Afghan literature

Last updated September 14, 2022

Afghan literature or literature of Afghanistan refers to the literature produced in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.^[1]^[2] Influenced by Central and South Asian literature, it is predominantly written in two native and official languages of Afghanistan, Dari and Pashto. Some regional languages such as Uzbek, Turkmen, Balochi, and Pashayi also appears in Afghan literature.^[3] While Afghanistan is a multilingual country, these languages are generally used as oral compositions and written texts by the Afghan writers and in Afghan curriculum. Its literature is highly influenced by Persian and Arabic literature in addition to Central and South Asia.^[1]^[2]

The history of the broader Afghan literature spans between ancient and modern Afghanistan. The earliest works of literature were orally transmitted. It's writing system is historically associated with Arabic script. The oldest extant records of the literature are believed derivative of the Nabataean variation of the Aramaic alphabet, dating to the 5th and 6th centuries. However, it primarily originated in the early Islamic centuries.

Archaeological researches conducted since 1922 has shown fine art of the pre-Islamic scripts. The country's literature was originally written and transmitted in Arabic alphabet, making it to possess a rich linguistic legacy of pre-Islamic scripts, which existed before being replaced by the Arabic alphabet, including Sharada, Kharosthi, Greek, and Brāhmī following by the Islamic conquest of Afghanistan. Bactrian language is also associated with pre-Islamic scripts.^[4]^[5]

Contemporary literature

Afghanistan's contemporary literature has its deep roots in rich heritage of both oral composition and traditionally written texts. The natives of Afghanistan either living within the country or outside use major languages, Pashto and Dari. Both languages are used by the 32 million people in Afghanistan, making the two officially recognized languages cover a major part of Afghanistan's literature. Afghanistan's literature is historically recorded by poets and writers. In 1886, a French author James Darmesteter wrote about the historical context of Afghanistan's literature and the role of poets.

Context

if we want to know what an Afghan is, let us put all books aside and receive his own unconscious confession from the lips of his favorite poets.

Widmark, Anders. The View from Within: An Introduction to New Afghan Literature, Words Without Borders

It's argued that Pashtun poems, including Sher Zaman Taizi's book titled The Field (1988) had played a significant role in literature. In the modern era, Afghan poets and short story writers are actively engaged in writing poetry, comprising a detained account of literature.^[2]

Medieval period literature

Afghanistan's literature is historically associated with the civilizations of Iran, China, and India. The country witnessed development of artistic work during the Ghaznavids dynasty and the Ghurid dynasty between 10th and 12th century. However, the Timurid dynasty shaped culture and artistic activities in the Islamic era.

Since Afghanistan has a rich literary identity, folklore and traditional custom songs reveal centuries-old as well as modern Afghan literature. Afghan literature has its roots in Dari, Pashto, Arabic, and Turkic languages as they were extensively used in the medieval period. Afghan rulers such as the Samanid Empire, the Ghaznavids, the Timurids, and the Mughal Empire, were highly influenced by Persian literature. They encouraged and supported the writers such as Rumi, Jami, Rudaki, Ferdowsi, and Khwaja Abdullah Ansari for writing in Persian language.

Epic poem, Shahnameh by Firdawsi is regarded as one of the important works, while Rumi is regarded as one of the greatest poets in Afghan literature who shaped Persian literature. However, his writings were later translated into English.

Colonial literature

Because of the large immigration to other countries in the 16th to 18th centuries, the articulation of ideals, and the early establishment of literary institutions and learning environments outside the country have often been regarded as the center of early Afghan literature. During those centuries, many literary figures originated in the undivided region, but following the partition between Mughal empire and Safavid dynasty, several poets, including Khushal Khattak moved to literary centres. Khattak lived in the Hindu Kush mountain range. By the late 19th century, Pakhtuns sung poetry with music for making it identical to ghazals, a classical Urdu genre.

Literary, Afghan, Turkic, and Pashto literature share identical traditions, and are collectively recognised as Persian literature, however, Afghanistan's literature is a distinct one which has its own traditions and customs of writing system, and oral-formulaic composition in particular.

Modern literature

In the 20th century, Kabul, the capital of the country became the center for literary figures and publishing. Mahmud Tarzi was the editor of Seraj al Akhbar , Kabul's first literary newspaper circulated from 1911 to 1919. He is often known for his contribution for the development of modern literary environment. Over the past decades, Afghanistan produced several literary figures including Khalilullah Khalili and Sayed Buhaniddin Majruh. Khalili is referred to as "Renaissance man" for his contribution to modern literature.^[6]

Mahmud Tarzi was actively involved in promoting Pashto as a national language and providing information and news through Seraj al Akhbar newspaper. During that period, Seraj ul Akhbar played significant role in modernising Afghan society through its articles. A French novelist Jules Verne, also translated the work into foreign language. He became the first writer to publish the first books printed in independent Afghanistan.^[7]

