“Save us God from such a misfortune!” (Afżal Khān Khaṫak)

Afżal Khān's report belongs to a small group of fragments with no direct relation to the main content of The Khaṫaks’ Chronicle. The latter is defined by Afżal Khān himself as a supplement to Tārīkh-i muraṣṣaʿ which is basically a Pashto translation of the Persian history of the Pashtuns, Makhzan-i Afghānī by Niʿmatallāh Harawī.Footnote ³ Afżal entitled The Chronicle “An account of events in our own tribe” (bayān də khpəlo qabāʾilo də sarguẕasht) (Afżal Reference Afżal and Kāmil Momand1974: 16). Extant manuscripts of Tārīkh-i muraṣṣaʿ attest that The Chronicle was not finished, nor properly structured and edited, before being widely released. What we have now is in fact a remnant of the Khaṫak chiefs’ family archive composed of writings by Khushḥāl and Afżal. However, The Chronicle occupies almost half of the whole corpus of Tārīkh-i muraṣṣaʿ.

The record of the Momand drama is placed in between the narratives which tell of Afżal Khān's struggle for chieftainship with his uncle Bahrām Khān (d. 1712) in 1689–1712 and with his younger brother Nāmdār Khān in 1712–23. This text follows another extrinsic fragment with a much longer account of developments in Qandahar among the western Pashtun tribes, the Abdālīs (later the Durrānīs) and the Ghilzays, in the first decade of the eighteenth century (Afżal Reference Afżal and Kāmil Momand1974: 398–402). Both pieces were inserted into The Chronicle apparently because there was no other suitable place in Tārīkh-i muraṣṣaʿ. As compared with the fragment about the western Pashtuns, which seems to be a later interpolation and raises many questions about its origins and authorship, the report on the Momand incident was undoubtedly written by Afżal as an entry in his personal diaries. It is very probable that Afżal Khān mentioned this haunting event for the better memorization of the date of his own final victory over Bahrām Khān who in 1711 was expelled from the Khaṫak dominion and died in exile the next year. Afżal's report is marked out in the text by the subheading “The Case of Jamāl” (Muqaddama də Jamāl) and runs as follows:

Retelling this fragment, H.G. Raverty named Jamāl Khān's clan “Khudrzī”, drawing on a line from ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd's poem translated by him as, “Truly, the Almighty hath made the Khudrzīs infamous by Jamāl” (Raverty Reference Raverty1867: 126). According to D.M. Kāmil's comments, in a Momand oral tradition (riwāyat) this small clan is called “Musrīzay” (or “Mushtarzay”), while the clan of ʿĪsā is identified as Māshokhel (Afżal Reference Afżal and Kāmil Momand1974: 1262). The ethnonym mentioned by ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd is likely to be read as “Khidrīzay” since it seems to be a derivative of the name of the mystical prophet Khiżr associated in Islamic popular beliefs with water and land fertility (Krasnowolska Reference Krasnowolska2009). A large number of Pashtun clans from various tribes bear this name, the best known being the Khidarzays of the Yūsufzay-Mandaṙ tribe (cf. Dictionary 1910: 26, 229; Syāl Reference Syāl1988: 52, 56, 64, 112, 168, 219, 228). Khidrīzay was probably a subdivision of the Momands to which the Jamāl Khān's small clan Mūsrīzay belonged.

