultural conglomeration. And
this kind of “literature” can be said to have neither a beginning nor an end.30
Pashto folk and Oral literature is at best timeless and universal; it is as old
as the language itself that embodies it. Since we deal here with a particular
area and its written and recorded literature, the Oral and Folk literature will
have to be ignored.
30
The Oral and Folk literature still very much flourishes all over Pakhtoonkhwa. It
has not yet been completely replaced by a sophisticated, written literature. One reason
for this may be the universal illiteracy, coupled with a primitive life-style and general
taste of the people. The general lack of literacy, reflected in the general apathy towards
Pashto language itself, is also a serious handicap in the development of meaningful, written
literature. No serious literature can be produced in a void where hardly anybody can read
and write.
Pashto literature is divided into convenient periods. The earliest period

spans over 139 H/ 728 AD and 771 H/ 1360 AD. The well-known names of this
period are: Amir Karor, Sulaiman Maku, Malik Yarghushtan, Qutbuddin
Bakhtiar Kaki, Shaikh Mati, Baba Hotak, Beet Baba and Akbar Zamindari.
But their scant and very elementary writing are now relegated to an historical
interest in the march of Pashto literature. It is the second period of Bayazid
Ansari (Pir Roshan) and the writers of his School that has given Pashto
literature some diversity, vigour, veracity and identity. The poets and prose
writers of this period were also well-versed in Persian, Arabic, and Hindi
languages, and they have profusely borrowed from all these languages, as it
would be the need of their Pashto. They also consciously introduced Tassawuf
or mysticism in Pashto literature. As they were never patronized by any
court, they turned to the court of Allah for guidance and grace. They took
ecstatic pleasure in songs of Tauheed (Unity Of God) or wahdatul Wajud
(the unity of being or pantheism).31
1.3.1 Bayazid Ansari (Pir Roshan) In Tirah

Due to some differences with his father, Qazi Abdullah, Bayazid Ansari left
his native village, Kanigoram, in Waziristan and lived in Dawar territory for
some time. From there he shifted to Tirah where he lived Mastiara. Here
he was given a warm welcome by the Tirah tribes of Afridis, Bangash and
Orakzai.32 This encouraged him to announce the founding of a mystic or-
der, the Roshania sect, which attracted numerous converts or adherents and
Bayazid was acknowledged as an accomplished Pir (spiritual leader). This
overwhelming response from the tribals to the call of his spiritual discipline
might have urged Bayazid to found a theocratic state in this area of geostrate-
31
There are two fundamental schools of Sufism: ‘Wahdatul Wajud’ founded by Mohayud
Din Ibnul Arabi and ‘Wahadtul Shuhud’ founded by Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi respectively.
According to Hamza Shinwari, there is no fundamental difference in their basic belief.
Their differences are only verbal and terminological. Hamza has devoted a whole volume
to this controversy. The book is in Urdu, entitled, Wajud-wo-Shuhud, 1970.
32
Since Pir Roshan was opposed to the Moghul Empire (like Khushal Khan after him)
he was driven to the hills. He chose to live in the inaccessible Tirah to avoid the Moghul
might. The onslaught on his mystic creed was carried on by Syed Ali Tarmezi (Pir Baba)
and his more-loyal-than-the-king disciple, Akhun Darweza. To this day it is suspected that
there was Moghul machination in the defamation of Pir Roshan by Pir Baba. Similarly,
the Moghuls pestered Khushal Khan with his own son, Bahram Khan, and the treacherous
son made no secret of his Moghul connections.
gic importance. Soon he started organizing the tribes, imposing taxes and
tithes and giving a practical shape to a virtual independent state in the tribal
territories. This alarmed not only the Moghul Empire in India, the thrones
of Shahinshah Akbar at Delhi and Mirza Muhammad Hakim at Kabul, but
also the local Pirs and religious leaders. His activities were a direct threat to
both the secular and religious set up around him. Bayazid also visited the
local tribes of the plains like Khalil, Mohmand, Daudzai, Gagyani, Yousafzai
Toyi and Safi, who all paid homage to him. However, while the Moghul
forces started pursuing and persecuting him, the opposing Pirs branded him
as a heretic. This was the beginning of a long, protracted struggle which
ultimately ended with the defeat and an anonymous death of Bayazid.
The mission of Bayazid Ansari at Tirah proved to be more of a political
than literary nature. Whether ha has directly inspired any local poet or
writer is not known, as it is not known whether there already were any poets
or writers at Tirah at the time. Still the religious zeal and literary genius
of Bayazid must have inspired a lot of the local tribals and the ones with
literary or poetic talents would have found great encouragement from this
living institution. However, the progeny of kept up the tradition of writing
mystic poetry at Tirah, even long after the death of Bayazid himself.30.
1.3.2 Khushal Khan Khattak At Tirah

Like Pir Roshan and his progeny, Khushal Khan Khattak was also repeatedly
driven to Tirah for refuge. But, it seems, he was more concerned with the
Moghul threat than with the growth of literature there. Instead of poets, if
there were any there at the time, he gathered around himself tough fighters
like Aimal Khan and Darya Khan and their ever-ready lashkar to face any
eventuality. We, therefore, have no record of Khushal Khan’s influence on
the Khyber literature. He could have inspired, while alive, a number of poets
and writers, as he continues to do even after three hundred years. He has
rightly claimed about the Khattaks ;
(If they would sit for a while by the side of Khushal

These Khattaks of the hills would all be turned into poets).
(Khushal)
His influence is there all right on the “Grand Chateau Family.” 33 But a similar
influence is not traceable in the Khyber. However, Khushal himself seems
to have been fascinated by the physical charms of the Afridi damsels. The
following oft-quoted poem corroborates it.
Both fair and rosy, too, are the Adam Khel Afridi maids;
Indeed, amongst them, all sorts of pretty lasses there are-
With large eyes, long drooping lashes, and arched eyebrows-
Honey lips, rosy cheeks, and moon-like faces, too, have they.
Small mouths, like unto rose-buds, teeth regular and white-
Their heads round, and covered with dark curls, of amber redo-
lent.
Their bodies soft and sleek, and like an egg, so smooth and glossy-
Their feet diminutive, their heels round, their hips prominent.
Thin stomached, broad chested, and small waisted-
In stature, straight, like the letter alif, and of complexion fair.
Although my peregrinations may, like the falcon’s, be among the
hills;
Still, many pretty plump partridges my quarry I have made.
Young and untaught, or old and trained, the falcon seeketh his
prey;
But more scientific, and more unerring, is the old bird’s swoop.
It is either the water of the Landdaey river, or of the Barah stream
That tasteth sweeter, and more delicious, than Sherbet in mouth.
The hills in the Matari Pass shoot straight up into the sky;
And one’s corpulence soon diminisheth, climbing and ascending
them.
Along with the Adam Khels into the Tirah country I came;
33
The, ‘Grand Khattak Family’ refers to Khushal Khan Khattak and his progeny. A
number of Khushal Khan’s sons and grandsons happened to be equally great poets and
writers. Hence this collective name.
And having dismissed them to Khwarrah, with regret I returned.

Love’s affairs O KHUSHHAL! Are fraught with fire to excess;
For shouldst thou conceal the flame, the smoke thou still wilt see.
(Taken from Raverty’s SELECTIONS FROM PASHTO POETRY)
A PASHTO - URDU - PERSIAN POET FROM KHYBER
1.3.3 Josh Malihabadi

From the beginning
Having stepped into this valley
Afridi will stay steadfast
To the very last.(Qasim Ali)
In a Pakistan Writers’ Guild Mushaira, held at Karachi in 1958, Hamza

Shinwari came across Josh Malihabadi. He felt that Josh was a virtual Pathan
tribesman minus the Pashto language and the Pathan’s crested turban. At
this Josh claimed that his ancestors belonged to the Malikhel sub-clan of the
Afridi Adam Khal tribe. His grand father was called Sarbiland Khan and
with this he recited the following extempore couplet in Urdu :
(Even now when the morning breeze comes from Khyber

It brings the sound of the heart-beat of my grandpa). ( Josh).
This awakens us to the rude realization of the intellectual drain from Khyber,
through the ages. This feeling is further intensified by the discovery of Qasim
Ali Khan Afridi, although it may be gratifying to know that apart from
Pashto, he has done his best poetry in Urdu and Persian.
1.3.4 Qasim Ali Khan Afridi

Qasim Ali Khan belonged to the Sultan Khan clan of Adam Khel tribe, living
in Durra. His grand father, Neknam Khan migrated to Hindustan in 1119
H / 1708 AD, either because of domestic enmity, or driven by poverty to
try his luck there as a solder of fortune. His father, Burhan Khan eked out
living in various parts of northern India and ultimately settled in Kolhar,
Farakhabad. Apart from Afridis other tribals had also settled there. The
Nawabs of Bangash had established their own principality in Farakhabad.

As brave soldiers, these tribals were readily recruited by the various Nawabs
and Maharajas, through the length and breadth of Hindustan.
Although given good, solid, traditional education, with good grounding
in theology and literature, Qasim Ali Khan also adopted the life of a soldier
which took him to Deccan. When he returned after a long time, he joined
the service of East India company at Shamsabad. After leaving this service
he seems to have dedicated the rest of his life to the pursuit of literature
and from his writings, particularly his Pashto Diwan, it seems that he was
inclined towards asceticism.
Qasim Ali Khan has written a number of books in both prose and po-
etry in all the three languages then spoken in India i.e. Pashto, Urdu and
Persian. Some of his works are preserved by the British Museum Library,
while a manuscript of his Diwan is there in the Islamia College Library. In
his autobiography, Afridi Nama, he claims to have written six books at the
age of thirty nine. These books are :
• Diwane Afridi. ( Pashto )
• Khwab Nama. ( Pashto )
• Diwane Afridi. ( Urdu )
• Afridi Nama: which also carries a list of equivalents of Pashto, Persian,
Hindi, Kashmiri and English vocabulary.
• Shafaat Nama : Which carries a list of the names of the spiritual leaders
of the Qadiria Order of tassawuf. It carries some hymns and panegyrics
also.
• Risala-e-Afridi : ( Persian ) It is a commentary on the condition of his
family and tribe.
• Risala-e-Tassawuf : Which is on the principles of mysticism. Not men-
tioned in the above list.
Qasim Ali Khan was born in 1183 H / 1772 AD. And died either in 1221
H / 1805 AD or 1231 H / 1811. He was born in India and died there. He
writes in his autobiography somewhere that if permitted by life he would
visit his ancestral home at Darra Adam Khel and write its account too. But
apparently this was not granted to him.
This Afridi Nama can also be looked upon as an important historical

document as it is a first-hand record of the political currents and cross-current
of the time. It describes the mutual rivalries and petty skirmishes of the
countless Nawabs, Rajas and Maha Rajas of the time and their helplessness
against the expansionist designs of the British East India company. It even
records the various articles, terms and conditions of some important pacts
and treaties. In this way, it is an unprejudiced and reliable source of historical
information of the time.
Seeing my condition in love,

