Poetry
Poems from the Divan of Khushhal Khan Khattak
دیوان
Khushal Khattak · 1680
Synopsis
Poems of war, love and old age, written in Pashto by the chief of a tribe who served the Mughal empire before raising his men against it. The poet calls on the Pashtuns to unite and reproaches them for their divisions; he celebrates victory over the enemy, even a fellow countryman, hunting and the falcon, the beauty of women and of nature; he meditates on God and on morality, and the pieces of his captivity express the lament of a man shut away far from his own.
Context
The Divan comprises about sixteen thousand couplets, out of an output that some put at more than forty-five thousand lines. It was first printed in 1869 in Peshawar, at the Jail Press, under the direction of the orientalist H. W. Bellew. The English have translated selections from it since 1862 with Raverty, then with Biddulph in 1890, Howell and Caroe in 1963 and MacKenzie in 1965. A manuscript found in 1966, completed five months before the poet's death, was edited in Kabul by Habibullah Rafi. The poet is said to have wanted a tomb over which the hooves of Mughal horses would not pass.
Who it is for
Short poems, to be read in series, in English translation. It is worth knowing that their author writes in Pashto at a time when the learned poetry of the region is written in Persian.
Prizes and reception
Britannica regards him as the national poet of Afghanistan; in 1965 UNESCO had a selection of his Divan translated.
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