Of Pious Missions and Challenging the Elders: A Genealogy of Radical Egalitarianism in the Pashtun Borderscape

ABSTRACT

At the core of this article lies the attempt to consider “radical egalitarianism” a defining feature of “borderscapes”, that is the space in which distinct socio-spatial identities between territorial claims and counter-claims at the margins of larger political entities are negotiated. These more general considerations are exemplified by a genealogical excursion into the dominantly Pashtun-inhabited regions around the Hindukush and its foothills. In a first step, the emergence of distinct ethnicities and religiosities as result of such asymmetrical negotiation processes, which are also strongly informed by the urban-rural divide, is highlighted by a historical recourse into the later seventeenth century. In the two successive steps, then, the further modifications of those ethnicities and religiosities since the late nineteenth century are indicated, painting an image of the “Pashtun borderscape” in which even militant movements like those of the present time can be understood as just a manifestation of such kind of negotiation processes that limit the scope of “us” and “them” ever further. It will be illustrated how an ever changing semantics of “egality”, which nonetheless is construed as entirely static, is established as a core benchmark of belonging.

Acknowledgments

Because of the subject matter of this paper and, related to this, the particular properties of the materials used, the format of this paper evidently differs to a great extent from that of the other contributions to this volume. I am most grateful to the editors for having been sensitive to discipline-specific formal particularities and, subsequently, allowing for this exception, even at the expense of formal consistency throughout the entire volume. All transliteration follows by and large the academic standard conventions for each relevant language; an ‘h’ struck out (ħ) indicates aspiration of the preceding consonant.

Furthermore, I would like to thank the editors of this special issue, as well as the editor-in-chief of Geopolitics and the anonymous referees for their repeated time and effort in helping me making my argument more stringent and, moreover, digestible for an audience less familiar with the history of the region in focus. Finally, I thank James Caron for his always stimulating companionship over the years.

Notes

1. For first attempts to take Ṭālibān legal and theological epistemology serious, see Hartung (2015, 198–220); Hartung (forthcoming); also, if only cursorily, Halverson (2010, 115–125).

2. According to these authors, it helps ‘to describe new geographies and socio-spatial identities that, as the result of negotiations between identity and territorial claims and counter-claims, challenge the modern geopolitical, territorialist imaginary,’ and to ‘express the spatial and conceptual complexity of the border as a space that is not static but fluid and shifting; established and at the same time continuously traversed by a number of bodies, discourses, practices, and relationships that highlight endless definitions and shifts in definition between inside and outside, citizens and foreigners, hosts and guests across state, regional, racial, and other symbolic boundaries.’ (Brambilla 2015, 19). Yet, with this notion Brambilla substantially advances the concept of ‘borderscape’ against earlier contributions to this discussion, first and foremost Rajaram and Gundy-Warr (2007, ix–xl), they still relate the concept of ‘borderscape’ to established geo-political categories, prominently borders between states ‘where the territorial resolutions of being and the law that props them up collapse [; …] a zone where the multiplicity and chaos of the universal and the discomfits and possibilities of the body intrude’ (p. x).

3. Examples for this are manifold and include Warren (2000); Haroon (2007); Qadir (2015). All three studies are predominantly reliant on British colonial archives, while the latter two also utilize later (and thus rather secondary) works in Urdu.

4. Those platforms include prominently the journals Geopolitics, Political Geography and Regional Studies, as well as the Journal of Borderland Studies.

5. Contributions that demonstrate a degree of sensitivity to the historical genesis of egalitarianism in borderland communities are, for instance, Jolicœur and Labarre (2013, 21); Power and Mohan (2010, 471, 479 and 486); Prévélakis (2000, 173 and 183).

6. Foundational to this notion, see Braudel (1958, 729–731). The conception refers, in the words of Koselleck (2000, 12), to ‘an extended duration which structurally underlies or precedes all individual histories’ [my translation]. Koselleck, however, demands a somewhat clarificatory modification of Braudel’s concept, as shall be discussed below.

7. Examples here are manifold. In Hartung (2017), for instance, I correlate the Pashtun setting with Alpine Tyrol and indicate remarkable parallels between the two. Another European case which could also well be tested in this regard is the Basque country in and around the Pyrenees.

8. The first of such attempts to be documented happened under the Mughal ruler Jahāngīr (r. 1605-27), who had his courtly minute-taker (wāqiʿ-nawīs) Niʿmatallāh ibn Kh^wājah Ḥabīballāh Harawī (d. c. 1039/1630) devise an ethnogenesis of the ‘Afghans’ from the Semitic prophet Yaʿqūb. See Harawī (1960, 1: 10–28).