Majnoon could all but say:
I am going towards the city,
You stay in your wilderness.(Qasim Ali)
1.3.5 The Poets Called Akhuds

In his book, Da Khyber Adab, Murad Shinwari also falls back on Folklore
and Oral literature from the end of the sixteenth to the beginning of the
twentieth century.34 He mentions a strange convention of poetry contest or
poetic declamation, when a poet from a tribe would challenge another poet
from the same or a different tribe for the recitation of extempore versification
(for you wouldn’t call it poetry anyway) . The event would be heralded by
a loud beating of the drum and the shrill blasts of a trumpet. The poets
would face each other at the appointed time and place, surrounded by the
villagers as their audience and judges. One poet would recite an extempore
line and the other would instantly complete it into a neat rhyming couplet,
with a complete idea. The villagers would mock, jeer, growl or laugh as
demanded by the occasion, and their cheers or Jeers would punctuate the
versification. However, the one who failed to meet the obligation would
slink back to his village, licking his wounds like a defeated dog while the
winner would be raised to shoulders and taken to the village in an excited
process like a Greek hero. Those poets ( now the specie is all but extinct )
were called Akhunds and their poetry would be sung to music. They were
mainly patronized by the tribal lords as they would be adept in the art of
entertainment. Murad has related the story of one particularly indefatigable
34
Da Khyber Adab, Murad Ali Shinwari, pp.47-58.
Akhunds called Najeebullah,35 whose fame and fad had spread right up to
Peshawar if not beyond. These poets would be virtual clowns, accompanying
a party of musicians and relating funny anecdotes in the interval. They would
provide dramatic element to music sessions. Hence they can be looked upon
as the medieval tumblers, jesters, clowns if not the actual bards.
1.3.6 The Nineteenth Century

Poets are, however, found in Khyber at the turn of the nineteenth century.
There was a particularly well-known poet called Mira, at Jamrud, in the mid-
dle of the nineteenth century. He was closely followed by Tura Baz Shinwari
from Landi Kotal. At about the same time, an elderly brother of Hamza
Shinwari, Yar Muhammad Shinwari (1886) was also writing poetry. Saidan
Shah Afridi (1897 - ?) was also a poet of the same period. At the dawn of the
twentieth century we have poets like Haji Muhammad Amin Khan Shinwari
(1905 - ?), Akhtar Muhammad Shinwari (1908 - ?) and Khisro Afridi (1927
- 1949) . These poets mostly wrote Ghazal and Charbeta (a poem with four
lines and a refrain, sing with music). Murad Ali has therefore catalogued
them as folk poets as they catered to the popular taste of poetry sung to
music. Their poetry is topical and highly romantic with sensuous and aes-
thetic appeal. Indeed Khisro Afridi among these poets, is still extensively
sung, having the widest (if not the wildest) possible appeal. However, like
the popular English Medieval ballads, the literature of this period has been
fossilized in music and songs, as none of it was published, or perhaps even
written down. None of it is available now even in manuscript form ; and their
families are reluctant to share any record of these poets with any prying re-
searcher or collector or connoisseur of literature. Their work, if any yet left
intact, is bound to perish with the passage of time.
Apart from poetry, so far there has been no trace of any other literary
genre. Most of these poets themselves were illiterate, deprived of even the
elementary mosque education. Prose was unknown to them and drama was
yet to be introduced and novel was to be borrowed from English through
Urdu. Throughout the three hundred years, from the end of the sixteenth to
the beginning of the twentieth century Pashto literature was mainly poetry-
based. And poetry is there in abundance, both sublime and ridiculous. This
brings us to Hamza Shinwari and his School or the Khyber School of Pashto
35
Ibid, pp.50-52 “Hamza Shinwari: A Brief Biography”
literature. According to Dr. Rajwali Shah Khattak, “ The vision or dream

that Khushal Khan Khattak had seen three hundred years ago found fulfill-
ment in the twentieth century in Hamza Shinwari, who could be considered
the rightful inheritor of the great Khan and the renaissance that we trace
from him.” 36 Ruminating on the School of Hamza, Dr. Aminul Haq from
Mardan has reached this conclusion: “ When God Almighty wishes to pre-
serve a nation or its language and literature from the abyss of extinction. He
creates such people in that society, from time to time, to enrich and invigo-
rate its culture and civilization. Such people in Pakhtoon society or Pashto
language were Pir Roshan, Khushal Khan, Abdur Rahman, Abdul Hameed
and Ali Khan. The same mission is now being fulfilled by Amir Hamza Khan
Shinwari.” 37
1.3.7 Amir Hamza Khan Shinwari

(His fame resounded there
When I visited Peshawar ;
I was looking for Hamza
In desolate graveyards). (Hamza).
Born at Landi Kotal in 1907, Hamza was put in collegiate School at Peshawar
at the age of five or six. Soon he developed an obstinate apathy to School
and withdrew into his miserable shell for the entire span of some eight or nine
years of his School life. His father had rented a Balakhana at Dabgari street,
Peshawar city. His frequent visits to this place would provide him some relief
from the suffocating School atmosphere. One day when he came to the place,
his elder brother took him to the theatre. This was his first experience of the
theatre and its glittering and jingling, make-believe, magic world. It turned
his plastic mind and affected him so deeply and so thoroughly that from then
on he made it a mission of his life never to miss the theatre again. He was
so infected by this insidious or invidious virus that he crammed up all the
dialogues of those crude, pristine plays. With this he was hopelessly taken to
acting, seeing himself now in the cast of a clown and now a hero. This juvenile
interest in the theatre and the world of films and acting propelled him to try
36
Dr. Raj Wali Shah Khattak, The Frontier Post, Peshawar (Hamza Supplement), dated
24.10.1989.
37
Dr.Amin-ul-Haq in Za Au Hamza, Abdur Rahman Lugai Kakakhel; p.174.
his luck at Bombay, the then subcontinental Hollywood. Although this long
tour of great expectations turned out to be a complete misadventure, yet
he was by no means demoralized and in 1920 succeeded in getting a role
of a dacoit in a silent movie called The Falcon, made by the Punjab Film
Company, Lahore. However it was in 1941 that his craze for films found
complete fulfillment in making the first-ever Pashto film, Laila Majnoon, in
Bombay, in collaboration with Rafique Ghaznavi. Later on he wrote scripts
for two more Pashto films, Paighla (the virgin) and Allaqa Ghair (the tribal
territory). Both were filmed at Lahore during the sixties. Hamza had left
school in 9th class to join some service in the Political Department, only to
leave it after some time for assisting his father in his railway construction
contracts. After some time he joined a railway service, again to leave it for
the tour of Bombay, in search of a role in some thaetrical company or film.
He was also married soon after leaving school, in order “to tie him to a pig”
as they say in Pashto.
1.3.7.1 Initiation In Mysticism

By the thirties he was deeply entrenched in Sufism. About his initiation in
this esoteric discipline he has said some where:”I stepped into this Hairatabad
(wonderland) in 1930. I was not consciously inclined that way before. It
would be more true to say that I have not come here of my own accord but
have simply been dragged to it.” 38 But once entering these enticing portals he
then lived there for good, unruffled by the ups and downs of life or the push
and pull of his own base nature, demanding sensuous and carnal pleasures.
Soon he carved a niche for himself in the awesome temple of mysticism to
be venerated more as a Murshid (spiritual mentor) than one of the greatest
of Pashto poets. Perhaps the credit of it all goes to his far-sighted Shaikh
(spiritual guide) who dragged him to the path of Salook (spiritualism) in the
very formative years of his young and restless life, which was but poised for
a leap in the void, unmindful of hell or heaven. We can not but appreciate
his practical wisdom in first advising Hamza against his own will, to take
to Pashto literature instead of Urdu, as was his wont, and then formally
initiating him in the eternal lore of mysticism to add yet another and more
subtle dimension to his vastly promising and fecund life.
Hamza took formal allegiance at the hand of Syed Abdus Sattar Shah
38
Meri Zindagi, 1976, p.76
(lovingly called Bacha Jan) in the Chishtia Nizamia Order. Bacha Jan lived
in the Dabgari Street, Peshawar City, where his house (which Hamza would
call Astana) was always thronged by the devotees of Tariqat (esoterecism).
On his death in 1954 Hamza started acting as his Khalifa (successor). Later
on Hamza wrote his memoirs which were published in Urdu in 1969, under
the title, Tazkira-e-Sattaria. It was translated in Urdu by Tahir Bokhari, a
disciple of Hamza. Its Pashto original was not published.
1.3.7.2 Poetry And Kindered Literary Activities

Perhaps Hamza was a born poet. He started writing poetry when he was in
6th class at school. In the beginning he thought that perhaps poetry was
a bye-product of literacy or an extension of the simple ability to read and
write.. Another misconception that he also suffered from then was that if one
was to write any poetry it should be in Urdu, as if Urdu was the language
of poetry and poor Pashto the language of hell; or perhaps Pashto was never
considered fit for poetic expression. It was in the twenties that he started
writing Urdu poetry which a senior student, Maulana Abdul Qadir (later the
founding director of Pashto Academy, Peshawar) would correct for him. I
shall quote here a part of one of his Urdu Ghazals, leaving it untranslated
with the hope that it will be understood as it is:
It was in 1937 that a Pashto literary society called Bazm-e-Adab was
established at the house of Syed Abdus Sattar Shah, with the active pa-
tronage of the enlightened Pir. Apart from Bacha Jan himself its founding
fathers were Syed Rahat Zakheli as its president, Hamza Shinwari as its vice-
president and Bad Shah Gul Niazi as its General Secretary. After some time
the Presidentship was entrusted to Hamza Shinwari to look after its affairs
right upto 1950 when it was merged in a larger society called Ulasi Adabi
Jarga.
This Bazme-e-Adab was perhaps the first ever Pashto literary society of
its kind in the entire Frontier Province. It started holding Pashto Mushairas
not only in the city schools but also at the Shrine of Rahman Baba. These
Musharias soon became very popular and the annual Rahman Mushaira was
turned into an Urs to be celebrated with great devotion. It was in 1940 in one
such Mushaira that Hamza Shinwari was given the title of Baba-e-Ghazal,
when he recited the Ghazal of which the following two couplets have been
taken:
(I am invited by the Raqib.
It may only be a trap for revenge.

