Nimat Allah Al-Harawi - Origin Theories

Origin Theories

The Bani-Israelite theory about the origin of the Pashtuns is based on Pashtun oral traditions; the tradition itself was documented in the Makhzan-i-Afghani, which is the only written source addressing Pashtun origins.

The Makhzan traces the Pashtuns' origins from the Patriarch Abraham down to a king named King Talut (Saul). Makhzan to this point agrees with testimony provided by Muslim sources or Hebrew Scriptures, showing King Saul around B.C. 1092 in Palestine.It is beyond this point that the description comes under serious doubt.

Makhzan-i-Afghani maintains that Saul had a son Irmia (Jeremia) who again had a son called Afghana raised by King David upon the death of King Saul and later promoted to the chief command of the Army during the reign of King Solomon.

The description jumps to 6th century B.C. when Bakhtunnasar (Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon) attacked Judah and exiled Bani-Israel, the progeny of Afghana, to Ghor in Afghanistan. This is contradictory, as Nebuchadnezzar attacked the Kingdom of Judah and Benjamin, not the kingdom of Israel of the Ten Tribes. The main ambiguity here is whether Makhzan-i-Afghani is failing to differentiate between the Kingdom of Judah and the Kingdom of Israel. This may have crept in because Makhzan might have copied the tale of Jewish captivity from Muslim sources and Muslim sources weren't well acquainted with Jewish history. Nebuchadnezzar brought Jews in captivity to Babylonia around B.C. 580 until Cyrus, the King of Persia, attacked Babylonia, freed the Jews, and allowed them to return to Jerusalem. So, Cyrus didn't send the Jews captives to Ghor but rather to Jerusalem.

However, Babylon did also conquer Assyria, where the Ten Tribes had been exiled to decades before. After that, Babylon was conquered by Cyrus of Persia. So if Babylon achieved jurisdiction over them that way, that would credibly explain how they were exiled originally by Assyrians, yet the Pashtuns' story depicts them being ruled by Babylonians, and then by Cyrus of Persia.

The Assyrian king Shalmaneser is the one who raided the Kingdom of Israel in B.C. 721 and sent the ten tribes in exile to Media, the North-Western part of today's Iran. The Persian Empire didn't exist at the time of first Jewish captivity (B.C. 721) and was founded later by Cyrus in B.C. 550. The ten exiled tribes might have mingled with the local population of Media or dispersed over to Russia and Eastern Europe. So the Jewish captives from the Kingdom of Judah were eventually sent to Jerusalem. These contradictions cast some doubts on the Makhzan account of Jewish captivity and so undermines its authenticity.

Israelites from the Kingdom of Israel might have been sent separately to a different area. The Bnei Menashe of India also have traditions which trace their wanderings as going originally from the Persian Empire to Afghanistan. In their case, they then went to China, where they encountered persecution, then pressed on to India and Southern Asia.