9. This is a conscious reference to a core component of the historical theory of Reinhard Koselleck with which he aimed at modifying the Braudelian concept of ‘longue durée’ (see above, note 8). In Koselleck (2000, 9 [trans. mine]), he defined ‘layers of time’ (Zeitschichten) as follows: ‘Informed by the geological model, layers of time [Zeitschichten] refer to several period levels [Zeitebenen] of variant duration and origin which nonetheless exist and operate simultaneously.’

10. None of the standard chronicles for the reign of Shāh Jahān, the Bādishāh’nāmah of ʿAbd al-Ḥāmid Lāhawrī (d. 1064/1654) and Muḥammad Amīn Qazwīnī (d. after 1042/1632) respectively and the ʿAmal-i Ṣāliḥ of Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Kanbūh (d. c. 1085/1675), mention Khūshḥāl among the listed military ranks of the nobility. Much of the narrative on Khūshḥāl’s earlier amicable relation with the Mughals seems to originate from Khān (1867, 389–390).

11. See, for example, Khaṫṫak (2001, 19), especially the famous line ‘For this state of things, no other termination can be seen/than that the Mughals be annihilated, or the Pashtuns undone’ (balah hīč līd lah nah shay pah dā miyanź kx̌ī/yā mughal da mīnźah warak yā pax̌tūn khwār).

12. Such works range from On a Foreign Approach to Khushhal: A Critique of Caroe and Howell by the celebrated Dost Muḥammad Khān ‘Kāmil’ Mohmand (d. 1981) (1968) to the recent Khushal Khan: Life, Thoughts and Contemporary Pakhtuns by Ghanī Khān Khaṫṫak (b. 1948) (2014).

13. It appears likely, however, that this event took place during Akbar’s stay at the garrison of Aṫṫak on 15 Muḥarram 994/6 January 1586, that is immediately before the disastrous campaign of Zayn Khān Kokah (d. 1010/1601) and Rājah Bīrbal (killed 994/1586) against the Yūsufzəy of Swat. See Harawī (1911–1935, Vol. 2, 398–400); also, ʿAllāmī (1877-86, Vol. 3, 484–485). Khūshḥāl himself, however, claims even to be in the sixth generation of loyal servants to the Mughals. See Khaṫṫak (2014, 1,019) (Swāt’nāmah): ‘We were the servants of the Mughals for six generations/having earned [so much] gold that we are peaceful generations’ (da mughal namak me wa-khwaṛ shpaǵ pīṛəy/mā da zar wa-pake roghe kaṛe pīṛəy).

14. Khūshḥāl’s Dīwān is full of scattered verses that allude to his self-perception as a respected local representative of the Mughal establishment. For examples, see Khaṫṫak (2014, 28: ‘As I was in complete uprightness/in the service of the Mughals, no other Afghan [ever] was’ (lakah zə wum pah rāstəy pah drastəy kx̌ī/da mughal khidmat nah wuh bal afghān).

15. Khaṫṫak (2014, 11): ‘My own truth, I say, is that I have been faithful and loyal to the Mughals’ (kih lah khpalah ḥaqīqatah dar tah wāyim/zah źāyay yam da mughal namak ḥalāl).

16. See Karghar (1385/2004, 38–40); Ikrām (1967, 43–44). Both works, however, are contemporary hagiographical accounts with a clear, visible political agenda; their reliability — especially in the absence of sustaining references — must therefore be questioned.

17. Apparently, about half of Bāyazīd’s works remain to be published. A glimpse of his view on the fundamental doctrine of God’s oneness (tawḥīd), however, can be gained from Karghar (1385/2004, 200–212); and Quddūsī (1966, 193–194).

18. This passage was copied verbatim by Harawī (1911-35, #).

19. ‘kih hindūstānī būd bā-andak dānishī wa ḥālan bah pīr-i tārikī ishtihār yāftah.’ Allegedly, the pejorative title goes back to the Pashto Makhzan al-Islām of the Chishtī-shaykh ʿAbd al-Karīm Akhūnd Darwezā of Buner (d. 1048/1638), completed in 1615, which has not been available to me.

20. More recently, Carl W. Ernst (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) has highlighted the many serious flaws of this translation as well as the fact that it transports numerous Orientalist stereotypes, which needs to be born in mind here. See The Dabistan and Orientalist views of Sufism. MUSA Lecture May 24, 2016. Accessed August 11, 2016. www.soas.ac.uk/south-asia-institute/musa/events/24may2016-the-dabistan-and-orientalist-views-of-sufism.html.