Your dark eyes are bent on my heart.
The Moors are again poised for storming the Kaaba) (Hamza)
For a number of years this society actively worked for the revival of Pashto
letters. Its scope expanded with the passage of time. A time came when a
larger and more representative society or circle was visualized to accommo-
date poets and writers from the entire province.
It was in 1950 that the Bazm-e-Adab was finally merged into the Ulasi
Adabi Jarga. The moving spirit behind this august Jarga was Sanobar Hus-
sain Kakaji with Hamza Shinwari and Dost Muhammad Khan Kamil as its
vice-president and general secretary respectively. Its membership also swelled
and consisted of Qalandar Momand, Ajmal Khattak, Mir Mehdi Shah, Wali
Muhammad Toofan, Fazli Haq Shaida, Saifur Rahman Salim, Afzal Bangash,
Latif Wahmi, Hussain Khan Soz, Ayub Sabir, Farigh Bokhari, Raza Ham-
dani, Qamar Rahi and a number of others. Apart from promoting poetry
this Jarga also paid equal attention to the promotion of Pashto prose. It
also held regular criticism sessions to groom the younger generation of poets
in this vital side of literature.. It held regular sessions at the Balakhana of
Kamil in Khyber Bazar, Peshawar City.
Hamza was also the first major poet to have consciously created and
carefully sustained a pervading literary consciousness throughout the Khyber
and even beyond. He raised a fresh crop of young, talented poets who were
soon to yield a rich literary harvest, ready for export to Afghanistan and
the rest of the Pashto-speaking world. Since then most of those poets have
established themselves in their own right. Most of them have published their
collections of poetry and prose works. Their songs from the radio, television,
films and the local musicians are a source of perennial joy. I intend to write
a separate, and slightly more detailed note on each of them towards the end.
In the preface to Hamza Shinwari’s Ghazawoone (Yawning: a collection of
poetry) Qalandar Momand maintains, “The poetry of Hamza Shinwari is not
confined to him alone; it is the poetry of all the contemporary Ghazal writers;
their expression, construction, style, imagery, and even their diction have all
been influenced by the Ghazal of Hamza. So, if the poetry of Hamza is to
be discussed, it will necessitate the discussion of all the contemporary poets,
which is a difficult task.” 39 Similarly, comparing Hamza to a lighthouse for the
39
An article on Hamza Shinwari by Qalandar Momand, The Frontier Post, Peshawar
coming generations of poets and writers. Noor Muhammad Zigar has written:
“It is a law of nature that every age is provided with such personalities as can
determine the standard and keep the wheel of evolution turning, whenever
a society reaches a stage of evolution when the previous standards no longer
hold good then a new sage emerges. Only the one with the enlightened mind,
high thoughts, strong morals and good manners is selected from among the
entire society for its guidance. Such a person is usually a symbol of unity
and universality and his influence transcends all the barriers of caste, colour
or creed. Though localized by necessity, his art and thought can benefit the
entire human society. Apart from his own time, such a person can be like
a lighthouse for the coming ages. Hamza has also been compared to a huge
tree with its roots deep down in the classical tradition, its trunk a source of
strength for the present age, while its tender, high boughs and the flowers
and fruit therein are a symbol of hope and nourishment for the posterity.
1.3.7.3 Contribution To Pashto Prose

As compared to poetry, Pashto prose is rather poor. Many of our great
writers, of course with a few fortunate exceptions, have paid hardly any heed
to this equally vital branch of literature; they have hardly ever wandered
from the ever-green pastures of poetry into the arid zone of prose. But on
the contrary Hamza has written more prose than poetry, with great diversity
and equally great depth. Starting with stories and essays, he soon stepped
into mysticism from where he took the bumpy highway to philosophy. He
has also written a novel, two volumes of travelogues, a biography and an
autobiography. There is hardly any aspect of life and literature that be might
have left untouched. In the beginning he used to write, essay, stories and
short stories which used to be published in various magazines including the
prestigious Nan Paroon (now-a-days) which used to be published from Delhi
during the second World War. Later on they were collected and published in
a miscellany called Zhawar Fikroona (deep thoughts). In 1937 he published
his major work on mysticism under the title Tajjaliat-e-Muhammadia (the
refulgence of Muhammad). It can truly be called a compendium on Sufism.
Like the Kashful Mahjoob of Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh, it can be a text-
book on Islamic mysticism. In 1957 he published the account of his tour
of Afghanistan, Nawe Pakhtoon (New Pakhtoon) and in 1958 he published
(Hamza Supplement), 24th November, 1989.
a novel called Nawe Chape (new waves). These were followed in 1959 by a
treatise Yaw Shir (one couplet) on the following couplet of Khushal Khan.
(I observe the same face in every thing
that disappeared in His over-creation) (Khushal)
In 1962 he published his first major work in philosophy called Zhwand (life),
and published its Urdu Version Insan Aur Zindagi in 1964. In 1967 he pub-
lished the accounts of his pilgrimage to Makka with this verse as its title:
(Even a my way to Hijaz
I go with-Pakhtoon caravans (Hamza).
In 1970 he published the Urdu version of the memoir of his Shaikh, Syed
Abdus Sattar Shah. It was written in Pashto but he got it translated in
Urdu by Tahir Bokhari. The Pashto version has not yet been published.
Round about the same time he published another philosophical treatise called
Taskheer Da Kayinat (the conquest of the Universe). In 1970 he published
Wajud Wa Shahud (the essence and the apparent) in Urdu. This is a de-
tailed commentary on the letters of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, commonly called
Mujjadid-Alf-e-Sani. In 1976 he wrote his autobiography in Urdu, entitled
Meri Zindagi (my life) on the repeated requests of a friend, Kanwar Muham-
mad Azam Ali Khan. It has not been published so far. The original MS lies
with Syed Anis Shah Jilani in Sadiqabad, Punjab. In 1980 he published Ana
Aur Ilm (Ego and Knowledge) in Urdu, its Pashto version was published in
1982. It was called Insani Ana Au Poha (Human Ego and Knowledge).
1.3.7.4 Transalations
Hamza has translated the entire Dewan of Rahman Baba in Urdu Verse.
It was published by Pashto Academy in 1963. Then he did Pashto verse
translations of Allama Iqbal’s Armaghane Hijaz and Javed Nama. They
were jointly published by Pashto Academy, Peshawar, and Iqbal Academy,
Karachi, in 1964 and 1967 respectively.
1.3.7.5 Contribution To Pashto Drama

The drama of Hamza is radio drama. When the radio station was opened in
Peshawar in 1935, along with Abdul Mazloom and Samandar Khan Saman-
dar, Hamza Shinwari was one of its pioneers in dramatics. Da Weeno Jam
(bloody cup) by Aslam Khattak was the first play to be broadcast from there.
Hamza had played the role of the judge in that play. Soon he wrote his first
play, Zamindar (the farmer) for radio. This was followed by hundreds of plays
and features over a life-long association with the radio. According to Farooq
Shinwari, Hamza has written four hundred plays for the radio. Hamza him-
self would modestly put it at more than a hundred. The irony is that most of
there plays are now simply lost as he would hand in the original manuscript,
hoping that the radio-wallas would be keeping a record. But having shifted
its premises twice since then the radio establishment has simply “misplaced”,
if not actually burnt or sold in junk, all the valuable old record. Safur Rah-
man Syed has dug up some sixty names of the plays of Hamza, from the old
diaries of the radio. But they are just names and no more. However, by a
happy stroke of good luck the following manuscripts of his plays have been
preserved.
• Ahmad Shah Abdali
• Akhtar Mo Mubarak Shah (Eid Greeting).
• Dva Bakhilan (two misers).
• Fateh Khan Rabia .
• Guman Da Eman Zyan De (doubt under mines faith).
• Khan Bahadur Sahib.
• Khushal Khan Khattak .
• Khaisto.
• Matali Shair (the poet of proverbs)
• Maimoona.
• Muqabila (competition).
• Qurbani (sacrifice).
• Spansare Peghla (the Spinster) and

• Zhranda Garhe (the miller).40
There is also the MS of Khukale Bala (the beautiful bogy) which is a transla-
tion of Agha Hasher Kashmiri’s Urdu Stage Play, Khoobsoorat Bala. Some
of his plays like Da Damano Khar (city of the professional Singers) and Da
Charsiyano Badshah (King of the Hashish Smokers) were also recorded by a
gramophone company in Delhi, whether by His Master’s Voice or some other
company we will never be able to ascertain, nor probably will ever retrieve
from the dust of oblivion those obsolete, round plastic discs called records.
This recording was first done at Peshawar and then at Delhi.
The following is by no means a complete list of Hamza Shinwari’s pub-
lished works. And this is beside his equal amount of unpublished works.
1.3.7.6 POETRY
• Baheer (The stream), first edition, Peshawar, 1983.
• Da Khyber Wagme (the Khyber Breezes), first edition, Kabul, 1968.
• Da Zrha Awaz (Voice of the heart), first edition, Peshawar, 1951.
• Ghazawoone (yawning), Eighth edition, Peshawar, 1984.
• Prewoone (the pleides), first edition, Peshawar. 1986.
• Salgai (sobs), first edition, Peshawar, 1989.
• Sparlay Pa Ayina Khe (spring in the mirror), first edition, Peshawar,

1986.
• Zhwand Au Yoon (life and Evolution), first edition, Peshawar, 19(7).
• Yoon (Excelsior), first edition, Peshawar, 1963.
• Dewane Abdur Rehman (Urdu Translation), first edition, Peshawar,

1963.
• Iqbal’s Armaghane Hijaz (Pashto verse), first edition, Peshawar, 1964.
• Iqbal’s Javed Nama (Pashto verse), first edition, Peshawar, 1967.

40
All these plays are in manuscript form. The plays Hamza have not been published.
1.3.7.7 PROSE
• Ana Aur Ilm (Ego and knowledge), Urdu, first edition, Peshawar, 1980.
• Da Hijaz Pa Lor (on the way to Hijaz), Pashto first edition, Peshawar,
1970.
• Insan Aur Zindagi (Man and life), Urdu, first edition, Peshawar, 1964.
• Insani Ana Au Poha (Human Ego and knowledge), Pashto, first edition,
Peshawar, 1982.
• Meri Zindagi (autobiography) Urdu, MS, 1976.
• Nawai Pakhtoon (Modern Pakhtoon), Pashto, first edition, Peshawar,

1958.
• Nawe Chape (New waves), Pashto, first edition, Peshawar, 1957.
• Tajjaliate Muhammed (the Refulgence of Muhammad), Pashto, first

edition, Peshawar, 1937.
• Taskheer Da Kayenat (the conquest of Universe), Pashto, first edition,

Peshawar, nd.
• Tazkerae Sattariya (memoirs of Sattar) Urdu, first edition, Peshawar,

1970.
• Wajud Wa Shuhud (the essence and the manifest), Urdu, first edition,
Peshawar, 1970.
• Yaw Shi’r (one couplet), Pashto, first edition, Peshawar,1959..
• Zhawar Fikroona (Deep thoughts), Pashto, first edition, Peshawar, nd.
We will review bellow some of the other poets of the Khyber School. As
we will see, some of them have already established themselves as poets and
writers of some stature, with significant and enduring contribution to Pashto
literature. They are no more known with a reference to Hamza Shinwari;
they have evolved an individual style of their own, to be known and regarded
on the strength and weakness of their own merit. As we will see bellow, most
of them have proved their worth by doing ample justice to their calling. It
is another thing that collectively we lump them under the Khyber School of
literature. But then they too would be proud of their being part and parcel
of this preponderant tradition.
1.3.8 Mohammad Akram Khan Farooq Shinwari

(Like the sun he shines in the sky of poetry.
Why further describe Farooq when so evident). (Farooq).
One of the earliest and the greatest poets and the closest to Hamza Shinwari
is Muhammad Akram Khan Farooq Shinwari. Apart from being a great
poet Akram Farooq was also a dramatist and a keen critic. He is considered
an authority on Hamza because he himself is a poet and writer of equal
standing. After receiving the traditional religious and Persianised education
first from Qayamuddin Khadim in his village and then from some Qazi in a
Thakhtbai village, he started writing poetry in 1935-36. He was one of the
first Landikotal poets to be attracted to Hamza Shinwari, who was considered
a poet of a far higher stature by that time. Their acquaintance turned into
a lifelong friendship. About his relationship with Hamza he writes in his
Bayaz (MS of collected works) "When I have opened my eyes in the world
of literature and have come to know about the various formalities without
which poetry can not hope to endure, I am convinced that it is all because
of Ostad Hamza Shinwari. A glance at my earlier poetry will reveal what I
mean. I needn’t further extol him."41
Apart from writing poetry Farooq also used to be writing plays for the
radio. His play Afimi (the opium addict) became very popular. He was also
an active member of the Bazm-e-Adab as well as the Ulasi Adabi Jarga and
participated in all those Mushairas held at the shrines of Rahman Baba and
Khushal Khan Khattak. Here we will quote just two or three couplets from
his poetry:
(Why wonder at the differences among people.