The rise of poetry

Afghan poetry and culture has a long history dating back to the rise of Sufism. Poetry was written in various shared languages such as Persian, Dari, Pashto, and very few in Urdu. Poetry in foreign languages such as English and Turkic also has a strong influence on Afghan poetry. The poetry reflects diverse spiritual traditions within the country. In particular, many Afghan poets have been inspired by mystical and Sufism experiences. Afghan poetry is the oldest form of literature and has a rich written and oral tradition. In Afghanistan, poetic expression exists for centuries. The great poet Rumi was an Afghan poet who wrote in Dari language throughout his life. Other poets also wrote in Dari, however several other poets were deeply influenced by Persian, Pashto and Arabic Languages.^[8]^[9] Modern women usually write the traditional Afghan poetry form, consisting of two lines of rhyme, called landay.^[10]

Authors and poets

Proverbs

Afghan proverbs are generally simple, concrete, and traditional saying. They usually express a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Some proverbs are categorised by the events occurred in real life or based on imagination facts that temporarily create objects, peoples and ideas without any immediate input of the senses.

Afghan proverbs primarily exist in two officially recognised languages. Unrecognised or anonymous proverbs exist in more than two languages because people borrow them from foreign or regional languages similar to Afghan languages.

Related Research Articles

Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties, namely Iranian Persian, Dari Persian and Tajiki Persian. It is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan, as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran. It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet, a derivation of the Arabic script, and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet, a derivation of the Cyrillic script.

Dari, or Dari Persian, is a political term used for the various dialects of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Dari is the term officially recognised and promoted since 1964 by the Afghan government for the Persian language, hence it is known as Afghan Persian or Eastern Persian in many Western sources. As Professor Nile Green remarks "the impulses behind renaming of Afghan Persian as Dari were more nationalistic than linguistic" in order to create an Afghan state narrative. Apart from a few basics of vocabulary, there is little difference between formal written Persian of Afghanistan and Iran. The term "Dari" is officially used for the characteristic spoken Persian of Afghanistan, but is best restricted to formal spoken registers. Persian-speakers in Afghanistan prefer to still call their language “Farsi,” while Pashto-speakers may sometimes refer to it as "Parsi." Farsi Dari serves as the lingua franca for inter ethnic communications in Afghanistan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uzbek language</span> Karluk Turkic language of Central Asia

Uzbek, formerly known as Turki or Western Turki, is a Turkic language that is the first official and only declared national language of Uzbekistan. The language of Uzbeks is spoken by 44 million people around the world (L1+L2), having some 34 million speakers in Uzbekistan, 4.5 million in Afghanistan, and around 5 million in the rest of Central Asia, making it the second-most widely spoken Turkic language after Turkish.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pashto</span> Eastern Iranian language of Afghanistan and Pakistan

Pashto, is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani.

Persian literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in the Persian language and is one of the world's oldest literatures. It spans over two-and-a-half millennia. Its sources have been within Greater Iran including present-day Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, and Turkey, regions of Central Asia and South Asia where the Persian language has historically been either the native or official language. For example, Rumi, one of the best-loved Persian poets, born in Balkh or Wakhsh, wrote in Persian and lived in Konya, at that time the capital of the Seljuks in Anatolia. The Ghaznavids conquered large territories in Central and South Asia and adopted Persian as their court language. There is thus Persian literature from Iran, Mesopotamia, Azerbaijan, the wider Caucasus, Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Tajikistan and other parts of Central Asia. Not all Persian literature is written in Persian, as some consider works written by ethnic Persians or Iranians in other languages, such as Greek and Arabic, to be included. At the same time, not all literature written in Persian is written by ethnic Persians or Iranians, as Turkic, Caucasian, and Indic poets and writers have also used the Persian language in the environment of Persianate cultures.

Azerbaijani literature is written in Azerbaijani, a Turkic language, which is the official state language of the Republic of Azerbaijan, where the North Azerbaijani variety is spoken. It is also natively spoken in Iran, where the South Azerbaijani variety is used, and is particularly spoken in the northwestern historic region of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani is also spoken natively in Russia, Georgia and Turkey. While the majority of Azerbaijani people live in Iran, modern Azerbaijani literature is overwhelmingly produced in the Republic of Azerbaijan, where the language has official status. Three scripts are used for writing the language: Azerbaijani Latin script in the Republic of Azerbaijan, Arabic script in Iran and Cyrillic script formerly used in Soviet Azerbaijan.

A Persianate society is a society that is based on or strongly influenced by the Persian language, culture, literature, art and/or identity.

Poetry of the modern-day region called Afghanistan has ancient roots, which is mostly written in Dari and Pashto. Afghan poetry relates to the culture of Afghanistan and is an element of Afghan literature.

The culture of Afghanistan has persisted for over three millennia, tracing record to at least the time of the Achaemenid Empire in 500 BCE, and encompasses the cultural diversity of the nation. Its location at the crossroads of Central, South and Western Asia historically made it a hub of diversity, dubbed by one historian as the "roundabout of the ancient world".