Although Afżal Khān was not personally interested in the conflict between two Momand khans, and did not know either of them closely, his report clearly reveals his negative attitude towards the ambitious Jamāl Khān. The latter's rise to power Afżal calls “a riot” (shūrish). Jamāl's companions are described as “witless short-sighted [individuals]” (ẓāhirbīn kūtahandīsh) and their doings are qualified as “excesses” (ifrāṭ-tafrīṭ). Afżal puts a noticeable emphasis on the fact that Jamāl Khān's clan was weak in the Momand tribe (mūsrīzay pə muhmando ke kamzore təpa da). These observations suggest that a pretentious person from a humble social background could build a military–administrative career and gain repute and glory (nām-nāmūs) only through violence. It is not by chance that he defines the leadership Jamāl so much desired as arbābī and not sardārī or khānī, the terms he regularly deployed in The Chronicle for the notion of chieftainship. Arbāb (the Arabic plural of rabb, “lord”) was a common title for Pashtun tribal leaders in the Peshawar region, mostly the Momands and the Khalīls, who served the Mughals (later the Sikhs and the British) in the capacity of “middlemen”. Their main duty was to provide communication between the foreign imperial authorities and Pashtun tribes (cf. Caroe Reference Caroe1958: 325, 348). Thus, Afżal Khān deliberately wished to stress that Jamāl was a parvenu who ascended to power in his tribe only as an imperial servant, a Mughal puppet, and not as a worthy licit claimant. Such an evaluation of Jamāl Khān's career agrees with the fundamental topic of The Khaṫak's Chronicle – the idea of legitimacy of political leadership and authority. In this light the story of the Momand conflict in The Chronicle serves as an additional example of the tragic consequences that may result from illegal power. There is little doubt that in recounting the Momand incident Afżal Khān had in mind the struggle for supremacy in his own tribe, and the overt reproach of Jamāl masked the author's resentment against his uncle and political adversary Bahrām Khān, the failed usurper of the Khaṫak chieftainship.

Towards Jamāl's antagonist ʿĪsā, whose act of vengeance resulted in tragedy with many innocent casualties including small children, Afżal Khān demonstrates a rather neutral attitude. He portrays ʿĪsā as a powerful man of his clan (pə khpəl khel ke zorawər dəy) who was able to make a separate personal agreement (joṙa) with the Mughal administration. It seems that even the use of the antonyms “weak” (kamzoray) and “strong” (zorawər) in the characterization of opposing parties to the conflict betrays Afżal Khān's concealed respect for ʿĪsā. Despite an evident and sincere compassion for the dead, voiced in the last phrases, as well as a discontent with the fratricidal clash between fellow tribesmen, Afżal Khān has no word of criticism with respect to the intrinsic drawbacks of the tribal law of retaliation. Other narratives in The Chronicle confirm his strict adherence to this law, the story of Khushḥāl Khān's revenge for the death of his father Shahbāz Khān in January 1641 being the most persuasive example. In a brutal depiction of the slaughter executed by Khaṫak combatants on Khushḥāl's order in the village of the Yūsufzay clan Akākhel, no remorse is expressed: “And they spared no one of animals, men, women, children, but killed whoever ran into them. Rivers of blood they set streaming in their yards. The blood of dogs and people flowed intermingled” (Afżal Reference Afżal and Kāmil Momand1974: 271; cf. Plowden Reference Plowden1893: 207).

A certain ambiguity can be detected in Afżal Khān's stance towards the Mughal authorities. On the one hand, he openly blames the Mughals for their routine imperial tactics of divide and rule aimed at igniting “the strife between Pashtuns” (də mughal pə wayrānəy ke [də] paẋtānə khpəla muddaʿā da). On the other, being a Mughal vassal and fief holder (jāgīrdār), he maintained close personal ties with Nāṣir Khān, then the Governor of Kabul province. Everywhere in The Chronicle Afżal Khān is at pains to point out that he had always been on friendly terms with Nāṣir Khān since the latter's first visit to Pakhtunkhwa in 1703 in the entourage of Bahādur Shāh (r. 1707–12), the second son of Awrangzīb (r. 1658–1707) (e.g. Afżal Reference Afżal and Kāmil Momand1974: 363–4). Among numerous reports of his amicable relationship with Nāṣir Khān, the lively story about the goose hunt that Afżal organized in 1704 for Mughal Prince Rafīʿ al-Shān (killed in 1712) and the Kabul Governor deserves special attention as a nice specimen of early Pashto narrative prose (Afżal Reference Afżal and Kāmil Momand1974: 369–71). In the account of the Momand incident Afżal Khān pays a subtle compliment to Nāṣir Khān for his generous wedding gift of 2,000 rupees to Jamāl's son, but refrains from mentioning his name when speaking of the insidious double-faced policy of the Mughal administration towards Pashtuns.