21. See Qur’an 3 (Āl ʿImrān): 104 and 110; 7 (al-Aʿrāf): 157; 9 (al-Tawba): 67 and 71.

22. In this endeavour, Bāyazīd’s efforts appear to coincide with the admonitions of the Mughal rulers by Shaykh Aḥmad Fārūqī Sirhindī (d. 1034/1627) at around the very same time.

23. The significance of this work was acknowledged even by the Mughal court chronicler ʿAbd al-Qādir Badāʾunī (d. 1024/1615) – otherwise known for his rather critical stance toward Akbar’s religious proclivities – who described the Khayr al-Bayān as containing ‘his [i.e., Bāyazīd’s] heretical tenets’ (ʿaqāyid-i fāsidah): Badāʾunī (2001). For a more recent analysis of this work, see Bariyāləy (2011).

24. See the discussion by the editor in the work by Anṣārī (n.d., 96–97), and Bāyazīd’s own justification in all four languages, 132–133: ‘Spake the Prophet – Peace be upon him: “Oh Bāyazīd! Write those letters, which can give form to any language, for humankind’s sake!” You are All-Knowing; I know only the letters of the Qur’an, oh Glorious One!’.

25. Indicative is the following passage in Anṣārī (n.d., 206): ‘Some involve themselves in the work of farming, or in market-trade, or the herdsman’s trade of cattle, or go as far as the servitude to kings, or other professions, for the accumulation of wealth, whether permissible or dubious, or [even] prohibited’ (źinī pah bahnah da karlī yā da bāẕar-gānəy yā da powandi-kaləy da źanāwarāno yā pah tir kshī bandəy da bādshāhāno yā pah nor čār māl-gird way kih ḥalāl yā shubuhāt day yā ḥarām).

26. A view that relates the Rawshāniyyah to the early Islamic futuwwāt is presented by Malik (1993, 46–47).

27. The ḥadīth is Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Kitāb al-birr wa’l-ṣilla wa’l-ādāb, bāb taḥrīm ẓulm al-muslim wa-khadhlihi wa-iḥtiqārihi wa-dammihi wa-ʿaraḍihi wa-mālih, no. 3 (2,438).

28. Rural counter-cultures have come into the focus of cultural Studies only in the last few decades, thus challenging hegemonic discourses of culture. Prominent examples in this field of study are Appalachia and the rural South of the United States of America. See, for instance, various of the contributions in Cloke and Little (1997).

29. While working on this paper, events were overturning: in July 2015, the so-called ‘Quetta shūrá’ – Leadership Council of the Ṭālibān – officially confirmed earlier media reports of the death of Mullā ʿUmar and announced the succession of Mullā Akhtar Muḥammad Manṣūr as elected leader of the movement, to whom, according to another official statement, numerous commanders and dignitaries have pledged their oath of allegiance. Not even a year later Manṣūr was killed in a US drone strike; the appointment of Mawlawī Haybatallāh Ākhūndzādah (b. 1380/1961) as new amīr also revealed serious frictions within the Ṭālibān leadership over the earlier appointment of Mullā Manṣūr as supreme leader. See, for example, Qazi (2015).

30. Under this label, I also very much subsume the eschatologies of various political ideologies, in which the realization of social and economic justice, the ultimate goal of ‘Providence,’ ‘History’ and the like, becomes equivalent to salvation.

31. On the Pashtun tribal leadership model in settled as well as nomadic settings, see Ahmed (1980, 141–149).

32. This is indicated, for example, by Dupree (1973, 128–131).

33. It needs to be emphasized, however, that similar processes of assimilating variant communities and peoples under the umbrella of an economically powerful nation were happening at around the same time in Europe; their apparent success there may have well stimulated the application of such strategies in the colonies. See, for example, Chibber (2013, 263–267).

34. Khūshḥāl himself had negative things to say about the Rawshāniyyah, even after he had severed his relations with the Mughals, as they seem to have not only challenged imperial authority, but also the regional authorities that Khūshḥāl himself had claimed to represent. See Khaṫṫak (2001, 1,032–1,033) (Swāt’nāmah), where he accused them of spreading ‘discord’ and ‘corruption’ – using the religiously charged terms ‘fitnah’ and fasād’ here – and insinuated the necessity to integrate into the prevalent societal order.

