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the love of hawksCertainly, there is little Pashtun literature commonly read in the world, although Pashto is a major language spoken by some 50 million people. I have in my collection a rarity once brought from the Emirates: an English translation of The Book of Falconry, written in 1674 by Khushal Khan Khattak, a poet from Akora Khattak in modern-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
Khushal Khan Khattak (1613-1689) is usually considered as a major author of the Mughal period, writing both in Pashto and in Persian; his Pashto baaz nama, or falconry treatise, is in verse, although he also mentions having written a similar treatise in Persian prose (a text that seems to be lost today). For the rest, he was a chieftain of the Khattak tribe appointed by Shah Jahan, the same who built the Taj Mahal. After the advent of the Shah's son, Aurangzeb, Khushal fell out of favour, was imprisoned, and re-emerged, several years later, as a leader of the resistance fighting against the Mughal hegemony in the Pashtun belt. As he proudly mentions in the introduction to his Falconry book, “It's been four five years / Since the start of the strife / As the Mughals are bleeding / By the Pashtun knife”. Exiled, he roams the mountains as an ibex, but war cannot detain him from his hunting passion: “Even in this state / You'll find me undeterred // Small or great, there are still / New tidings in store / The love of hawks lured me / To the Swat Valley floor” (p. 2-3). The treatise, in spite of being written in mathnavi verse (two-line couplets rhyming the endings of both lines), is very precise as a way of transmission of falconry lore. The first part is dedicated to the usual basis of the falconry practice, describing all aspects of taming and training; the second, sort of advanced one, deals with diseases and specialised treatments for birds. Khushal Khan Khattak, The Book of Falconry, trans. By Sami Ur Rahman, Islamabad, PanGraphics, 2014. |
