تلخیص
It is known to very few, that five hundred years ago,
before the arrival of the Mughals, the demographics of
the northern regions comprising Pakistan were much
different. There existed a substantial and well
established Tajik (Persian) farming population here from
ancient times in the lush valleys of Peshawar and Swat
(the Gandhara region). These areas formed part of a
kingdom, ruled since Ghori times by a family of Muslim
Tajiks known as Gibaris (also Swati and Jehangiri) who
were converts from Zoroastrianism. They were the
sultans of the Kingdom of Swat or “Pakhli Sarkar” as it
was known – which later became a dependency of the
Sultanate of Kashmir. Kashmir in turn was a “provincial
sultanate” of the renowned Delhi Sultanate.
The displacement from Kabul of the Yusufzai Pashtuns
by the Timurids resulted in their migration to the Swat
Kingdom, and both this and the subsequent Timurid
(Mughal) conquests of India brought about the fall of
both the Delhi and Swat Sultanates. Although the Delhi
Sultanate is world famous, that of Swat is shrouded in
mystery. It is the objective of this paper to apprise the
reader of that history, as well as explain why it has been
obscured.
Arif Hasan Akhundzada. (2017) THE KINGDOM OF SWAT AND THE LOST TAJIKS OF NORTH PAKISTAN, Pashto, Volume 46, Issue 1.
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