35. See here the numerous histories of the institution at Deoband, prominent among them Rizwī (1992–1993, Vol. 2, 33).

36. For a more detailed account on the life and work of Maḥmūd al-Ḥasan, including his placement in the social fabric of the North Indian Muslim communities, which are stratified along the lines of ‘nobles’ (ashrāf) and ‘inferiors’ (ajlāf), see Hartung (2016a 349–353).

37. See Qur’an 2 (al-Baqara): 247, 8 (al-Anfāl): 28, 18 (al-Kahf): 47, 23 (al-Muʾminūn): 55f, 26 (al-Shuʿarāʾ): 88f, 34 (Sabaʾ): 37, 63 (al-Munāfiqūn): 9, 64 (al-Taghābun): 15, and 68 (al-Qalam): 14f. Also, see the comments of Maḥmūd al-Ḥasan and his student Shabbīr Aḥmad ʿUs̱mānī on these verses in ʿUs̱mānī (1428/2007, Vol. 1, 207 and 813, Vol. 2, 449, 647, and 751, and Vol. 3, 175, 701, 709, and 745).

38. This rhetoric is especially strong with regard to a distinct regional Islamic tradition, portrayed in essentialist fashion as an entirely spiritually oriented and peaceful Sufi-Islam, in the wake of military operations against Islamic militancy in the borderscape of today’s nation-states Afghanistan and Pakistan. Conversely, all militant inclination is blamed on foreign actors, currently especially Arabs and Central Asians who would abuse the traditional Pashtun obligation of hospitality (melmastiyā, or melmah palānah) and sanctuary (panāh, or nanawātəy) and lead youngsters astray to radical interpretations of Islam that have no local antecedent.

39. See, for instance, Qur’an 3 (Āl ʿImrān), 110: ‘You are the best community I have brought forth among humankind; you enjoin the commendable and prevent the reprehensible …’ (kuntum khayra ummatin ukhrijat li’l-nāsi taʾmurūna bi’l-maʿrūfi wa-tanhawna ʿan al-munkar …). In the Arabic historiographical tradition meanwhile, the question of how to deal with the non-Muslims in conquered lands plays an exponentially large role.

40. Gaborieau’s argument here is based on a reading of Shāh Ismāʿīl’s rather late Persian treatise Manṣib-i Imāmat.

41. On the concept of ‘hiero-history,’ as coined and elaborated throughout much of his life by the French philosopher and orientalist Henri Corbin (d. 1978), see Corbin (1965).

42. On the concrete case of the local ramifications of the Ṭarīqah-yi Muḥammadiyyah in the Pashtun-inhabited borderscape, see Qadir (2015, 106–128 and 162–173).

43. Qadir’s exposition, however, is based mainly on the significantly later account of writer-activist Mihr (2008, Vol. 2, 93–105), and therefore requires further fortification from contemporaneous documents. It might be interesting to note that the Arab volunteers in the guerilla war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan between 1986 and 1989 upheld a similarly suspicious attitude towards their Pashtun hosts. See al-Shaybānī (2003).

44. ‘Popular mobilization’ shall here be understood in dissociation from the narrower concept of ‘political mobilization’ that is well established in Political Science (see, e.g. Cameron 1974). ‘Popular mobilization’ refers therefore to ostensibly similar phenomena that are, however, not embedded in the context of nation state and socio-economic class determined by a distinct political class consciousness.

45. Oddly, however, Bāyazīd’s Mahdist inclinations are related here to Ismāʿīlī gnostic thought, ostensibly only on the basis of some general similarities.

46. This distinction in the conception of ‘charisma’ was made by Max Weber in his Sociology of Power, from which Wallace’s theory draws heavily. See Weber (1972).

47. See Madanī (n.d., Vol. 2, 162–163, 165–168, 177–180, 188–190 et passim) and Madanī (2001). Whether or not, however, the Ḥājjī Ṣāḥib Turangzəy’s relationship with the ṣāḥib of Haḋḋah Sharīf near Jalalabad was as crucial as suggested by Haroon (2007, 83–90, 98–99 et passim), remains to be established by future research.

48. Warren’s statements are predominantly based on colonial archives and therefore reflect a pronouncedly British perspective. To develop a more balanced view, these archives would of course need to be correlated with indigenous narratives.

