On the road of failure: the Afghans in Mughal India
On the road of failure: the Afghans in Mughal India

Summary/Abstract: The origin of the name Afghans is unknown – it is known to the Afghans themselves only through the medium of the Persian language. Their own name for themselves is Pashtuns or Pakhtuns, while in India they have generally been known as Pathans. All of these names, attempts to prove otherwise notwithstanding, refer to the same ethno-linguistic group. In Babur’s memoirs they make their appearance as a tribal and mostly pastoral-nomadic people whose original homeland in the Sulayman mountains was called Afghanistan. These mountains, like most of the other lands that make up modern Afghanistan, were then considered to have been part of Khurasan, or were simply referred to as Sarhadd, ‘the frontier’.

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