The same branch gives off Flowers as well as thorns). (Farooq).
(The mirror would only show you to you.
The beloved is but a step on the way to yourself). (Farooq).
41
Preface to Hamza Shinwari’s Ghazawoone, p. 3
(Where now is the kingdom of Aurangzeb?

. Didn’t he leave behind all his treasures .
But look at the poetic treasure of Khushal..
It has spread on the east and the west). (Farooq).
1.3.9 Nazer Shinwawri

Would that I were even a cripple
But on my way to the beloved
Rising and falling, but rising again.
(Sorry for you trouble, The angel of death.
The one I was dying for, Just came by chance). (Nazer Shinwari)
The next worthy poet of this School is Lalzada Nazer Shinwari whom Murad
Ali would call the Socrates of the Khyber. Hamza himself refers to him as
"The teacher of the younger generation of poets,"42 as it is mainly he who
corrects their poetry and looks after the brood. He is Hamza Shinwari’s
nephew (sister’s son), hence Hamza looks upon the disciples of Nazer as his
(Hamza’s) grandsons. Hamza believes that Nazer is the next greatest poet
of the school. Although basically illiterate, Nazer has deeply read not only
Pashto but also Urdu literature. In this sense he is a self-taught prodigy and
a self-made poet, second only to his great uncle, Hamza Shinwari. We will
quote here one or two of his verses:
Nazer has also published his first collection of Ghazals and Rubaiyats
under the titile Mazal (Destination). His poetry has uniform simplicity
and sweetnesst, although wrapped in apparent philosophical idiom. Unlike
Hamza, he neither a mystic nor a philosopher; he is all but a poet. Having
no unearthly, high sounding pretensions, poetry for him means, in the words
of Wordsworth, “a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”
His expression is romantic and his love is, unlike the divine love of Rah-
man Baba, very much worldly and sensuous. And like Hamza Shinwari, his
language the purest and sweetest Pashto. At the same time he seems to have
an ear for metre, rhythm and the resultant melodey and music. Hence his
poetry is widely sung with music.
42
Da Khyber Adab, p.20
(With ignorance for a companion,

This escort itself becomes a danger).(Nazer).
(Make new scabbards for your old swords.
Give new titles to the old chapters of your history).(Nazer
(Some evil eyesight may fall on you.
For God’s sake don’t laugh on the way).(Nazer).
Why do you ask Nazer
About the beauty of his beloved;
Where is the concept of colour
In the consciousness of a blind?
1.3.10 Murad Ali Shinwari

(A mendicant used to live here,.
Do you remember, Peshawar!?).(Murad Ali)
Murad Ali is the most qualified, the most well read and the most well in-
formed poet of this School. He has the most forceful and the most attractive
personality and a typical life and literary style among all the older and even
the younger generation of poets. He can be said to be a bridge between the
now sharply defined generation gap. He is the sole son of Hamza Shinwari
and has been attracted to poetry and literature from a fairy young age. He
can be said to have inherited poetry, if not some Jagir, from his great father,
and it is very much there in his veins. He is a poet, prose writer, dramatist
as well as critic. Unlike his legendary father, he is not a prolific writer, but
whatever little he writes, he writes it with considerable ease, charm and au-
thority. He is drawn to new experiments in Pashto literature. He is therefore
in favor of translations as well as adopting the canons of the Progressive
Writers from Urdu literature. Unlike his father there is no attraction in Su-
fism for him; he simply ridicules the mysterious art (or sciences) of alchemy
and apothecarianism, and philosophical riddles have no appeal for him. He
is a modern, practical man and has a pragmatic approach to literature. His
poetry is partly nationalistic but mainly romantic. Unlike his father, who
is called the father of Pashto Ghazal, Murad has been strongly drawn to
Nazam. His eternal Nazams are about the most valuable contribution to our
literature. His Nazams like “YOON” (exelsure), “ADE PAKHTO” (mother

Pashto), “TATARRA” (a peak in the Khyber), “DAULAT KAKA”, “RAH-
MAN BABA”, “SHAHEED” (the martyr) and “DA DOST MUHAMMAD
KAMIL PA MRHENA” (on the death of Dost Muhammad Kamil) are con-
sidered a landmark in Pashto literature.43
He has also translated some poems of Tennyson, particularly “The Lady
of Shallot”, (it is not surprising that of all the English poets Tennyson should
appeal to him most) and Shakespeare’s MERCHANT OF VENICE in Pashto.
Lately he has been drawn to the Radio, T.V. and the film world. For a time
he was a permanent employee of the radio as a script writer. Simultaneously
he wrote a large number of songs for the T.V. and Pashto films. One feels
that Murad Ali has not fully exploited his unbounded genius.44 However, he
is still as active and as productive as ever. He is like a live, rumbling volcano,
erupting every now and then with a molten lava of prose and poetry. Here
we will give two or three examples from his immortal works:
(Being a Pakhtoon,.
Your love turned me into a Moghul.
When you ambush the Khyber.
I pass through the Tatara).(Murad)
(Where one is afraid of ones own shadow.
What to do with such a village.
Where thieves are sentinels).(Murad)
(He is crazy after knowledge,
And can not rest in peace,
Once again he will have undertaken,
Some other piece of research.
I am watching the zigzag paths,
Of Khalil and Mohmand for him,
That Kamil will return one day,
43
In writing Nazam Murad Shinwari is second only to his illustrious father, Hamza
Shinwari
44
This is a common feeling about Murad Shinwari that he could have been a prolific
poet and writer which he has failed to be.
With layers of dust all over him,

With hair crusty and unkempt,
With his shirt wide open in front,
With the lost book of Shaikh Malli,
In his eager grasp). (Murad)
1.3.11 Khyber Afridi

(They get lost in the book of your face,
The entire Shinwari, Afridi and Mullagori tribes). (Khyber)
His real name is Syed Ahmad Jan with Khyber his pen name and Afridi his
tribe. He belongs to the Kuki Khel clan of the Afridi tribe. Along with
Khatir Afridi he is the most popular poet of this School. In the beginning
he used to be more close to the Guru or Baba i.e. Hamza Sahib, than any
other poet, so much so that this closeness used to be grudged by some of the
other poets, who would consider it a sheer monopoly, infringing on their own
rights on the great man. However, of late he seems to have undergone some
transformation, which has resulted in a conspicuous distance between the
Guru and the Shagird. Hamza himself would now ascribe this long closeness
to a profound misunderstanding on his part.45
Khyber is equally impressed by Nazer Shinwari, the unfailing teacher or
guide of the younger generation of poets. Among the old poets he has been
impressed by Khushal Khan Khattak. Lalzada Nazer writes about him,
"Khyber is the forth in my fold of disciples, the other three being Qayyum
Kausar, Misri Khan Khatir and Ahmadzai Qasir. In the beginning he would
send his poetry for correction by letters. Then we met. Then he became
a teacher at Landikotal and we would often meet. I have trained many
students both before and after Khyber but the milestones that Khyber has
passed in his onward march of poetry are as yet beyond all the rest of my
brood. It will not be an exaggeration if I claim that Khyber can now be
counted among the greatest Ghazal writers in Pashto".46 Khyber Afridi died
in 1995 of kidney failure. He was hardly forty years old, and at the peak
of his poetic power. In his life time he had published a prose account of
45
This Hamza has said in one of his diaries.
46
Lalzada Nazer Shinwari in Da Khyber Leekwal by Kalim Shinwari, 1989, p.46
the Khyber poets called Angaza and a collection of poetry called Garzandi
(turns). Some of his poetry has been posthumously published by his family.
He has left a large amount of unpublished poetry. Here we will give two or
three examples from his memorable poetry:
(Inside they were laughing at me,

I was laughing at them outside) (Khyber).
(Alone with you in this awesome forest of Gurgur grove.
This Pakhtoonkhwa I shiver with fear). (Khyber)
1.3.12 Khatir Afridi

(Khatir, your beloved lives in the Khyber.
May the entire valley be over grown with the Syrian rue). (Khatir).
Perhaps Khatir is the most well known poet of this School as far as folk
music is concerned; he alone is the most widely sung poet whether here in
the Frontier or there in Afghanistan. May be his poetry is sheer music as
music was his most favorite hobby along with poetry and gardening.47 He
has said somewhere:
(By sowing seeds of flowers.