49. In this regard, the potential confluence with left-wing ideologies is obvious, and it is therefore scarcely surprising that around the very same time we see Deobandī scholars from and in the Pashtun-inhabited borderscape, prominent among them yet another student of Maḥmūd al-Ḥasan, the one-time grand-mufti (muftī-yi aʿẓam) of the NWFP ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Popalzəy (d. 1363/1944), flirting seriously with Marxism.

50. This is a paraphrase of the famous closing statement in the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

51. See Nūrī (1318h, 235–271). The tale has meanwhile made it into a PTV romantic drama series (2013), with the focus clearly shifted onto Gul Basharah as the tale’s main protagonist; a Pashto novel by Waǵmah Sabā ʿĀmir with the title Ṭālib Jān was published in 2014.

52. In this regard, one may recall the anti-educational framework of the Egyptian Jamāʿat al-Muslimīn, better known as al-Takfīr wa’l-Hijra of the late 1970s, led by the former agricultural engineer Shukrī Muḥammad Muṣṭafá (executed 1978). With reference to the early Muslim community during the lifetime of the Prophet Muḥammad as the ultimate benchmark, Muṣṭafá emphasized the ambivalent nature of knowledge (ʿilm), which can lead to dangerous idle speculation beyond the sphere of belief, and pleaded therefore for its radical limitation by linking illiteracy to intellectual innocence. See Muṣṭafá (1991, 122–124). A somewhat similar attitude in this regard exemplifies the North Nigerian militant Jamāʿat Ahl al-Sunna li’l-Daʿwa wa’l-Jihād, better known by its Hausa name Boko Haram. See Higazi (2013). The target of Boko Haram, however, is not any form of knowledge, but all that is associated with the Latin script, epitomized in the bound book (Hausa: boko) that is contrasted with the loose sheet (waraq) of the Arabic manuscript tradition. I am grateful to Amidu O. Sanni (Lagos State University) for clarifying to me Boko Haram’s conception of ‘knowledge’ during our meeting in Riyadh in September 2015.

53. See Khan (2004). On Nūr Muḥammad Wazīr, see Ḥaqqānī (2010, 12–15).

54. Khan (2004) cites an anonymous teacher at the madrasah in Wānā, who said that ‘Nek [Muḥammad] never had an intellectual mind but some other traits of his personality became evident during his stay at the Darul Uloom. He showed himself to be a hard-headed boy, endowed with an impenetrable soul and an obstinate determination to carry out his will no matter how mindless it might be.’

55. On the seriously restricted access and subsequent exclusion of rural Pashtun women from education, as well as the Pashtun male imaginary of females as potentially in league with evil spirits that aim at corrupting male honor and dignity, see Grima (1992, 2004).

56. The first attempt at this interpretation has, as far as I am aware, been made by Abou-Zahab (2013, 57–59). Here, role of the Pakistani State in changing the status quo in the authority structures in the region has also been touched upon.

57. On the role of and rationale for taqlīd-i shakhṣī, i.e. the unconditional emulation of the legal opinions developed by specific teachers, in Deobandī legal thought and practice, see Hartung (2015, 201–202) and Hartung (forthcoming). For a lengthy exposition of this legal procedure, see Deobandī (1990, 73–88).

58. A prominent case in point is the Özbekiston Islomiy Harakatï (IMU), initially led by Nek Muḥammad’s associate Tohir Yöldosh (killed 1430/2009), whose current amīr, Usmon Ghoziy, declared the IMU to be part of IS in September 2014. Perhaps as a result, the IMU’s former webpage http://jundurrahmon.biz/ was shut down some time in late 2014 and was replaced by the Uzbek IS website http://hilofatnews.com/. Accessed August 12, 2016.

59. For the historical links between Shawkānī and the Ahl-i Ḥadīs̱, see Hartung (2004, 224–228).

60. Outstanding in this regard is Maḥmūd al-Ḥasan’s popular Adillah-yi Kāmilah (ca. 1875), in which he defended the Ḥanafī positions followed by the Deobandīs against the staunch refusal of any form of taqlīd.

61. Relations between Najdī scholars of Wahhābī orientation and the Ahl-i Ḥadīs̱ in India date back to the early nineteenth century and are largely maintained until today. See Hartung (2004, 337–360).

62. See Laoust (1939), where the label is however reserved for the developments from Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb Najdī (d. 1206/1791); also Lav (2012). Critically, see Krawietz (2010); also Nedza (2016, 251–258).