Unfortunately, Afżal Khān does not specify in his story the locality in which the incident took place, if the phrase “he ascended to Tal” (pə tal ye khatəna wukṙa) is not an indirect indication to it. Even if Tal (lit. “hill”) here is really a toponym, its geographical position is uncertain. D.M. Kāmil, an expert on the subject, did not comment on the matter. However, in one fragment of The Chronicle the word “Tal” is undoubtedly mentioned as the name of a geographical locality: Afżal Khān tells here in passing that Tal was a popular hunting place (p. 426). The context helps to locate this Tal somewhere on the north-western borders of the Khaṫak territories to the south-east of Peshawar. This was the area where the Khaṫak domain partly adjoined the lands of those Momand clans which, in the mid-sixteenth century, had left the mountainous region to the north of the Khyber Pass and settled in the valley of Bāṙa, a southern tributary of the Kabul river (Caroe Reference Caroe1958: 187). According to ʿAbd al-Qādir Khaṫak, the Momand incident happened exactly on the banks of Bāṙa (see below).

“The time of lament” (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Momand)

In ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's dīwān, the poem on the Momand drama is of particular importance as both a unique example of the poet's reaction to earthly, tribal affairs and the only authentic evidence of the fact that in 1711 he was still alive (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Reference ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and ʿAbd al-Qādir1963: 81–4).Footnote ⁶ Drawing a parallel between ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and the Roshani poet Mīrzā Khān Anṣārī, who likewise authored mostly traditional religio-philosophical lyrics but on the verge of his death wrote an “innovative” anti-war ghazal, we may assume that Raḥmān also composed similar verses towards the end of his life in a state of strong emotional strain. It appears that the mass murder of his fellow tribesmen in 1711 finally drove ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who was in his sixties or older, to step aside from traditionalist lyrics and mould previously abstract humanistic motifs into a distinct, socially engaged protest against violence. However, both the rhetoric and the tone of the poem indicate that formally it was written as a mourning elegy dedicated to Jamāl Khān and his people. Thus, Raḥmān's poem may be regarded as a contribution to the elaboration of the classic genre of marsiyya.

Of the 28 distiches of the poem, only the first 17 directly concern the incident itself. Even if Raḥmān's sympathies were with Jamāl, he tried in his verses not to take sides openly. His message in the poem was to express compassion towards the victims of fratricide and to condemn malice and cruelty in human society in general. Besides, he was undoubtedly well aware of Jamāl Khān's former wrongdoings which led to the tragedy. It seems that from the very beginning of the poem Raḥmān purposely shifted accent to the theme of true friendship and honour by introducing a character who is not mentioned in Afżal Khān's report, “Gul Khān and Jamāl Khān had many friends, / but no one was useful in the time of lament (zāristān)” (distich 1). In fact, it is gratitude to a man named Gul Khān for his faithfulness to Jamāl and self-sacrifice that shapes the poet's reflections of the dramatic event. Apparently Raḥmān personally knew Gul Khān, who was among honourable guests invited to the wedding with their relatives.

In eight distiches (5–12) the poet elaborates the motif of the fire which killed two “sincere friends” with their wives and children. Three times he repeats the plea for salvation (al-ghiyās) from such a monstrous evil as burning people alive and occasionally employs hyperbole to picture the global scale of the incident: e.g. he calls it the Day of Resurrection (qiyāmat), reproaches the earth, the skies and the mountains for being silent and undisturbed by the tragedy, or, alluding to Muslim mythology, compares the fire to that in which the tyrant Namrūd (Biblical Nimrod) attempted to kill the prophet Ibrāhīm (Quran 21: 68–9, 29: 23/24, 37: 95/97–96/98). In accordance with Afżal Khān's report, these verses prove that the fire was the culmination of the Momand drama. No other details of the incident are provided in Raḥmān's poem except for the fact that it happened on Sunday (distich 14).

