Writing the Mughal Past in Pashto: Khushal Khan Khattak Historical Consciousness in Early Modern South Asian History

Abstract

This paper examines Khushal Khan Khattak representation of Delhi and its rulers as a historical consciousness in Pashto literature. Khushal as a poet in modern professional sense, makes his poetry a mode of historical representation through which he highlights Delhi environment, dynastic succession, political memory, and knowledge of the past. Focusing previous accounts of Delhi and the succession list of its rulers, the study analyzes how Khushal use place, chronology, compression, selection, and characterization to construct a poetic narrative of the political past. His poetic narrative includes representation within the wider Persianate and Mughal intellectual environment in which early modern Pashto literature developed. The paper therefore argues that Khushal’s historical poetry highlights the importance of vernacular literary texts for understanding historical memory in early-modern South Asia. His work shows how knowledge of the political history could be circulated beyond formal court chronicles and could be preserved through poetic forms in Pashto.

Keywords: Khushal Khan Khattak; historical consciousness; Pashto literature; historical memory; Mughal India; Delhi; Persianate culture; early modern South Asia.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23274419