Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Afghan History

Bibliographic Data

ID3615087
AuthorsNile Green (0000-0001-9575-3889, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume67
Issue1
Pages171-211
Publication date2008-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9118 • E-ISSN: 1752-0401
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/s0021911808000065
OpenAlexW2166208537
LanguageEN
Citations received20
References cited35

Before the founding of the state of Afghanistan in the eighteenth century, the main centers of political and cultural gravity for the Pashtuns lay in India, where numerous Pashtuns migrated in pursuit of commerce and soldiery. Amid the cosmopolitan pressures of India and its alternative models of self-knowledge and affiliation, Pashtun elites elaborated a distinct idiom of "Afghan" identity. With the Afghans' absorption into the Mughal Empire, earlier patterns of accommodation to the Indian environment were overturned through the writing of history, whereby the Afghan past and present were carefully mapped through the organizing principle of genealogy. While the Afghan religious world was being reshaped by the impact of empire, in response, tales of expressly Afghan saints served to tribalize the ties of Islam. With the decline of Mughal power, the collective "Afghan" identity of the diaspora was transmitted to the new Afghan state, where the relationship of this tribal template of Afghan authenticity to the non-Pashtun peoples of Afghanistan remains the defining controversy of national identity

Aesthetics · Afghan · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Diaspora · Empire · Ethnology · Genealogy · Geography · Identity (music) · Islam · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · State (computer science) · Tribe · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · History · Law · Philippine History and Culture · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East