The names of Jamāl and ʿĪsā, the principal actors in the conflict, are mentioned together only to exculpate both from direct charges of homicide: “It is not the guilt of ʿĪsā and Jamāl, / but the tricks of Shayṭān and the lower self (nafs). // People killed their own relatives, / but all this was predestined by God” (distiches 16, 17).Footnote ⁷ Nevertheless, in the verses about the fire there is a slightly disguised accusation of the assailants: “How impudent were that fire and those people / who did not extinguish it by a rain of tears!” (distich 8).

Declaring that the key motif behind the incident was the mundane desire for “worldly goods” (dunyā), i.e. power and wealth, Raḥmān touches on a conventional topic of Sufi homiletic literature. He joins those Sufi preachers who not only denounced the lower self, nafs, as the breeding ground of lust and base instincts but also portrayed it as a zoomorphic creature (cf. Schimmel Reference Schimmel1975: 112–3). From the old stock of poetic images Raḥmān chose the description of nafs as a dog (spay) which “drinks water and eats food” (distich 13).Footnote ⁸

In the remaining part of the poem Raḥmān addresses the broad issue of violence in two aspects. First, he examines the roots of violence in despotism and arbitrariness of rulers (bādshāhān), “Kings are doing what they wish” (distich 18). Instead of indulging in commonplace lamentations and admonitions he briefly recalls three cases from history – the recent wars for succession in the Mughal Empire, associated in the poet's mind with the names of the winners, Awrangzīb in 1658 and Shāh ʿĀlam Aʿẓam (Bahādur Shāh) in 1707, and the assassination of the Islamic Prophet's grandson Ḥusayn in 680, the latter being perceived as a symbol of martyrdom by Sunni Pashtuns even nowadays.Footnote ⁹ Thus, Raḥmān pointed to the strife for political power as the principal social factor in violence and bloodshed. Like other Pashtun litterateurs of his times Raḥmān felt free to criticize contemporaneous Mughal rulers. Emperor Shāh ʿĀlam, who died a few months after the Momand incident in early 1712, was characterized by Raḥmān as the one who “covered with blood all the land of Hindustan” (distich 19). Such forthright and sharp statements were not considered indiscreet, probably because they were intended for a domestic readership and articulated not in official cosmopolitan Persian, but in regional Pashto.

The second aspect of Raḥmān's discourse on violence is rightly defined by Enevoldsen as “a powerful ‘anatomy of evil’ which comes very close to the Biblical doctrine of Original Sin” (Reference Enevoldsen1977: 177). The unsophisticated verses in which the poet explains violence as a product of inborn vices of human nature sound like a fragment of public sermon addressed to laymen:

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's poem and Afżal Khān's report were evidently written at about the same time, just after the Momand incident. If Raḥmān was unlikely to be acquainted with the personal diaries of the Khaṫak chieftain, the latter may have known the poem of the very popular Pashtun poet from the neighbouring tribe. Of course, Afżal was informed about the incident through other sources, but Raḥmān's affecting verses could have inspired him to leave a note on the Momand conflict among the narratives that focused entirely on the events in the Khaṫak domain.

“He who digs a pit for others…” (ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Momand)

H.G. Raverty (Reference Raverty1867: 124) noted that ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd had written his poem as a reply to the verses of Raḥmān Bābā, his fellow tribesman of an older generation, with the aim of justifying ʿĪsā, his fellow clansman. Both Ḥamīd and ʿĪsā were Māshokhels, while Raḥmān belonged to a different clan, possibly Ibrāhīmkhel (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Reference ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and ʿAbd al-Qādir1963: iii; Hewādmal Reference Hewādmal2000: 174). According to Raverty (Reference Raverty1867: 85–86), “Mashū Khel” was also the name of the poet's home village where his descendants were still living in the mid-nineteenth century.

