Two Versions of Niʿmatallāh Haravī’s Book on the History of Afghans

Abstract

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