RASC News Agency: The present-day country of Afghanistan, burdened with a fabricated tribal name, was once a significant part of a great civilization and a vast land known as “Ariana” or “Aryana” or “Aria and Iria.” Ariana, with its glorious cultural and political identity that dates back thousands of years before the Common Era and until the 5th century CE, encompassed current Afghanistan, portions of present-day Iran, regions in Central Asia, and parts of northern and western Pakistan.
According to a tale by an ancient Greek researcher and historian named “Eratosthenes,” in the mid-3rd century BC, Ariana was the ancient and former name for present-day Afghanistan, and this land was considered one of the seven cradles of ancient human civilization.
Ariana is among the lands located in the Middle East, Egypt, the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, China, the Indian subcontinent, the Greek Peninsula, Italy, and ancient Rome. The inhabitants of these lands thousands of years ago had a brilliant civilization in various fields such as science, medicine, geometry, and more, laying the foundations of today’s human society on Earth.
The Zoroastrian religion emerged hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus Christ by its promulgator and founder, Zarathustra, with the same name, from the present-day city of Balkh in Afghanistan, which was known as “Baktria.” This ancient historical city of “Balkh” or “Baktria” was the center and capital of the Aryan Aryans’ civilization.
According to the Afghanistani historian’s account from the past five centuries, the present-day geography of Afghanistan was known as Khorasan during the Islamic periods until the mid-nineteenth century. Khorasan, which encompassed a larger territory than Sistan, Kabulistan, and Transoxiana, had its capital in the city of Bukhara. Roudaki Samarqandi, a Persian-speaking poet in the court of the Samanid dynasty, referred to himself as a poet from Khorasan, and a Balkhi poet in the court of Sultan Mahmmood Ghaznawi also mentioned the “Gods of Khorasan” in his poems.
Historians have debated the origins of the Afghan/Pashton tribes, and Professor Morgan Stern sheds some light on the topic. According to him, the term “Pakhtokis” was initially used by Herodotus, referring to one of the eleven Aryan tribes that migrated from the southern plains of Central Asia. These tribes crossed the Hindu Kush range and eventually settled in the Soliman Mountains.
The mountains range of Soliman, located in the vicinity of “Sul,” is divided into two distinct branches: the eastern and western branches. Sul, being the western branch, currently serves as the dwelling place for the waziri Pashton tribe. Despite the fact that the esteemed author of the Herat Chronicle, Saifi Herawi, refers to the lands between the present-day borders of Kandahar and the Sindh River as Afghanistan, the majority of scholars have identified and attributed the origins of the Pashtons to the Soliman Mountains in present-day northwestern Pakistan, particularly in the central hub known as “Shahr-e- mustang.” These regions in the northern part of the Soliman Mountains, encompassing the surroundings of Peshawar, have been excluded from the classification of “Afghanistan.”
When examining the events in Khorasan, it becomes apparent that the extensive migrations of the Pashtons from the Soliman Mountains ranges coincided with the Mongol invasions and the Timurid campaigns towards Khorasan. This suggests that the widespread looting and massacres perpetrated by the Mongol forces resulted in the deaths of many farmers and landowners in Khorasan. These individuals formed the backbone of society and the agricultural workforce. Consequently, the residential areas and agricultural lands were left vacant, providing an opportunity for the Pashton migrants. Initially, the Pashtons used these barren lands as pastures, but they later utilized them for agricultural and residential purposes, settling down.
Following Saifi Herawi’s writings in the Herat Chronicle, subsequent historians increasingly mentioned the Pashtons, particularly as this tribe began collective migrations from the Soliman Mountains and their surrounding regions towards India and Khorasan. Eventually, they relocated to the southern parts of Khorasan and the northeastern part of Balochistan.
Based on historical accounts and writings of historians, associating the change of name from Khorasan to present-day Afghanistan with the beginning of Ahmad Shah Durrani’s rule and the first tribal power grab by them in 1747 is a fictional, historically inaccurate, and untrue narrative. Because according to history, after the rule of Ahmad Shah Durrani, his son Timur Shah and his descendants, Shah zaman, Shah Mahmmood, and Shah Shuja, referred to themselves as the kings of “Khorasan.” Even in the historical accounts of Ahmad Shahi (1773) and Hussain Shahi (1798), the term “Afghanistan” does not appear, and Shah Shuja also dedicated his own book Tarikh Waqeyat “History of events” (1835),” to the “historians of Khorasan.”
After half a century, the fragmentation of political dominance among the aristocrats in 1800 led to the formation of independent and semi-independent local governments in northern and southern Khorasan. The name “Afghanistan” came into existence during the reign of Abdur Rahman, with the first delineation of borders and demarcations of this region by the British. For the first time, it was referred to as the country of “Afghanistan” in the political geography of the region and the world, being recognized as a British colony. Prior to that, no country with this name and defined borders existed in the political geography of the world.
After the establishment of the country called Afghanistan during Abdur Rahman’s time, the notion of ethnic and linguistic superiority emerged for the first time by Mahmmood Tarzi under Habibullah’s rule. During Amanullah’s reign, this notion was further elaborated practically through the issuance of the Nizam namah-ye-Naqalin, which aimed for the path of westernization. The “Kabul Literary Society” was founded during Nader Shah’s time, and articles such as “Afghanistan and a Look into its History” were written to delve into the nation’s past. Additionally, in Zaher Shah’s era, the association of “Pashto Language and History Society” was established in an unprecedented effort to Afghanize or Pashtunize the history, identity, and language culture of all ethnic groups referred to as Afghans and to Afghanistan. Notably, the “Peta khazanah” was constructed, and the names of historical regions of the country were changed to Pashto.