In his poem Ḥamīd does not so much acquit ʿĪsā as reprove Jamāl Khān who, conversely, is mourned by Raḥmān (ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd [Reference ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd and al-Ḥaqq1958]: 95–6). Essentially, the entire text of Ḥamīd's poem is an accusatory speech addressed to the murdered Momand chieftain. In terms of poetic genres it may be best defined as hajw (social satire), though irony and mockery are here replaced with outspoken condemnation. The poem's main idea is unequivocally stated in its first distich: “Every chieftain (sardār) who plots evil against his people, / should hold in front of him the case of Jamāl like a mirror”. Then, employing a whole range of rhetorical tools, the poet expounds at length on Jamāl Khān's viciousness and misconduct only to declare that this chieftain was justly punished for his avarice and malice towards his kinsfolk.

Ḥamīd's long diatribe contains few historical details. Besides the ethnonym “Khidrīzay”, presumably related to Jamāl Khān's tribal subdivision (distich 23, see above) he mentions the name “Jalāl”, attributed by Raverty to Jamāl's son whose wedding celebration turned into the massacre. Rather cynically reproaching both father and son, the poet hints at the fact that Jamāl Khān's authority in the Momand tribe depended on the support of “aliens” (pradī), i.e. the Mughals: “Courage is not attainable with the help of aliens without relatives; / this is what Jamāl and Jalāl shout from their graves” (distich 8). In one metaphorical verse Ḥamīd even succeeds in displaying the sequence of the drama's acts: “Other people are always being burned / because of those who break the hope of sword against a wall” (distich 22). Afżal Khān's report gives a clue to interpreting this verse, as follows: Jamāl Khān and his men failed to resist their attackers in close combat and hid behind the walls of the house; to force them to leave the shelter, the attackers set fire to the house, which caused a mass murder.

Ḥamīd himself is silent about the fact that his poem was an answer to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's verses. Moreover, he never mentions in his writings either the name of Raḥmān Bābā, or the names of other celebrated Pashtun poets, whereas in the former's dīwān we find references to Khushḥāl Khān and Dawlat Lohāṅay, who in their turn occasionally remembered Mīrzā Khān Anṣārī and other early Roshānī authors (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Reference ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and ʿAbd al-Qādir1963: 67, 75, 140; Khushḥāl Reference Khushḥāl and Kāmil Momand1952: 533–4, 623, 861–2; Dawlat Reference Dawlat and Rashād1975: 20, 149–50). The conspicuous aestheticism and intentional intricacy of Ḥamīd's poetical wording, often identified with the so-called “Indian style” of later Persian classics, as well as the very title of his dīwān “Pearls and corals” (Durr aw Marjān) and the supercilious phrase “Persian speakers bit their fingers in amazement, / when Ḥamīd displayed eloquence in Pashto” ([Reference ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd and al-Ḥaqq1958]: 131) testify to the poet's very high opinion of his exceptional literary mastery.

However, in Ḥamīd's few passing remarks we may detect allusions to Raḥmān's poem. His assertion that Jamāl Khān was as much guilty “as Yazīd who was responsible for [the murder] of Ḥasan and Ḥusayn” (distich 19) is an obvious reply to Raḥmān's verse where the names of the Islamic prophet's grandsons are mentioned together as the martyrs of war (see above). Like Raḥmān, Ḥamīd erroneously connected the death of Ḥasan in 669/70 and the murder of Ḥusayn in 680 with the name of the second Umayyad caliph Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya (r. 680–683), who according to the available evidence had been involved only in the latter case. Certainly, Ḥamīd points to Raḥmān and himself when he observes, “Let the one who is unaware of the true state of affairs say everything; / he who knows always speaks with reason” (distich 21). The last lines in Ḥamīd's poem leave little doubt that it was conceived as a polemical answer to Raḥmān's verses, “Such are the habits of this epoch: / when somebody grieves for the death of someone, the other rejoices at it” (distich 25). Being an uncompromising objection to the mournful homily of the highly esteemed Momand bard, Ḥamīd's poem seems to contradict the tribal legend which tells that Raḥmān once met with Ḥamīd “and was so pleased with his modesty and humility, that he gave him his blessing” (Raverty Reference Raverty1867: 86).