I am growing beloved’s of the Bulbuls),(Khatir).
Like Keats Khatir died young, He was hardly thirty years old when he died of
consumption or T.B. Also like Keats he can be set against our Shakespeare
i.e. Hamza Shinwari, not because of his actual output but because of his
poetic promise and literary potential. or may be in anticipation of early
death he has simply blurted out all the best in him. His Diwan (collection of
verses) has been posthumously published by the Tatara Pashto Adabi Jarga
(Tatara Pashto literary circle), Khyber in 1987, compiled by Muqaddar Shah
and Fazle Rabbi Qais. It has 114 Ghazals, 26 Nazams and a miscellany of
other poetry. It was published in May, 1987 and must have sold like hot
cakes for its second edition was brought out in the following month i.e. June
1987. I don’t know of any other book having such a supersonic sale (if I may
borrow this aviation metaphor). A Diwan of Khatir was also said to have
47
As quoted by Khyber Afridi in his Da Khyber Angaze, 1982, p.30
earlier been published from Kabul. Hamza Shianwari writes about Khatir,"
Poetry was in his blood but the guidance of Nazer kindled fire in it. I have
also guided him repeatedly. He would go to Mushairas with us. Khyber
Afridi used to tease him. From appearance he did not look like a poet but
when he would start reciting his Ghazal, the spectators would feel as if a
colourful stream was flowing".48
Writing about the humour of Khatir, Khyber Afridi writes, "If Khatir had
concentrated on humour his contribution to Pashto literature would have
been still more healthy and full of vital tonics. Whatever the cease-fire
that Nazer would so painstakingly effect among Murad, Qasir, Khyber and
Khatir, it would be violated at the first opportunity",49 This refers to their
attacking each other with the sharp arrows of their humorous poetry, with
the best tradition of the Roman gladiators, with their bleeding wounds being
thoroughly enjoyed by the cheerful spectators. Khyber has drawn a graphic
picture of Khatir in the following way:
Height: Hardly four feet.
Colour: Dark, pale, gray.
Eyes: Average (bordering on largeness),
Lips: Thin, dry, parched.
Forehead: 2 1/2" x 1 1/2"

50
Dress: Shalwar Kamees, waste coat, turban, Peshawari chappal.
The face of Khatir had been dried by the winds of time and his heart drained
by the leakage of love. He defied change for ages. He was like a wooden statue.
He didn’t have much blood in him. At last, on 22 August 1970 his heart was
broken by the world. Vomiting the palmful blood, he became cold and stiff
in death.51 Here we will give two or three examples from his most quotable
poetry:
48
Hamza Shinwari in his preface to the Divan-e-Khatir, compiled by Muqaddir Shah
Muqaddir and Fazle Rabi Qais, Peshawar, 1087, p.11
49
Da Khyber Angaze, op cit, p.31
50
the turban and chappal would somehow add to his height
51
Da Khyber Angaze, op cit, p.32
(You will have seen yourself

In one colour in the mirror;
Come and see for yourself
How you appear in every Ghazal of Khatir).
(What if I am more leaden with your grief,
A bough never breaks under the flowers ).(Khatir).
(Death and separation came together,
Should I opt for this or this??) .(Khatir).
(The way you look at me,
As if you don’t look at me .
The shaft of your slanting sight
Goes straight through my heart).(Khatir).
(People have lost their heads for it .
Khatir hopes for a kiss by the asking).(Khatir).
1.3.13 Sahir Afridi

Sahir Afridi is also a well sung poet of this school. His name is Zinat Shah and
like Khyber Afridi, he belongs to Jamrud. They are also exact contemporaries
and even class fellows. But unlike Khyber, who was a Shagird of Hamza,
Sahir claims to have been self-taught in the art of poetry. His poetry is
mainly romantic and he has also chosen Ghazal for the expression of his
muse. Most of his poetry has been published in a book called " (the foot
ornament). Although he claims to be having no teacher, to be doing poetry
on his own; to be his own teacher, as it were, yet he seems to be visibly
influenced by Hamza Shinwari. About Hamza he himself writes:
(After putting forehead on the door frame of Hamza.

People came to know of the songs of Sahir) .(Sahir).
He has started writing poetry since 1957 when he was a budding young
student at Jamrud high school. Since then he has been regularly writing
poetry. Like that of Khatir his poetry is full of music and widely sung. His
poetry has also found its way to the radio and T.V. The local musicians also
fondly sing his songs. Kalim Shinwari writes about him, "Although Sahir
has not held the hand of any teacher (sought guidance from no one) in the
intricate paths of Ghazal, yet he has carved for himself a distinctive place
among the Ghazal writers from Jamrud. If conditions were favorable for him
he would contribute a great deal to the Pashto literature".52 His poetry is
like this:
(The spring departs from the garden.

In the noise of falling leaves
Lets be going Sahir.
After burning all desires) .(Sahir).
(If you remember, Sahir,
I remember them too.
There is just a faint memory
Of the stories of our love).(Sahir).
(Perhaps some one has
Again undone the tresses,
When this fragrance
Seems to have spread around).(Sahir).
1.3.14 Noor Mohammad Zigar Afridi

Noor Muhammed Zigar Afridi was born in 1928 in Chak No. 7, Multan. He
is the younger brother of Amir Muhammad Saghir Afridi. He was educated
upto 8th class in government high school, Peshawar. His education was dis-
continued due to young marriage and his life was disjointed by the death of
his young wife, who left for eternity after a mere two years of their married
life. He was strongly drawn to poetry or poetry can be said to have been in
his blood like the rest of all the Khyber poets. In 1946 he was recruited in
the Khyber Rifles Militia where he came into contact with Muhammad Omar
Seemab and Murad Shinwari. Through them he was introduced to Hamza
Shinwari and his extended and enticing literary circle. Since he was a bird the
same feathers, soon he was sucked into the local literary mainstream. This
52
Da Khyber Leekwal op, cit, p.55
left an indelible mark on his on his budding genius. Poetry provided him not
only solace but an escape from the scars of an unfulfilled love but also a pos-
itive mission in life and a suitable media for the propagation of his message.
If on the one hand there is deep pathos in his Ghazals, on the other hand
his Nazams are full of vigour and reminiscent of the Pakhtoon glory. Like a
true practical soldier, he is proud of his preponderant Pakhtoon heritage and
takes Ahmad Shah Abdali for his hero. He translated the hereditary fighting
instinct in his blood into martial poetry. Like Ovid he also sings "Of arms
and the men”. Along with poetry Zigar later on also started writing prose.
He has written stories and a novel. He is the exact contemporary of Murad,
Khatir and Khyber and has been able to attain the same stature. Hence
some examples from his poetry:
(I would have put it on your door step .

But this skull is full of Pashto, dear .(Zigar).
(When I became a disciple of Hamza .
I became a teacher of the world.(Zigar).
(Why did you forget your iconoclastic habits,
Why rusted the Abdali sword in the scabbord).(Zigar).
(You wanted to somehow
Generate the world of your love ,
Otherwise, sweet God;53
What is so sacred about the wheat?) ..(35).(Zigar).
( When the nightingale saw dew on the flower,
The spring brought soft tears to his eyes) . .(Zigar).
1.3.15 Qayyum Kausar Afridi

Qayyum Kausar Afridi was also a young poet of eminence and promise. He
was the exact contemporary of Khyber, Khatir and Sahir. But for the last
thirty years he has paid scant attention to poetry. Perhaps he also believes
with Akram Farooq that "poetry and poverty go hand in hand", as if they
53
Wheat was the forbidden fruit that caused the fall of Adam for his disobedience to
partake of it.
are but brother and sister or that "one doesn’t live by poetry alone”. Khyber
Afridi has described him in these words, "He is jolly, cheerful, hardworking
and sagacious plays Sitar and Banjo; understands the ups and downs of
music. He is an artist, painter and even a sculptor. He writes good Ghazal,
Nazam and even prose. He is a born artist but economic considerations have
dampened his immense enthusiasm. He has also studied for some time at
Islamia College”.54 He was also a disciple of Nazer Shinwari and a close
friend of Khatir Afridi and Khyber Afridi and all the poets and writers of
that now graying generation. His best Nazam is “Da Tirah Da Lam Naqsha”
(the scene of the Tirah expedition). In this Nazam an Afridi tribesman girds
his loins and picks up his sword to participate in the famous Tirah expedition
of 1878. His little son doesn’t understand his Papa’s going like that. The
poem is like an extended lecture, charged with emotions and brimming with
honour and chivalry, about an honest father to an innocent son. The poem
has a tragic ring for the father is sure not come back alive from this bloody
expedition. However, he can be succeeded by his son in carrying out this
unequal and cruel war of national independence.
(As you are a baby, it is my turn,

But remember tomorrow will be your turn
You will inherit the responsibility of the tribe,
You are better dead than disgraced.
Tell your mommy "I am going to papa"
My dear son, am going to an exciting game).(Kausar).
(O morning breeze, when you blow
Towards my flowery beloved
Also take along every wish of Kausar)
1.3.16 Ihsan Zaheer Afridi

Ihsan Zaheer Afridi is another poet from Jamrud and a contemporary of
Kausar, Khyber and Khatir. He is famous for writing Nazams with a marked
local touch. He has also published his Diwan under the title Lambe (flames).
By now he is the highest qualified member of this school as he claims to have
54
Da Khyber Angaze op, cit, p.39
attained a doctorate degree from London where he stayed for some five years
after graduating from the Punjab University.
Like Qayyum Kausar, he was a prolific writer in the beginning

but for some time now his output has slowed down if not dried
up altogether. His poetry is like this:
(My heart becomes restless like mercury
When I remember the days of my youth).. (Zaheer).
(My heart aches with a wound ,
Only faithfulness can cure it .
But where is the medicine?)..(Zaheer)
1.3.17 Jadran Muntazir Afridi

Jadran Muntazir Afridi is also a well known poet of this school. He belongs
to the Afridi territory of Tirah and has been educated upto the primary level.
Born in 1937 he has been drawn to poetry from a very young age. Khyber
Afridi writes about him, "He started writing poetry from 1955. He can write
Nazam, Rubai, Charbaita and Qita etc, but like the rest of the Khyber poets
he has paid more attention to Ghazal. He has published a book of poems
under the name "Da Tirah Wagme (the Tirah breezes) in 1971. His second
book containing some fifteen hundred (500) poems, was ready for publication
when it was gutted in a fire in the Bara Bazar. in 1980".55 However in 1993
he published his collection under the title Kulyat-e-Muntazir. This couplet
will give an idea of his poetry:
(The eyes of Rahman were opened by love

