Abdul Hai Habibi

Who was Abdul Hai Habibi?

Abdul Hai Habibi was a prominent Afghan historian for much of his lifetime as well as a member of the National Assembly of Afghanistan during the reign of King Zahir Shah. A Pashtun nationalist from Kandahar, Afghansitan, he began as a young teacher who made his way up to become a writer, scholar, politician and Dean of Faculty of Literature at Kabul University. He is the author of over 100 books but is best known for editing Pata Khazana, an "old" Pashto language manuscript that he claimed to have "discovered" in 1944; the academic community, however, does not acknowledge the manuscript as genuine.