To win a poetic dispute with Raḥmān, Ḥamīd abundantly embellished his accusatory speech with various means of artistic expression – comparisons, metaphors, aphorisms, etc. Thus, he compares Jamāl Khān with a hawk who only tires and weakens himself attacking the larger quarry of a falcon (distich 9), or with a moth who carelessly dies in a flame (distich 14), or with a sultry desert which can never be made cultivable by sweet water (distich 17). Exposing Jamāl Khān's moral defects, Ḥamīd quotes two popular proverbs: one about a person who maliciously digs a pit for others (distich 5), and another about a wolf's whelp brought up by incautious people (distich 18).Footnote ¹⁰ Several figurative expressions in Ḥamīd's poem may be understood as local idioms, e.g. the locution “to thread a needle with the flash of lightning” (də breẋnā pə raṅā stən peyəl) with the meaning “to do futile things” in the phrase, “An unworthy person who aspires to dignity through enmity / threads a needle with the flash of lightning and makes [only] a hassle” (distich 15). The most characteristic sample of “Indian style” imagery is the verse in which Jamāl Khān is blamed for illegal encroachment on other people's property: “He who puts on another's clothes by force / makes the wrap for his wounds unclean” (distich 12). The plain idea of the inviolability of private property is figuratively formulated here through the unconventional image based on everyday realities. Slightly rephrased, this poetical aphorism, actually an invented proverb, goes as follows: “The cloth of a misappropriated garment is impure to bandage wounds”.

Unlike Raḥmān Bābā, who in his poem condemned violence per se and called for mercy, Ḥamīd in his response bluntly expressed quite different feelings of revenge and even gloating over the death of a sworn enemy of his own clan. However, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd's large arsenal of wise sayings, moralistic admonitions, reasoned appeals for justice, as well as sophisticated poetical devices, do not help him to match the powerful humanistic tonality of Raḥmān's verses.

“All Pashtuns speak of honour …” (ʿAbd al-Qādir Khaṫak)

The considerations that impelled ʿAbd al-Qādir to compose a poem on the incident in the neighbouring tribe are not entirely clear (ʿAbd al-Qādir Reference ʿAbd al-Qādir and al-Ḥaqq1969: 254–5). No other historical event, except for the death of his father in 1689, is discussed in his poetry. The most suitable explanation is that Qādir, like his nephew Afżal Khān, wished to draw a parallel between the Momand conflict and the current war for supremacy among the Khaṫaks, but his comparison was not in favour of Afżal.

In The Chronicle Afżal Khān (Reference Afżal and Kāmil Momand1974: 408) many times speaks of ʿAbd al-Qādir, often disrespectfully nicknamed “Kādī”, as his political opponent who, secretly or openly, plotted against him during his long confrontation with Bahrām Khān in 1681–1712. Afżal reports that when, after Bahrām's death, ʿAbd al-Qādir sided with his younger brother Nāmdār Khān, he arrested his uncle with other mutinous relatives, for he “considered imprisonment a better solution than murder or exile”. According to Afżal, this happened in June 1713, and in subsequent accounts the name of ʿAbd al-Qādir is never mentioned again. H.G. Raverty's assertion that Qādir was in fact executed by Afżal is not supported by a reference to any sources, “Æbd-ul-Kadir, together with ten of his brothers, and a number of their sons, were put to death, at the village of Zama Garraey, in one day, and buried in one grave; thus escaping the sorrows and troubles of chieftainship” (Raverty Reference Raverty1867: 269).

