Dear Sir/Madame,

Please find here the introduction to the Book on Falconry by the 17th-century Pakistani poet-warrior, Khushal Khan Khattak, which I have translated from its original Pashto into English rhyme, for publication in your esteemed magazine. Please let me know if it would be possible for your to publish the piece in your next edition. Also, I’ve included in the file the short life-history of the poet and the translator at the end of the poem.

Thanking you

Sami

Introduction

You inspire these passions

In the heart, O Lord!

You indulged in hunting,

As You can see, this bard

The moment I was able

To tell right from left

You established this love

Into my warp and weft

In childhood, I’d hunt

The robins and sparrows

While young, I’d shoot

The deer with my arrows

In mountains and in plains

Ibexes did I basket

As countless of them

Fell prey to my musket

I drew, later on,

Toward the birds of prey

Consumed by falconry

Body and soul in a way

I kept busy in multiple tasks

All along the way

But hunting? No, I won’t break

For a single day

Now that I age

Around sixty two

I find the Pashtuns

And the Moguls in a stew1

1 Relations between the Moguls and the Pashtuns deteriorated when Khushal Khan was imprisoned by the Moguls in 1664 C.E. for no apparent reason and kept into captivity for about four and a half years.

From the mainland India

King Aurangzeb2 has come

In Hasan Abdal, Attock3,

He sounded the war drum

It’s been four five years

Since the start of the strife

As the Moguls are bleeding

By the Pashtuns’ knife

The Moguls are craving

To take their revenge

Plotting day and night

Khushal’s end to arrange

Upon power, silver and gold

The Moguls do rely

The God Almighty name

Khushal Khattak swears by

Exiled, without countrymen

All alone he roams

Mountain after mountain,

Like an ibex, he combs2 The orthodox Mogul ruler, who imprisoned Khushal. 3 Hasan Abdal and Attock are two adjacent cities in the northern Punjab, Pakistan.

There are two others4

In the field, I’m the third

Even in this state

I’m undeterred

Small or great, there’re still

New tidings in store

The love of falcons brought me

To the Swat Valley5 floor

Tomes on other topics

Have many I penned down

But the Book on Falconry

Is like a feather in my crown

Every heart that is passionate

About a certain thing

Would talk without end

And discuss it in full swing

I’m an old boy, having a hundred

4 The two others being, Aimal Khan and Darya Khan, who were notable tribal chieftains. Collectively, the three made into a formidable force and routed the Mogul Army in a number of military campaigns. 5 A scenic valley in north-west Pakistan. In recent years, it was in the media spotlight for the Taliban insurgency in the area, which was contained by the Pakistan Army in 2009. Malala Yousafzai, the child star, also belongs to the same area.

Sons and grandsons6

Who are all obsessed

About different funs

Some hunt with arrows

As they’re master archers

Some are like me

The keen falconry marchers

Some wander in the deserts

While looking for the rabbits

Some chase the ibex

In mountains which inhabits

Passionate are some

About hunting with the hound

Just everyone’s in love with

His own happy hunting ground

May God endow everyone

With an unbounded treasure

May all of them enjoy

Great luxury and leisure 6 Khushal Khan had a very large family. He had many wives and some sixty sons and thirty two daughters. Among them, Ashraf Khan Hijri, Abdul Qadir Khattak and Hafiza Halima were also accomplished poets. While, among his grandsons, Afzal Khan Khattak, was also a notable man of letters and writer of the voluminous Tareekh e Murassa, a book on the history of Pashtuns, also containing the diaries of Khushal.

The art of hunting runs

Through our very lineage

We’ve inherited this great skill

As a family heritage

Whether it’s the hunting

Whether it’s the sword

With our pedigree

These two skills fully accord

Money making or amassing

Is not my cup of tea

Charity and benevolence

Is to what I agree

Whether it’s generosity

The sword or the pen

In these three areas have spread

My name among men

Things such as these

I desire my offspring inherit

If they’ve any honor

They’ll qualify the merit

In Persian, I’ve penned

The Book on Falconry in prose7

In Pashto, I’d like

The verse form to juxtapose

Nine hundred and nineteen

Are the couplets as such

In the village of Rustam8

I gave it the final touch

Whether it’s the training

The cures or the odes

Consisted they are all of

Forty-seven episodes

It’s the year – Hijrah

One thousand eighty five9

I finished it when the last days

Of Rajab10 did arrive

7 This particular book has, unfortunately, been lost to the ravages of time. There’re a couple of such titles being attributed to Khushal but suspicions surround their authenticity. There’s particularly one book written in Pashto prose, which draws heavily on Khushal’s Baz Nama, and being attributed to the poet but even that claim is hotly contested by scholars. 8 A small village in the outskirts of Mardan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. 9 The Muslim Lunar Calendar, which corresponds to 1674 C.E.10 The seventh month of the Islamic Calendar.

In the month of Scorpio11

I started writing the book

A period of six days was

All the whole work took

When my tongue began

To converse in verse

You’d say, it all started

In sorcery diverse

Nature of the golden eagle

Luckily do I own

Ready to make a killing

You’ll see in every zone!

******************************************

About Khushal Khan Khattak: Khushal (1613-1689), has widely been hailed as the national poet of the Pashtuns - a major ethnic group living on either side of the Pak-Afghan border. His work consists of more than 25,000 individual couplets, on themes ranging from love, aesthetics, statecraft, metaphysics, ethics, philosophy, medicine to jurisprudence and falconry.

Khushal was the chieftain of the Khattak tribe and served as the guardian of the Mogul Royal Road from Attock in the northern Punjab to Peshawar, in the modern-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Before him, his forefathers had also served in the same capacity right from the times of Akbar the Great (1542 –1605).

Khushal was in the good books of the Mogul emperor, Shah Jehan – the builder of the timeless, Taj Mahal - and fell under the wrath of the orthodox, Aurangzeb, who, in 1664,

11 October 23-November 22

put him in the dungeon of the Ranthambore Fort, Rajasthan, India, and kept under house arrest in Delhi, for about four and a half years.

Upon his release, he started a freedom struggle against the Mogul hegemony in the Pashtuns dominated areas. He formed an alliance with two other influential tribal chiefs, Aimal Khan Afridi and Darya Khan Mohmand, and was quite successful in a number of military campaigns.

Things, however, started to fall apart with the death of his two allies and his own old age. The Moguls then made inroads in his household by bribing and offering royal offices to his sons, to rise against their father. His later life was marked by exile and suffering at the hands of both the Moguls and his sons.

He died at the age of seventy-six, while living in exile. As per his will, his body was brought to his hometown, Akora Khattak, and secretly buried in a place, where - to his own words: “the dust of the Mogul cavalry hoofs could not light upon my grave.”

The Book on Falconry was written by Khushal in 1674 C.E., on his journey to the Swat Valley, north-west, Pakistan. The purpose of his trip was two-fold. First, to urge co-Pashtun tribe, the Yousafzai, to ally with him in his struggle against the Moguls. Second, to explore the art of falconry in the area. He wasn’t very successful in his political goal but as to his contribution to the field of falconry, it’s fame and utility will ever abide.

About the translator: Sami ur Rahman is a freelance columnist and a translator. He holds a master’s degree in political science and is currently working on Khushal’s quatrains. He hails from the same small town, which was founded by Khushal’s ancestors, and to which the poet himself belonged.