Artistic functions of poetic elements in “The Khattak Chronicle”

Abstract

The corpus of “The Khattaks’ Chronicle” (finished in 1724), the first original historiographical work in Pashto, contains over seventy poetical quotations in Pashto and Persian which perform literary functions as rhetorical tools. The article offers systematical analysis of the contents, contextual meaning, artistic tasks and ideological implications of these quotations classified according to their formal and thematic characteristics as ad hoc verses referring to historical realities, emphatic ornamentations of prose, wise sayings and advices, aphorisms and proverbs. The study proves that “The Khattaks’ Chronicle,” having its roots in the national Afghan folklore as well as in the Persian literary traditions, combines features of both learned and entertaining writings which pertain to documented historiography and chronicles, on the one hand, and to the genres of memoirs and diaries, on the other. Refs 14.