A few verses in the second part of Qādir's poem may relate to developments in the Khaṫak territories in 1710–11. Afżal Khān recounts in The Chronicle (Reference Afżal and Kāmil Momand1974: 391–8) that towards the summer of 1710 Bahrām Khān captured the Khaṫak chieftains’ residence Sarāy-Akoṙa (present-day Akora Khattak) with the aid of some Pashtun tribes including the Yūsufzays. Afżal had less military strength and was forced to escape to the Khaṫak mountains in the south. Hired Pashtun troops were not satisfied with payment for their service and, after a few raids on the Khaṫak settlements, left Bahrām Khān with only 200 horsemen. In October 1710 Afżal Khān regained possession of Sarāy-Akoṙa and by the spring of 1711 restored his authority in the Khaṫak domain. ʿAbd al-Qādir, who had allegedly rendered assistance to Bahrām, fled to the Yūsufzay lands. Afżal's account explains why Qādir, in his poem, unexpectedly attacks the Yūsufzays, blaming them for avarice and lack of honour (distich 15). In the following verse the poet formulates a maxim: “All Pashtuns speak of honour (nang), / but only those have honour who are selfless and not mercenary” (distich 16). Then, in distiches 20–21, Qādir accurses unnamed people who provoke discords and thus weaken the troops (laẋkar).

In the closing passage of four verses the author shifts the focus of his criticism to the Mughal imperial authorities (distiches 22–25). He declares that one should not neither trust the Mughals whose oaths are “Satanic traps” nor fear too much their disunited armies since the princes (shāhzādagān) “are occupied with the war for power”. A cynical conclusion in this philippic could have been addressed as well to his nephew Afżal Khān, “Make a stairway of heads and climb up! / Rising to a high rank is not easy” (distich 25). These verses suggest also that Qādir might have finished the poem in the early 1712 when the descendants of Emperor Bahādur Shāh started the war for the Mughal throne.

The Momand incident itself is described in distiches 5–13 after the philosophical introduction in which the poet ponders the vicissitudes of life and calls for a cupbearer to bring him a wine that would blur the difference between joy and sadness. In contrast to the Momand poets who mostly reflected on ethical aspects of the clash, ʿAbd al-Qādir draws an imaginary picture of the very battle accentuating the episode of the hand-to-hand sword fight and ignoring the fact of the fire highlighted by all other authors. Following an old poetical tradition, Qādir tells the story on behalf of a wind:

Needless to say, in these verses Qādir not only sympathizes with Jamāl Khān's adversaries portrayed as the defenders of the oppressed, but even praises them, thus siding with ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd. He even unwittingly echoes Ḥamīd, introducing into his poem a proverb with the same explanatory remark dā matal dəy (“this is a proverb”), “The blade cuts by its nature – this is a proverb; / the blades of the Momands now are nothing but ore” (distich 18).Footnote ¹² In the next verse Qādir continues to laud the Momands for bravery, asserting that they are perfect fighters in the open field in comparison to other tribes such as the Afrīdays or the Shinwārays, who prefer to wage warfare in mountains.

The political overtones of Qādir's poem are easily discernible. By depicting Jamāl Khān as a dishonourable henchman of the Mughals the poet alludes to the vassalage of his nephew Afżal Khān, who in 1710 refused to join a wide coalition of Pashtun tribes against the imperial administration of Kabul province and confronted the insurgents who then provided military support to Bahrām Khān. If in Afżal Khān's report Jamāl Khān Momand is implicitly compared to Bahrām Khān Khaṫak as an illegitimate contender for tribal leadership, in ʿAbd al-Qādir's poem he is an alter ego of Afżal himself as an imperial vassal tyrannizing his fellow tribesmen.

