History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c44.s2.1

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.