Those who say that a lover is blind are blind). (Muntazir)
In the introduction to the Da Tirah Wagme Hamza has written that, "This
is the second edition of the collected poems of Muntazir. In these poems
nearly every aspect of life has been touched upon. It is not because this
collection contains beautiful Ghazals, it has also its share of moralism and
precepts. The reverberations of Nationalism can also be heard throughout
these poems. It is hoped that it will be given due consideration and the
55
Da Khyber Angaze op, cit, p.53
labours and art of Muntazir will be fully acknowledged".56 Here we will give
some examples from his poetry:
(Our Shalwar Kamees has been replaced by a suit,
The hems of Pakhtoonkhwa were never like this)..(Muntazir).
(Would that the entire gathering .
Were illuminated by my refulgence
If only like a candle,
I were burning with a bright light). (Muntazir).
(Welcome scholars and experts,
In literature, mysticism and philosophy) ..(Muntazir).
For the sake of brevity we will skip the rest of the older generation poets
although they all had had their share in founding and sustaining the school
of Hamza or the Khyber school of poetry. Sadly now this generation is
gradually disappear ring leaving the stage for a younger generation of poets
most of whom struggle hard for a firm foothold in the precincts of this august
school. For some of them it may even be the question of establishing their
very identity. But the mooring is there. The seas have been charted. The
course has been already set and the ship of the Khyber school is in full steam.
The task of the younger generation has been considerably lightened. Things
have been simplified and clarified. The Light House is still there to guide
the new navigators. The torch lighted by the older generation before half
a century ago, has been still burning. The trial blazed by the earlier sages
still leads to the domain of meaning full, indigenous literature. The path has
been cleared of all sorts of bushes; obstructions have been removed, pitfalls
have been filled up and regular milestones have been provided. The highway
to poetry has been spread with Persian carpets. Now it is not only a fun but
also an honour to walk on it, although it is difficult to add to it. It is said
that each age has its peculiar taste, that is why there is a shift in literary
conventions from time to time; that is why new movements arise to supersede
the older ones. The dust of time buries the foundations of older cultures and
civilizations. But nature constantly renews itself. There is new growth on
the buried foundations of older generations. Ruins are covered by carpets
of grass. New flowers pop up among new weeds. Even rivers change their
56
Da Khyber Leekwal op, cit, p.73-74
course in the course of time; forests are denuded of trees; the soil eroded to
make new plains for new cultures to grow on. The flora and fauna of a given
area, over a given period of time, constantly shift and rotate. This is how
nature perpetuates itself, all the time coming out with its infinite variety.
But sometimes this change seems to have been arrested by some invisible
force. The same order is meticulously perpetuated; the same atmosphere is
made sure to prevail; the same flowers are grown the year round, the same
smell accompanying them with same profusion. They shoot up the same
thorns to prick the same nightingales. In this way a semblance of endurance
and eternity is created (or simulated would be a better word) even on the
shifting sands of time, an illusion of permanence and indestructibility reflects
in every grain of sand.
To come out of this ethereal reverie, the younger generation of poets have
kept rather too closely to the beaten track to be easily distinguishable from
their worthy predecessors, except by the accident of recent birth. Through
them one comes across the same undisturbed continuity. It is like the same
flow of the river Abasin which the Aryans might have come upon more than
three thousand years ago and which we also see all the same today. It is true
that we have now fettered it in one or two places, making little puddles of
artificial lakes on its swift surface by making earth filled or concrete dams in
its dizzying path. But on the whole it has kept its majestic flow from the
Himalayan peaks to the smooth expanse of the Indian ocean. Our younger
poets have turned out to be similar slaves of a centuries old tradition (even
the tradition of Hamza is more than half a century old). There is hardly
any deviation from either the style or the substance of the older generation.
Like the older generation, they too have been drawn to the Ghazal form,
with here and there a Nazam or two thrown in, being on the same worn-out
themes of patriotism or Pakhtoonwali. However, their poetry sometimes have
all the qualities of a good, enduring poetry. If they conform closely to the
school, they can at the same time be said to be in search of perfection and
fulfillment. The school of Hamza or the Khyber school is the continuation
and a combination of the same old seventeenth century schools of Bayazid
Ansari and Khushal Khan Khattak. Yet Hazma not only revived the twin
schools in one but also gave them a new vigour and a new direction. He
gave both of them a future at the same time. Now the present generation
of writers, who would be expected to look after the future of the school,
only happen to be retrospective and tradition bound. They are as much a
part and parcel of the present of the school as all the writers of the older
generation. May be then perhaps a school must consume many generations

of writers before it undergoes even a little change. But if it did change then it
would be a different school, with another nomenclature. The present school
will have become a part of history.
Here we will take up some of the younger generation of poets one by one
to see their individual worth as also to establish their worth and see them
in the general context of our school. It would not be out of place if we
were at the same time comparing them to their worthy predecessors whose
shadow may still be too thick on them to shake. Perhaps the growth of
the younger generation might have been only stunted to some extent by the
overbearing presence of the older generation which is still not only alive but
also potent and productive. These big Banyan trees would make it impossible
for any undergrowth to prosper and attain full maturity even as their birth
right. Perhaps some of the younger generation of poets might be suffering
the negative influences by the older generation. But since they are in the
race they must be conscious of the law of "the survival of the fittest" and
must be exerting themselves not to be overshadowed and turned into wild
weeds. In some of them we come across ample poetic promise along with an
urge for self assertion and a hazy or half cooked idealism. Or may be another
generation may be more favorably and more properly distant to perceive the
difference, if it must have been taking place right under our nose, for some
time one simply fails to see the jungle from the trees. Now lets turn to our
young saplings one by one and look at their characteristics.
1.3.18 Engineer Shahzad Khan

By a common consent Engineer Shahzad Afridi is considered about the best
poet among the wild growth of the younger generation of poets. Born in
1954 Shahzad has done mining engineering from Peshawar and works as an
engineer. His Guru, Nazer Shinwari writes about him: "He has deep study
of Urdu and English languages. He looks at every aspect of life with a
philosophical eye and comes out with his philosophical opinions. His study
and interest revolve around books on philosophy and literature. His ideas are
modern and progressive. He is a staid, sincere and ingratiating person. He
is strongly drawn to humanism. He has been writing poetry since 1976. His
early poetry is simple and sweet; but his later poetry has become more and
more philosophical and therefore more difficult. In the beginning he used to
write more poetry but of late his tempo has slowed down to more objective
or purposive and creative poetry". 57 According to Kalim Shinwari, "Mr.

Shahzad belongs to that coterie of the literary group who want to blaze a
new trail in both Nazam and Ghazal. It is this pursuit that has created
difficulty in his poetry. In fact the modern poet is faced with this difficulty
at the conclusion (or perfection) of the classical Ghazal. One can rightly
expect from a bright and progressive poet like Shahzad that if he kept it up
he can create a new style in Ghazal".(40). Here we will give some examples
from his poetry.
(In fact we can not describe Reality,

There will be diverse discussion of Unity).(Shahzad).
(All that unsaid with all the noise,
How silently said by the eyes!).(Shahzad).
1.3.19 Kalim Shinwari

The next important poet of the younger generations Kalim Shinwari. He is
the second son of Ostad Lalzada Nazer Shinwari. Born in 1964 he has been
educated upto 10th class and now serves as a teacher in some local school.
He is a young energetic man with great promise. Poetry he seems to have
inherited from his great predecessors; it is very much in his blood. He has
started writing proper poetry since 1977. These days he is also the secretary
of Da Khyber Adabi Jarga (the Khyber literary council)58 He has published
an account of the Khyber poets Da Khyber Leekwal, under the auspices of
the above Jarga, in 1988. Like all the rest of the writers of this school, he
has also started with the traditional forms of Ghazal, Rubai and Qita. He
has also written plenty of prose by way of introducing the Khyber writers.
The promise is there, Kalim seems to be equally serious and one rightly feels
about him that a great poet is in the making. Here we will give two or three
examples from his poetry:
(A song of life, you are life in universe,

Why is this silence in your voice then?). (kalim).
(Don’t despair with the spreading darkness,
57
Nazer Shinwari in Da Khyber Leekwal, op, cit, pp.98-99
58
Nazer Shinwari in Da Khyber Leekwal, op, cit, pp.99
My every tear is a bright burning lamp)..(Kalim).

(What one does upto death is but
Preparation for the journey). (Kalim).
(If you don’t see those eyes any more,
Don’t despair, the tavern is at hand) ..(Kalim)
1.3.20 Riaz Afridi

Riaz Afridi is the next worthy poet of the school. Born in 1961 he has done
B.A. and at present teaches at Landi kotal high school. He also studies for
M.A. in Pashto. He is widely read in Pashto literature and philosophy. In
poetry, like all the rest of the brood, he is a student of Ostad lalzada Nazer
Shinwari who writes about him: "He has keen interest in Pashto literature,
particularly poetry and still more particularly Ghazal. He is enlightened and
progressive minded. He also reads philosophical works in Urdu. His poetry
is also infected by the virus of Philosophy. He is a poet of great promise".59
His poetry is like this:
(The lot of the poor and down trodden,

Did not change at all
Although the world repeatedly rolled in wealth) . .(Riaz).
(The secret of evolution was never found,
Philosophies have been chasing but a concept) . (Riaz).
1.3.21 Shafiq Shinwari

Shafiq Shinwari is also the elder son of Ostad Lalzada Nazer Shinwari and
elder brother of Kalim. Born in 1952 he started writing poetry from 1975.
He was a poet with immense promise, in fact a guiding star for the younger
generation of poets. But he was sucked in business with his muse ignored for
a long time. Murad Shinwari writes about him, "It is regrettable that there
being no dearth of poets in the Khyber; as they say you can find one under
every stone; the majority of them are illiterate. Even the few literate ones
have no interest in general study. That is why the Khyber did not produce
59
any worth while poet. In the beginning Shafiq did vibrant and vigorous
poetry. If on the one hand there was colourfulness in his poetry, on the other
hand his poetry had the perfection of both Nazer and Hamza. I had said
somewhere about him that his poetry was older that him".60 His poetry is
like this:
(Neither will I regain the domain of Ahmad Shah,

Nor will I ever see an indigenous Afghan king) . (Shafiq).
(Every one must quit this earth,
The force of nature snaps friendships;
If flowers wither and candles burn ,
Don’t cry Bulbul, the moths also turn to ashes).(Shafiq).
(Surrounded by friends in prosperity,
I am but left to face adversity alone).(Shafiq).
1.3.22 Kohat Khan Zakir Afridi

Kohat Khan Zakir is also a promising poet of the younger generation. He
made his debut as a poet of note with the publication of his collection under
the title of Nawi Fikroona (new thoughts) Belonging to the famous Zakhakhel
tribe he was born in 1949 in a small village called Wali Khel. Educated upto
8th class he started writing poetry from 1970. He too is a disciple of Ostad
Lalzada Nazer Shinwari who writes about this poet with an individuality:
"He writes poetry for some years now and comes to me for corrections. Al-
though writing scant poetry yet he has all the qualities of a true poet. He
neither follows the tradition nor depends upon the thoughts or style of oth-
ers. He has his own individual style. Some of his Ghazals are so attractive
that they appeal directly to the heart".61 Here is a specimen of his poetry:
(With the dart of your dark eyes in my heart,

Even my days are nights what to say of dawn). (Zakir).
(Not caring for worldly palaces.
An ascetic, I live in abstinence). (Zakir).
60
Murad Ali in Da Khyber Leekwal op, cit, pp.93-4
61
1.3.23 Manzoor Afridi

Manzoor Afridi is also a serious poet of this school. Born in 1949, he has
been educated upto matric. At present he is an operator in the telephone
department. He is not only a born poet but also a born musician. To him
poetry is music and music poetry. He is also fond of singing and has a sweet
voice. In fact he is called Sehgal by the Khyber poets and musicians. Ostad
Nazer writes about him: "He is attached to the Chishtia order in Sufism and
deeply interested in any discussion of mysticism. He is almost in love with
music. By nature he is kind hearted and humble. He writes occasionally but
writes well. He writes lyrical poetry using sometimes nationalistic Pakhtoon
symbols. He is always after new thoughts and new concepts and ideas. His
Ghazal is nearly perfect and he can be counted among the best poets from
Jamrud".62 His poetry is like this:
(There is the destination, heart,