Islamic culture and Muslim culture refer to cultural practices which are common to historically Islamic people. The early forms of Muslim culture, from the Rashidun Caliphate to the early Umayyad period and the early Abbasid period, were predominantly Arab, Byzantine, Persian and Levantine. With the rapid expansion of the Islamic empires, Muslim culture has influenced and assimilated much from the Persian, Egyptian, North Caucasian, Turkic, Mongol, Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Malay, Somali, Berber, Indonesian, and Moro cultures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Persian</span> Final-stage classification of the Persian language

New Persian, also known as Modern Persian and Dari (دری), is the final stage of the Persian language spoken since the 8th to 9th centuries until now in Greater Iran and surroundings. It is conventionally divided into three stages: Early New Persian, Classical Persian, and Contemporary Persian.

Persianization or Persification, is a sociological process of cultural change in which a non-Persian society becomes "Persianate", meaning it either directly adopts or becomes strongly influenced by the Persian language, culture, literature, art, music, and identity as well as other socio-cultural factors. It is a specific form of cultural assimilation that often includes a language shift. The term applies not only to cultures, but also to individuals, as they acclimate to Persian culture and become "Persianized" or "Persified".

Iranian Persian, Western Persian or Western Farsi, natively simply known as Persian, refers to the varieties of the modern Persian language spoken in Iran and by minorities in neighboring countries, as well as by Iranian communities throughout the world. These are mutually intelligible with other varieties of Persian, including Afghanistan's Dari and Tajikistan's Tajik.

The Persian language in the Indian subcontinent, before the British colonisation, was the region's lingua franca and a widely used official language in North India. The language was brought into South Asia by various Turkic and Afghan dynasties from the 11th century onwards, notable of which were the Ghaznavids, Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Dynasty. Persian held official status in the court and the administration within these empires. It largely replaced Sanskrit as the language of politics, literature, education, and social status in the subcontinent.

Across Afghanistan, proverbs are a valued part of speaking, both publicly and in conversations. Afghans "use proverbs in their daily conversations far more than Westerners do, and with greater effect". The most extensive proverb collections in Afghan languages are in Pashto and Dari, the two official languages in Afghanistan.

Seraj al Akhbar was a Persian newspaper that circulated in Kabul, Afghanistan from 1911–1919. Published in 1911, the newspaper was founded by Mahmud Tarzi as an attempt at modernization, with the support of Emir Habibullah Khan. It was primarily a political newspaper, purposing to keep the country informed about international affairs, and the current events of the country. Seraj al Akhbar promoted Pan-Islamism, and supported the young Turks coalition in the Ottoman Empire. As the first recognized newspaper in the country, Seraj al Akhbar is regarded as the founding of the Afghan press.

Mahmud Tarzi was an Afghan politician and intellectual. He is known as the father of Afghan journalism. He became a key figure in the history of Afghanistan, following the lead of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in Turkey by working for modernization and secularization, and strongly opposing religious extremism and obscurantism. Tarzi emulated the Young Turks coalition.

Literature in Iran encompasses a variety of literary traditions in the various languages used in Iran. Modern literatures of Iran include Persian literature, Azerbaijani literature, and Kurdish literature, among others.

Turkmen literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in the Old Oghuz Turkic and Turkmen languages. The Turkmens are direct descendants of the Oghuz Turks, who were a western Turkic people, who formed the Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family.

Uzbek literature refers to the literature produced and developed in the Republic of Uzbekistan with additional literary works contributed by the other parts of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan people of Central Asia. Influenced by the Russian and Turkish literature, Uzbek is predominantly written in Uzbek language with its roots in Chagatai language, one of the widely accessible languages in the region from 14th to 20th century. In Uzbek literature, Chagatai plays an important role as a reference to Central Asian literature, including Uzbekistan.

References

1 2 Pillalamarri, Akhilesh. "Afghanistan's Persian Linguistic Identity". thediplomat.com.
1 2 3 Widmark, Anders. "The View from Within: An Introduction to New Afghan Literature". Words Without Borders.
↑ "What Languages Are Spoken In Afghanistan?". WorldAtlas. 25 April 2017.
↑ "Afghanistan Literature". Afghanistan's Web Site. 9 May 1984. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
↑ "Afghanistan – The arts and cultural institutions". Encyclopedia Britannica.
↑ "ARTS AND CULTURE - English". English. 31 December 2016. Archived from the original on 20 August 2020. Retrieved 8 December 2021.
↑ "Afghanistan: The emergence of modern Afghan literature". 4 May 2005. Archived from the original on 4 May 2005.
↑ "FEATURE: In Western Afghanistan, an ancient love of poetry thrives again". UN News. 5 October 2017. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
↑ Mashal, Mujib (25 October 2019). "In a Quiet Corner, an Old Afghan Poet Polishes 'the Heart's Mirror'". The New York Times.
↑ "Ancient Afghan Poetry Form Adapts to Tell Story of Modern Life and Conflict". Pulitzer Center. 19 June 2013.