The literary style of Qādir's poem, atypically for his lyrics, bears a strong resemblance to that of the popular war ballads of Khushḥāl Khān, which had already become classics of the genre in the seventeenth century. Qādir chose the rhyme on -ānī, the same as in Khushḥāl's ballad about the defeat of the Khaṫaks in a clash with the Bangashs in 1676, having changed only the grammatical epistrophe wa (“was”) to dī (“are”) (Khushḥāl Reference Khushḥāl and Kāmil Momand1952: 857–60). Khushḥāl's poem (qiṭʿa) begins with də bangaẋ pə tūra māt na yəm bāwar kṙa / də gunbat pə jang me mate āsmānī wa (“I am not defeated by the blades of the Bangashs, believe me; / my defeat in the battle at Gunbat was from Heaven”), and the first distich in Qādir's poem (qaṣīda) is dā kārūna chi nən gānda ʿayānī dī / hets pə khwā pə khāṭir na wū āsmānī dī (“The things that happen today and tomorrow / were not in thoughts at all, they are from Heaven”). In this distich Qādir also rephrased the opening verse of Khushḥāl's other ode written in 1674 in connection with the events of the Mughal–Afghan war of 1672–76: chi pə khwā pə khāṭir na hase ʿayān shī / dzine tsə chāre paydā pə dā jahān shī (“When something turns out otherwise than it was in thoughts, / what things may happen in this world”) (Khushḥāl Reference Khushḥāl and Kāmil Momand1952: 612–3). Of 26 rhyme words in Qādir's poem, 17 coincide with those in Khushḥāl's ballad “I am not defeated…”, some of them generating similar motifs and ideas. For example, the Persian word nānī (“mercenary”)Footnote ¹³ is used in both poems negatively to characterize allied troops – the Yūsufzays in Qādir's poem and some Khaṫak clans in that of Khushḥāl. Qādir's verse (distich 16, cited above) is a rephrasing of Khushḥāl's lines, “A troop may fight either for fame and honour (nām-u nang) or for gold; / this posse of mine was not fighting for honour, it was mercenary!” (Khushḥāl Reference Khushḥāl and Kāmil Momand1952: 858).

The symbolic figure of a cupbearer (sāqī) in the philosophical introduction to Qādir's poem was not so much a tribute paid to the canon of classical Persian lyrics as an allusion to Khushḥāl's most famous war ode “Whence did this spring come again…” (byā lə kūma rā-paydā shū dā bahār) translated into English as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century by Mountstuart Elphinstone (Reference Elphinstone1839: 257–9; Khushḥāl Reference Khushḥāl and Kāmil Momand1952: 526–8). Khushḥāl's ode also opens with a brief overture which belongs to the traditional genre of the landscape spring lyrics. The concluding verse of this introduction is, “O cupbearer, give me full, full cups / so that I may become wholly indulged in wine drinking!” Qādir rephrased this verse by changing its frank hedonistic appeal into a moralizing statement from the philosophy of life, “O cupbearer, bring me a cup so that everything may become equal to me, / for both sorrow and joy have no constancy, they are transient”. Another, even more distinct, reference to the major source of influence in Qādir's poem is an almost literal quotation of the verse from Khushḥāl's ode where the bloodstained battlefield is compared to a blooming garden of tulips: “White blades they made red with blood; / a tulip garden bloomed in the heat of summer” (cf. Qādir's distich 9 above). Parallel lines in Pashto are pə ahāṙ ke shigufta shū lālazār (Khushḥāl) and lālazār-ye shigufta pə srə ahāṙ kṙə (Qādir).

As for the possible connection of Qādir's verses with those of the Momand authors, one may point to the very similar number of distiches in all three texts: 28 (Raḥmān), 25 (Ḥamīd) and 26 (Qādir). There is no reason not to assume that Qādir had the chance to become acquainted with the verses of the Momand lyricists before he decided to compose his only war ballade with a quite unexpected description of the dramatic clash in the neighbouring tribe.