Lets be off to it straight-away.
Not minding the rough ground,
Gorge, ravine or gully). (Manzoor).
(I am a Pakhtoon and live a free life.
With the sword of equality in my hand). (Manzoor).
1.3.24 Abdul Azim Nazar Shinwari

Abdul Azim Nazar Shinwari is the scion of the most venerable religious family
of the Khyber. Son of the spiritual divine Haji Gul Mubarak, Nazar was born
in 1965. Having received intensive religious education, Nazarr has been a
teacher at present. He is also the chief organizer of Ahle Sunnat Wal Da’wat
in the Khyber Agency, crusading against the tide of Wahabism. He is also
strongly drawn to Sufism and, like Hamza Shinwari, follows the doctrine of
Wahdatul Wajud (the unity of essence). Hamza writes about him: "Mr.
Nazar is a distinctive poet of Ghazal. I have read most of his works and have
reached the conclusion that he is not only already a worthy poet but can also
contribute a great deal to Pashto literature. I say this because Nazar is not
62
only a poet but also a scholar. In this way he can create a distinctive place
in Pashto literature for himself".63 Here we will quote two of his couplets:
(This age is rather free from restrictions.
Customs and traditions only mar its spirit). (Nazar).
(For God’s sake consider my love to be true.
It is not always proper to be swearing about it). (Nazar).
1.3.25 Fazle Rabi Qais

Fazle Rabi Qais is another energetic poet of this school from Jamrud who,
according to Kalim Shinwari, has devoted two third of his precious life to
the promotion of Pashto literature. There is hardly any literary gathering
or Mushaira where Qais is not present not only physically but also spiri-
tually. Born in 1960 he has been educated upto 10th class. Like most of
the rest of the Khyber poets he can be said to have poetry in his blood.
His poetry is mainly romantic and with a strong under current of Pakhtoon
ethos. Along with Muqaddar Shah Muqaddar, his greatest contribution to
Pashto literature is the compilation and publication of the collected works
of Khatir Afridi. But for their dedicated efforts and the benign patronage of
Pir Yaqub Shah (the then P.A. Khyber), the sparkling exuberance of Khatir
would still be shrouded in obscurity. His highly endearing works ought have
been published earlier. However, it is still not too late. The Pashto speaking
world owe it to the enterprise of this pair of young poets from the Khyber to
revive the imperishable Khatir. Here we will give one or two examples from
the poetry of Qais:
(When I was reminded of your old stories,
Songs gushed out of my consciousness). (Qais).
(How many times had I demolished it,
I wonder at the wall rising yet higher). (Qais).
1.3.26 Qandahar Afridi

Qandahar Afridi was born at Maidan in Tirah in 1957. He is also an enthu-
siastic follower of the Khyber school of poetry. His Ghazal has a distinctive
63
Hamza Shinwari in Da Khyber Leekwal, op, cit, p.221
flavour and a stark simplicity. We will give one or two examples from his
poetry.
(My sight is not less sharp than your eye lashes,
Don’t hide your face in the armour of the scarf). (Qnadahar).
(Please God give no wings of pride,
Even though the candle of love can burn them). Qnadahar).
1.3.27 Jamal Khan Nasir

Jamal Khan Nasir is drawn more towards nationalistic poetry than the tra-
ditional romanticism in Pashto Ghazal. He is a disciple of Ostad Nazer who
writes about him. "Born in 1952 he has been educated upto 8th class. He
has been writing poetry for the last three or four years. In this short period
he has perfected his Ghazal to the extent of an experienced hand. He writes
mostly Ghazal. He has understood the nature of Ghazal so well that he can
be said to have acquired his own distinctive style. His poetry is deep and
meaningful".64 His poetry is like this:
(They are not asleep
But intoxicated with ignorance ;
I want to change the destiny
. Of youth with knowledge). (Nasir).
(What is more exalted than love.
The harbinger of happy life in life) (Nasir).
(People chatter incessantly,
I search for thoughts in silence ). (Nasir)
1.3.28 Mohammad Aslam Taseer Afridi

Muhammad Aslam Taseer Afridi is another young but comparatively more
qualified poet of the Khyber school. Born in 1962 he has been educated upto
M.A. He has been writing poetry for the last nine or ten years. He is keenly
interested in literary activities and hardly misses any worth while function.
64
Nazer Shinwari in Da Khyber Leekwal, op,cit, p.182
His style and diction reflect the distinctive characteristics of the Khyber
school. He is also one of the keenest members of the Khyber Adabi Jarga, of
which he is usually entrusted the responsibilities of the secretaryship. He is
extremely popular among the younger generation of poets.
For some time now Taseer has become a more a more active member or
worker of the Khyber Adabi Jarga. These days he has been acting as its
general secretary which is indeed a great honour for young and energetic
port like Taseer. Recently he wrote the constitution for the Jarga and got it
approved from the general body. He is very particular and methodical about
recording the minutes and keeting the record of the multifarious activities of
the Jarga. Hence a specimen of his poetry.
(Once again the exploiting forces

Have caught Pakhtoon by the throat
What a sense of honour is this !.
When he is not moved by this shame) (Taseer).
(It seems that my hut of affection
Is being demolished again .
Again the sky is thundering with merciless fury) (Taseer).
1.3.29 Zahoor Shinwari

Zahoor Shinwari is also a post graduated student of this school. Born in 1963
he is now M.A. in Pashot. He writes poetry since 1979. He is also president
of the Tahrek Ittehad Qabayal (movement for the tribal unity), Landi kotal
branch. In this way he is a political poet or a poet with politics for a hobby.
Ostad Nazer writes about him: "He is extremely interested in poetry and
is sensitive like the other poets. Towards the end of 1985 he made such
strides in Ghazal that he more than made up his previous shortcomings. He
also writes Nazam. He is also brimming, if not bristling with nationalistic
feelings." 65 His poetry is like this:
(Pathans are used to Hardships,

Chains and prisons are but their lot). (Zahoor).
65
(What is the need of such a system

Which neither satisfied the nation nor individual). (Zahoor).
1.3.30 Nisar Ahmad Nisar Afridi

Nisar Afridi must also be mentioned as a promising poet of this School. Born
in 1962 he is educated upto 10th class. He is also a disciple of Ostad Nazer
who writes about him: "He belongs to a respectable, learned family, with
Habibullah Khan and Qayyum Kausar as his grandfathers. He must have
inherited poetry from his illustrious forebears. He has crossed the initial
stages of learning the art of poetry and can now be said to have stood on his
own feet. The delicacy of his thoughts sometimes result in ambiguity. But
he is bound to return to simplicity and lucidity”.60 His poetry:
(What the hell is let loose

With a kiss of the eye sight;
If sweets are available so freely,
One might as well have them). (Nisar)
(Come and see deep into my eyes
So that you see my beloved there). (Nisar).
1.3.31 Yar Hussain Sahil Afridi

Yar Hussain Sail is already a poet of stature among the younger generation
poets of this school. He was born in 1948 and has been writing poetry from
an early age. He is keenly interested in literary activities and Mushairas. He
seems to be deeply influenced by Khisro Afridi, the legendary folk poet from
the Khyber. Two of his collections, Jazbe Aw Walwale (gushes of passion)
and Da Saar Tiga (the tombstone), are ready for publication. They will be
a valuable contribution to Pashto literature. Hamza Shinwari writes about
him: "Sahil is also among the younger generation of poets whose poetry I
am going to briefly discuss. I will quote his following poems to show that he
has done full justice to Ghazal. His Ghazal is not entirely objective, he also
has a great deal of subjectivity.66
66
(When the beloved laugh beautifully

They skilfully snatch the hearts) (Sahil)
(Her look of love brings a smiling spring
By the mere turning of her beautiful eyes). (Sahil).
(The lamp of my hopes will be lighted at last,
I am not scared of waiting in the dark). (Sahil).
Hamza himself is very much conscious of his influence over the poets of the
younger generation although his authority was disputed by certain poets over
a number of years. He was called undemocratic and dictatorial if not an out-
right praetorian. In a letter to Ayub Sabir he writes in this connection, "The
grace and spruceness of my Ghazal is there in the Ghazal of the younger
generation of poets. If any one consciously writes now with Pakhtoon sym-
bolism, his Ghazal will inevitably have the colour of my blood. Anyhow I
can not say this about the progressive writers. To see what I mean look at
the following couplet by Qalandar
(By reaching the lips

My sighs become sobs
My fearless desires
Come again and again).(Qalander)
I am not against progressive literature. I consider progressive literature to

be a name full of the secret or expediency of socialist literature. I am neither
against any person. The Olasi Adabi Jarga was broken up by this unneces-
sary wrangling and antagonism. sometimes I wonder that I must have some
personality when I am so much opposed".67
67
Ayub Sabir in Za Aw Hamza, op, cit, pp.207-10
Chapter 2
CONCLUSION
“In the beginning there was darkness. Then God said: Let there be light and
there was light” Similarly, with the birth of Hamza Shinwari light was shed
or showered on the dark literary landscape of Khyber. In fact what we call
literature was born in Khyber with the birth of Hamza and he put Khyber
on the literary map of the world. With him or in him the centuries-old folk
literature of the area suddenly crystallized into an ultra-modern School of
Khyber Literature. This School was soon recognized throughout the Pashto-
speaking world, from the Abasin to the Oxus. The School engendered and
fostered a number of now well-known poets and writers all molded in the
image of Hamza. They founded literary societies and circles and started
holding Mushairas and literary sessions. They created a far-reaching literary
consciousness throughout Khyber, and even beyond, which acted as a seed-
bed for the future flowering of literature there. The result is that if previously
Khyber was known for its historic role as an invincible, strategic Pass, now
it also equally known for its worthy contribution to Pashto literature.
The literature produced in Khyber is Pashto literature as Pashto is the
only language spoken throughout Khyber. Although all the tribes speak
different dialects of the same language, yet their literature appears to be in a
uniform language, free from local dialectical peculiarities. As a matter of fact
their literature conforms to a sort of “standard Pashto,” spoken throughout
the NWFP, irrespective of the multiplicity of regional or local dialects. The
literary Pashto of the area closely conforms to the Yousafzai dialect, the other
major dialect being the Kandahar dialect; the two dialects being separated
by the hard [kh] and the soft [sh] sounds. These writers may speak any
dialect in their tribal context but when they come to writing they leave their
74
CHAPTER 2. CONCLUSION 75
dialect differences behind and conform to a standard Pashto.

