History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c44.s2: §2. The Afghans, their social organization and character.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c44.s2
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§2. The Afghans, their social organization and character.
v3.c44.s2.1
Along our entire north-western border,—in the valleys leading from India to Kashmir and Afghanistan, and in the encompassing hills, live numberless Turko-Iranian clans, called Pathans in the north and Baluches in the south. Nine centuries ago we first hear of them as an obscure and savage people against whom the Turkish rulers of Ghazni had to wage occasional war. Later they were converted to Islam, but the new creed made no moral transformation among them. They retained their old speech, their old tribal organization, and their immemorial profession of brigandage. In the course of time, after long wanderings from the cradle of their race in southern and south-eastern Afghanistan, the Pathans settled as the dominant class in the regions where we now find them.
v3.c44.s2.2
Brave and hardy as these people are above all the races of the plains, they are torn by the feud of clan against clan and often of family against family. In all their history they have failed to establish any large and compact State, or even any enduring confederacy of tribes. The promise of a career of plunder has held together these born warriors for a time, but they have always separated on the death of the successful leader. The Afghans have never sent any large military force outside except as the mercenaries of some great conqueror, and in their homes they have united only under the stress of a common danger, such as an invasion of their entire country. They have never formed a nation, but always clans. Within the clans even, the strict discipline of the Rajput tribal system is wanting. The Rathor or Sisodia obeys his chieftain as a demi-god, or at least as the father of a family of which all who bear the tribal name are the children. But the Yusufzai or Afridi follows his chieftain only while it is his interest or pleasure to do so.
v3.c44.s2.3
Weak as the Afghans are for conducting distant or long campaigns on a large or organized scale, they are weaker still in diplomacy and internal administration. An ambitious man among them gathers together a number of families and makes himself chief for the time being; another man does the same thing, and, if more successful in rapine, supplants the former. These ever-forming ever-dissolving groups of families are the only effective forces of an Afghan clan for offence or defence; the nominal chieftain merely governs on the sufferance of his followers. This lack of a common head makes it impossible for an Afghan clan to enter into any treaty obligation for the whole body, even if they knew the sacredness of plighted word,—for they have no machinery for ensuring respect for such undertakings from all their members. The family and not the clan is the true unit of Afghan society.
v3.c44.s2.4
Such were the enemies with whom the empire had to wage an intermittent war ever since the days of Akbar, and who taxed all the resources of Aurangzib during the second decade of his reign.
v3.c44.s2.5
The trouble began with the Yusufzais. The present home of this clan lies in the Swat and Bajaur valleys and the plain of north Peshawar,—a rough semi-circle bounded on three sides by the Indus, Kabul and Swat rivers, and on the fourth by the lower Kashmir hills. Hither they had migrated in the 16th century from the Qandahar region and settled in the lands of the Dalzaqs, an Indian race, whom they gradually ousted. Their progress was unwittingly aided by the Mughal emperors who slew and deported the Dalzaqs in large numbers, so that the district was almost entirely denuded of them. Thus, by the end of the reign of Jahangir the occupation of this tract by the Yusufzais was completed.*