63. See Nedza (2016, 258–303), where the respective views of leading theorists of militant Islamism from Egypt (Sayyid Imām al-Sharīf, a.k.a. Dr. Faḍl, b. 1369/1950) and Saudi Arabia (Nāṣir al-Fahd, b. 1388/1968; ʿAlī al-Khuḍayr, b. 1373/1954; Aḥmad ibn Ḥamūd al-Khālidī, b. 1389/1969) are meticulously analyzed and contrasted with one another.

64. For a recent example in this rather optimistically pursued debate, see Pelizäus-Hoffmeister (2013).

65. See, for instance, the above-mentioned websites of the IMU, or also the websites of the TṬP (https://umarmedia.wordpress.com/) and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (http://alemara1.org/and www.shahamat.com/), all accessed on July 2, 2015.

66. On Urganchiy, no further information could be found. Several of his writings, however, appear prominently on the various and oftentimes only short-lived IMU websites.

67. See Anonymous (2014). The video was released around 13 July 2014, but is not accessible anymore because of its violation of YouTube Terms of Service. Urganchiy’s argument appears to resonate at least with the fourth normative conditions for a proper Imamate made by medieval Shāfiʿī jurist al-Māwardī (1422/2002, 8): ‘sound in limb, free of any deficiency which might prevent them from normal movement [salāmat al-aʿḍāʾ min naqṣ yumniʿa ʿan istīfāʾ al-ḥarakat wa-surʿat al-nahūḍ].’ Interestingly, however, Māwardī is much more precise when discussing the eventual physical absence of a claimant to the Imamate, stating that the jurists are holding different views over this matter. The ultimate defininiens would be the excellence (faḍīla) of the claimant.

68. The most important ḥadīth in this regard is al-Tirmidhī, al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ, kitāb al-fitan, bāb mā jāʾ fi’l-nahy ʿan sabb al-rayyāḥ, no. 17: ‘Black banners will come from Khurasan, nothing shall turn them back until they are planted in Jerusalem [takhruju min Khurāsān rāyātun sūdun lā yarudduhā shayʾun ḥattá tunṣaba bi-ʾIliyāʾ].’ For an example of the advocacy of this interpretation as a rationale for the ‘Khurasan shūrá,’ see Basit (2016, 82–83).

69. In the ‘Abbasid revolution,’ however, this ḥadīth apparently did not play a legitimizing role. For the significance of Khurasan and the black colour of the flags, see Sharon (1983–1990, Vol. 1, 51–54, and Vol. 2, 83–86). Abū Bakr al-Baghdādī has not explicitly claimed his caliphate to be the continuation of that of the ʿAbbasids that came to its end with the Ottoman sack of Mamluk Cairo in 1517. However, the symbols he employs to enact his caliphal authority are too strongly reminiscent of those of the ʿAbbasids to be dismissed as mere coincidence.

70. http://alemara1.org/?p=17042 (Pashto text). The text has also been published on the official website of the Islamic Emirate in Arabic (www.shahamat-arabic.com/archives/2652), Urdu (www.shahamat-urdu.com/?p=1148) and Dari (www.shahamat-farsi.com/?p=2385). All four sites have been accessed on July 8, 2014. Interestingly, the terminology used in these translations differs somewhat from that of the original.

71. The original statement of al-Baghdādī, issued allegedly on January 29, 2015, could not be located and its veracity remains therefore to be proven.

72. About a year later, an Urdu translation of the text appeared in the same place. Honesty demands an acknowledgement that, because of linguistic limitations, I had to work mainly with the Arabic and Urdu texts, while using the Pashto one mainly for crosschecking on the terminology.

73. The works referred to by Salārzəy are the Mughnī of Ibn Qudāma (39), Shawkānī’s Nayl al-Awṭār (49) and Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān’s al-Rawḍa al-Nadiyya Sharḥ al-Durar al-Bahiyya (39). Of Ibn Taymiyya’s works, the most frequently cited one is his Minhāj al-Sunna al-Nabawwiyya fī Naqṣ Kalām al-Shīʿa al-Qadariyya (11–13, 20, 30, 34–36 and 56); other of his titles are Shubuhāt ḥawla al-Ṣaḥāba (p. 10), al-Khilāfa wa’l-Mulk (22) and his famous Fatāwá al-Kubrá (p. 39).

74. For a more detailed analysis of Salārzəy’s treatise within the current leadership disputes between the IS and al-Qāʿida, see Hartung (2016b).

75. Here belongs, first and foremost, the Communist coup d’état in Afghanistan and the subsequent Soviet invasion of the country in late December 1979, which, among other events, resulted in a great variety of substantial developments that irreversibly impacted upon the region as a whole.