The Khyber literature is mainly poetry-based. In poetry also it is mostly
confined to the Ghazal form. Hamza himself also started with the Ghazal and
ended with the title of “Baba-e-Ghazal” of Pashto literature. He was closely
imitated by all the Khyber poets, as he was their Ostad. However Hamza has
also written some well-known and memorable Nazams and Rubaiyats. His
Rubaiyats have also been published in two or three separate volumes. Among
the other Khyber writers only Murad Shinwari and Khyber Afridi have suc-
cessfully tried the Nazam form and have written some landmark Nazams. Al-
most all the rest of the poets are lost in the intricacies of the illusive Ghazal.
This has only made their poetry one-dimensional and tradition-ridden.
The Ghazal form has come to Pashto either directly from Persian or
indirectly via Urdu; it is not an indigenous Pashto poetry form. There is a
great deal of Ghazal in our Medieval literature. It has been tried by all our
previous poets like Khushal Khan, Rahman Baba, Abdul Hameed, Kazim
Khan Shaida, Ali Khan and Ahmad Shah Abdali. In Rahman Baba we
arrive at the perfection of Pashto Ghazal. He is the Hafiz Shirazi of Pashto
literature. All the Khyber poets are a part and parcel of this preponderant
tradition and they are busy in exploring the infinite varieties of Ghazal.
The Khyber School is rather poor on the prose side. Hamza himself has
left a worthy example of writing all kinds of prose which has only been taken
up by one or two other writers to a far lesser extent. Among the rest of the
Khyber poets only Murad Shinwari, Nor Muhammad Zigar and Sahir Afridi
have written worthwhile prose in the form of stories and short stories. Murad
Shinwari, Khyber Afridi and Kalim Shinwari have also written and published
accounts of the Khyber poets and writers. But all the three suffer from a
typical, narrow, traditional approach and much is left to be desired in their
methodology and critical standards.
All the poetry of the Khyber School is potentially musical. Most of its
poetry is sung with not only local music but music from the radio and televi-
sion stations.. The singing of this poetry was started in right earnest first by
Rafiq Shinwari and later by Bagheram, both famous musicians from Khyber
( the former having died, the latter is on the verge of death). Rafiq Shinwari
was a disciple of Bacha Jan and would sing Sama’ or Qawali in his presence.
With the passage of time he became such a well-known and master musician
to be composing music for Pashto films. He has also sung a great deal of
Hamza Shinwari’s poetry. Bagheram was a legendary Rabab maestro. He
has composed music for most of Khatir Afridi’s and Khisro Afridi’s highly
popular songs. He would sing their poetry with accompaniment of his Rabab
from Hujra to Hujra and this made them the most well-known poets from
Khyber. Khisro had died in 1948 and Khatir also died young. Both were
illiterate. Hence it is difficult to say whether they would at all have improved
upon their existing poetry. The poetry of Nazer Shinwari, Murad Shinwari,
Khyber Afridi, Sahir Afridi and a number of other poets is also extensively
sung with music.
The Khyber literature did not die with the demise of Hamza Shinwari,
although it can be said to have been born with his birth. The torch has been
taken by his successors like Nazer Shinwari and Murad Shinwari ( incidentally
the one is his nephew and the other his son), and a number of poets of stature.
They have kept the great tradition alive. The Khyber Adabi Jarga is not only
alive and kicking, it has swelled its rank and accelerated its activities, If it was
founded by only a handful of poets back in the fifties, now-a-days its rank and
file run into hundreds; and if previously they would meet once in a blue moon,
now-a-days they have regular weekly sessions which are attended by almost
all the poets with religious regularity. The Jarga holds criticism sessions for
both poetry and prose works. From week to week different members are asked
to submit their fresh prose or poetry for critical evaluation. Such sessions
are usually not only interesting but also highly informative at the same time.
Since there is hardly any critical literature in Pashto, these poets and writers
are not guided or misguided by any critical theories and standards. They
devise their own “touchstones” there and then and judge their literature in
the light of tradition and common sense, with the fear of God at the back of
their mind. They also hold occasional grand Mushairas, particularly on the
death anniversaries of the well-known poets, which are usually attended by
thousands of people. Of late the “Hamza Kaliza Mushaira” on the anniversary
of Hamza Shinwari, has become a regular annual feature. It is attended by
so many people that it can no more be held in the confinement of a Hujra,
where in the beginning it used to be held. It is now being held by his “Shrine”,
adjacent to the sprawling grounds of the Landi Kotal school and college. The
Mushaira attracts poets and people for audience from both Kooza and Bara
Pakhtookhwa. I think this Mushaira is bound to soon end up into an outright
Urs with Qawali and Raqs-e-Darwesh. The Government has also promised
to construct a grand complex on the Mazar of Hamza (like the one built at
the shrine of Rahman Baba in Hazarkhwani), with a spacious Hall, s library
and a mosque. In this way it can be turned into a cultural centre for the
whole of Khyber. If materialize this complex would be yet another catalyst
in the cultural and intellectual transformation of the Khyber tribes, with a

wholesome effect on their literature.
The question that we asked ourselves at the outset is still staring us in
the face as to why should the twentieth century Pashto literature find revival
among the primitive environment of Khyber, or have its unique flowering in
the laps of the bleak, imposing mountains of the historic Khyber Pass. Per-
haps the answer to this question can be searched in the social, cultural, polit-
ical and economic conditions there at the dawn of the twentieth century., and
the coincidence of the birth of Hamza Shinwari there at the same time. We
have already seen in the preceding account, that with Anglo-Russian scram-
ble for India and the control of Asia, and with the geostrategic importance
of the Khyber Pass, these tribal were gradually awakened to an opportunity
of unlimited possibilities. Although partly subdued by the British Forward
Policy, they still managed to maintain their cherished independence. Sand-
wiched between British India and Afghanistan, they successfully played the
hostile force against each other for benefits and material gains. The changed
conditions opened up previously unthinkable trade and commercial avenues,
bringing all round prosperity and a revolution in their standard of living..
Their very philosophy of life was changed from renunciation, resignation and
asceticism to materialistic pragmatism. This also rendered their culture more
sophisticated and differentiating. Claims of music, fine arts and literature on
life became more demanding. They can be said to have developed even a
taste for literature.
The birth of Hamza at the turn of the century was also mainly responsible
for the revival of literature in Khyber. He gave it not only a start and a
direction, but guided its course throughout his life. He appeared to be a
poet with a mission, with his mission being the creation and establishment
of a sound literary tradition. In this sense he was not only a poet but
an institution for the dissemination of literature not only in Khyber but
throughout the Pashto-speaking world. He had dedicated his entire life to
the promotion of literature and would demand, in turn, the same dedication
from his followers. And with this much self-less dedication, literature was
bound to flourish. Hence the growth of such memorable literature in Khyber
at the turn of the century.
Bibliography
[1] Amir Muhammad Saghir Afridi. Èñ» ø. ñK Young Generation. Manzoo-e

Azam Press, Peshawar, 1972.

[2] Asim Afridi. Q¢ ñK
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. X@ Q.J.k X The Khyber Literature .. A Review.
Monthly Pakhto, November 1987.
[3] Khyber Afridi. K@ Q.J.k X. Khyber Qomi Adabi Jirga, Jamrud, 1982.
ø. PA¶
[4] Qabil Khan Afridi. Amir Hamza Khan Shinwari - Life and Works (PhD
Thesis). Peshawar University, 1990.

[5] Latif Bahand. È Q « AK. AK. Father of Ghazal. Department of Literature,
Ministry of Tribes and Nationalities, Public Press, Kabul, Afghanistan,
1987.
[6] Sher Afzal Khan Barikoti. ø

PA@ YK
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AK. Pir Rokhan. Millat Educational
Printers, Lahore, 1995.
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È@ñºJ
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[8] Khyal Bokhari. àA g úÎ« ÕæA¯ à@ ñK

X (Urdu). Pashto Academy, University

of Peshawar, Nazimudin Printers, 1971.
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Areas of Pakistan (M.Phil Thesis). University of Peshawar.
[10] David M. Hart. Guardians of the Khyber Pass. Vanguard Books Ltd,
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Í@YK. @ èA YÔg @ à@ ñK
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June 1963.
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Pakhto, June 1977.
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Sarhad, Peshawar, 1951.
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ú.³Qk. ð ú.æËñ Monthly Pakhto,

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Literary Heritage of Khyber; Past and Present

Professor Dr. Qabil Khan Afridi

A UGC research project submitted to the University of Peshawar

Reproduced at Khyber.ORG from Author’s Homepage

Prof. Dr. Qabil Khan Afridi is ex-chairman,

President: Lalazada Nazer Shinwari.

Vice-President: Murad Shinwari.

G.Secretary: Aslam Tasir Afridi.

J.secretary: Rahmat Shah Lihaz.

Press Secretary: Kalim Shinwari.

Treasurer: Jehanzeb Majboor.

Propaganda-Secretary: Ayub Irshad Afridi.

Another election of the Jarga in 1998 selected the following cabinet:

Patron: Lalzada Nazer Shinwari.

President: Murad Shinwari.

Vice-president: Riaz Shah Afridi.

G.Secretary: Aslam Tasir Afridi.

J.Secretary: Kalim Shinwari and Amir Haidar Shabgir Afridi.

Press Secretary: Hashim Khan Hashim Afridi.

Treasurer: Manzoor Cheshti Afridi.

Executive-Members: Mir Ahmad Akhtar Afridi. Rahmat Shah Lihaz

The general body of the Jarga consist of the following also:

of them - some of the present research was but a review of my findings of

Professor Dr. Qabil Khan

1.3.17 Jadran Muntazir Afridi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Colourful flowers have blossomed

and guru, or The School of Khyber Literature, as it blossomed there. The

• Adoption of the Ghazal form.

• Pakhtoonwali; reflection of the Pashto code of life.

• New and ingenious constructions.

• Full of conceits, paradoxes and quibbles.

• Clever and subtle use of comparison and contrast.

• Use of repetitions and refrains.

• Novel figures of speech

• Dynamic and moving rhythms and refrains.

• Fewer but effective meters.

• Originality of style and substance.

• Simplicity, ease, flow, freshness, spontaneity, sweetness and sustained

• Strong affinity to music and an overall musical tone.

• Temperate and mild in nature; free from extreme or wild emotionalism.

• Use of comparatively purer and idiomatic Pact; free from Persianization

• Deep philosophical and mystical problems wrapped in apparent sim-

• Deep adherence to the seventeenth-century pioneering tradition with

• Mainly poetry-oriented with scant attention paid to non-poetic forms

• Entirely uninfluenced by Urdu, Persian, English or any other foreign

• Strong universal appeal despite clear cut local touch.

This period needs to be probed to visualize what preceded the twentieth

seeking converts among the other tribes.

hardly been touched before him, as be claims himself:

(I girded my loins for the honour of the Afghan,

1.1 The Geographical Features Of Khyber

1.2 The Khyber Pass

1.3 The Literary Pespective

Pashto literature is divided into convenient periods. The earliest period

1.3.1 Bayazid Ansari (Pir Roshan) In Tirah

1.3.2 Khushal Khan Khattak At Tirah

(If they would sit for a while by the side of Khushal

And having dismissed them to Khwarrah, with regret I returned.

1.3.3 Josh Malihabadi