Afzal Khan Khattak

Who is Afzal Khan Khattak?

Afzal Khan Khattak was a Pashtun chief of the Khattak tribe, Pashtoon poet, and author of Tarikh-e-morassa was the eldest son of Ashraf Khan "Hejri". In 1083/1672-73 Ashraf succeeded his father Khushal Khan in the chieftaincy of the Khattak tribe, but in 1092/1681 he was betrayed into the hands of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb by his brother Bahram and died in captivity.

Afzal Khan was arrested by the Mughals in 1098/1686-87 and carried to Kabul. He returned two years after the death of Khoshal Khan to assume the chieftainship of the Khattak tribe, which he held for sixty-one years. Based on a reading of a tarikh in the divan of Afzal's son Kazem Khan Sayda, Sidiqullah Rishtin and A. Habibi gave the date of Afzal's death as 1183/1769-70, but this divan had already been put into final form in 1181. Thus the date of his death is uncertain.

H. G. Raverty's statement that Afzal, upon the assumption of the chieftainship, put his uncle Abdul Qader to death does not bear examination; the latter translated the Golestan of Sheikh Saadi in 1124/1712. Another uncle of Afzal's; Gawhar Khan's writing in 1120/1708, gives testimony to Afzal's good chieftainship and to his consuming literary interests, which were aimed at