Dari Literature in Afghanistan

After the assassination of Nader Shah in 1747, Ahmad Shah Dorrani went to the east of Iran and established the independent Afghan state in Ghandhar.His son Timur Shah brought the capital to Kabul and continued his regime by the help of Tajiks, Qizilbashs and urban elements. He himself was very fond of poetry and wrote ghazals in the style of Hafez, Bidel and Sa’eb. He formed a special literary group where the poetry of such masters were discussed and analyzed. During this period the so-called Indian style of poetry (sabk-i hindi) was completely dominant and most of the poets who came later followed the same style. Among the most outstanding poets of Taimur Shah’s court were Muhammed Reza Barnabadi , Allah Verdi Hayrat and Mir Hutek Afghan. The same literary tradition continued during the reign of Shah Shuja (1839-1842) and the second period of the rule of Amir Shir Alikhan (1868-1879), who succeeded Taimur Shah. The difference was that in the time of Shah Shu’ja there was a revival of heroic spirit and several epic poems were written : Akbar-namah (1843) by Hamid Allah Kashmiri on the first Anglo-Afghan wars in the style of the Shah-namah, and Muharibah-yi Kabul ve Qandhar (1855 ) by Qasim Ali. The second period of the rule of Amir Shir Alikhan saw the cultural revival of Afghanistan. In 1873 the first printing press was established in Kabul and the periodical Shams al-Nahar begins publication. Its language was Dari but its style and set-up was modeled on the Indian press in India. The first English translation called “Va’z-namah” was from the London Times by a certain ‘Abdul-Qadir. The great reformist and thinker Jamal al-Din Afghani (or Astarabadi) was in Kabul and Shir Ali Khan consulted him on many of his plans for reform. In spite of all this the reforms did not have a great impact on literature especially poetry. Most of the poets followed Bidel, Hafez and Sa’eb. Mirza Qudsi Heravi, Mirza Muhammed Nabi known as Vasil, Mir Mujtaba Ulfat Kabuli and Ghulam Muhammed Tarzi are among the most outstanding poets of this time who imitated the classical masters especially Bidel and Hafez. Most of these poets had court affiliations but there were some who preferred to be independent: Ahmad Naqshbandi (1898) wrote his Gulshan-i Hayrat on the life of the prophet Mohammed in imitation of Nizami, and Muhammed Ibrahim Gowhari (d. 1905) wrote many qasidahs eulogizing the Imams. Although Abdul-Qadir Bidel impacted Dari poetry tremendously, he was not the only the influence. The classical masters of Persian poetry and more particularly those of the Iraqi and Khorasani Schools, left important impression on the poetry of the era. The poets of Heart and western Afghanistan, being near Iran, were influenced by the Bazgasht or the Neo-classical school of Persian poetry. Fatullah Khan Shaybani, one of the poets of the Bazgasht School who was in the Iranian army in Heart around the year 1857, influenced a number of poets of western Afghanistan such as Ismail Siyah, Abdul-Husain Towfiq and Latif Nazimi. Even in our own times a poet like Kahlil allah Khalili because of spending some time in Heart is distinctly influenced by Persian poets.. The early writings in prose were mostly on the history of the country: Padishan-i Muta’khter-i Afghanistan by Ya’qub ‘Ali Khan, (Kabul 1889-90); Seyyed Jamal’s Tatemmat al-Bayan fi Tarikh al-Afghan (Kabul 1899) and Fayz Mohammed Hazara’s Seraj al-Tawarikh (Kabul, 1913-16). The latter work which mostly deals with the 18th and 19th centuries was written in the honor of Habib Allah Khan, who ruled from 1901 to 1919 and one of his titles was Seraj al-mella. Modern prose and journalism in Afghanistan begins with Mahmud Tarzi (1865-1933) who spent twenty-three years of his early life abroad mostly in Damascus and Istanbul and translated many books from Ottoman Turkish. Among these were Around the World in Eighty Days and three other works of Jules Verne as well as a number of his original works of poetry and prose. After returning to Afghanistan he managed to get permission to continue the publication of Siraj al-Akhbar Afganieh , which had been banned after only one issue on account of its democratic policies. For many years this periodical became the most liberal, progressive and anti-colonialist publication. Tarzi on account of his personal relations with Habibullah Khan and his sons, managed to continue this periodical and in its eighth year added a newspaper for children, which was the first of its kind in Afghanistan. From 1911 to 1918 he edited Seraj al-Akhbar, which exerted a profound political and cultural influence not only in Afghanistan but in northern India and Central Asia. After a fruitful diplomatic and civil service career Tarzi was accused of being part of a coup d’etat (1928) and had to flee the country to Istanbul where he died five years later. In later years, four important papers Aman-e Afghan (1919), Islah (1929), Anis (1929) and Tulu’ Afghan (1921) followed the same way that was opened by Tarzi in journalism. The last publication was both in Dari and Pushto, and it is at this period that Pushto as the official language of the country is discussed and later becomes a heated political issue. Tarzi was a poet in his own right and tried very hard to extend his reformist ideas to the domain of poetry and persuade the contemporary poets to write on social and political themes. Though some complied and even a Sufi poet like ‘Abdul-Haqq Bitab wrote a few poems on modern advancements, the old Indian School style with its far-flown imagery and hyperboles continued. Among the poets who followed the call of Tarzi, albeit in a limited fashion, was ‘Abdul-Ghani Mostaghni (1875-1933), who was also influenced by the poetry of Malek al-Sho’ara Bahar and was praised by him. ‘Abdul-Hadi Davi (1895-1982) with the pen-name of Parishan was another poet who wrote ghazals in the style of Iraqi and translated the poems of Iqbal Lahuri into Dari verse. Mir Mohammed ‘Ali Azad Kabuli (1884-1944), ‘Abd-al Ghafur Nadim (1880-1917) and ‘Abdullah Qari (1870-1945) were among the outstanding poets of this period. Mohammed Isma’il Siyah , known as Guzak, (1855-1945) was a satirist who successfully imitated ‘Obeyd Zakani and humorously wrote about modern advancements in the age of Amanullah Khan. . His Aryana Songs are descriptive of the historical events in Afghanistan and in his other poems the impressions of his travels in Europe and Middle East can be seen. Though he has experimented in modern poetry as well, it is in classical poetry that he has reached new heights. ‘Abdul-Rahman Pazhvak,’Abdul-Hakim Ziya’i and Mohammed Othman Sidqi all followed the traditional styles. Other contemporary poets such as Ziya Qarizadeh, Mohammed Yusof Ayinah, Rahim Ilham, Suleyman Laiq, Mohammed Asef, Fekrat Heravi, Wujudi Panjshiri and Wasef Bakhtari have tried their hands in both traditional and modern styles. Though some Afghan poets were familiar with English and French modern poetry and blanc verse, it was through the influence of Nima Yushij from Iran that they turned to a different type of poetry. However, at the outset their experimentation was far from successful, and even some like Khalili went back to the traditional classical style. Some others continued to write both in classical and modern styles, but unlike Iran in Afghanistan poets of great stature did not appear in the realm of blanc or free verse. In the late sixties and throughout seventies managed to flourish in a considerable fashion. Bariq Shafi’i (b. 1931) in his Setak (Kabul, 1963) and Shahr-i Hamaseh (Kabul, 1979), Mahmud Farani (b.1938) in his Akharin Setareh (Kabul, 1963) and Ruya-yi Sha’er (Kabul, 1967), Ghulam Mujadid Laiq (b. 1930) in his Badban (Kabul, 1981), and Vasef Bakhtari (b.1942) in his Dar Kucheh-ha-yi Sorkh-i Shafaq (Kabul, 1981) display great talent and ingenuity. In recent years under the influence of modern Persian poets such as Shamlu, Akhavan, Forugh, Nader Naderpour and Tavallali, poets of younger generation have experimented more in modern poetry with sometimes brilliant success: ‘ Abdul-Qahhar ‘Asi (1957-1984),who died as a result of a rocket striking his house in Kabul, in his numerous collections of poems in a touchingly vivid manner describes the war and the capture of Kabul by the Mujahiddins. Muhammed ‘Aref Pazhman (b.1946), Latif Padram (b.1963) and Muhammed ‘Aqel Birang Kuhdamani (b. 1951) are of this group of poets who mostly wrote modern poems. All three went for higher education to Iran and the tragedy of war weighs heavily in their poetic and prose works. The occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet forces in 1979, which lasted almost a decade and the subsequent years of war and domination of the Talibans had a cataclysmal effect on the history of the country. On the one hand it forced many millions of Afghans to immigrate to Iran, Pakistan, Europe and America, on the other it engulfed the country in a disastrous civil war of unprecedented dimensions. On the literary scene it had far reaching effects. A literature of resistance “Edabiyyat-i Muqavemat” gradually was created mostly by those poets and writers who are still in the country as well as those who had to leave their homes. This type of literature had existed before the Russian occupation and there were many examples of it during the war with the British or later on. Layla Sarahat (b. 1958), Partov Naderi (b.1952), Ghulamshah Sarshar Shomali (1930-1981),who died in prison in Kabul, as well as ‘ Abdul-Qahhar ‘Asi and Latif Padram were among the poets who wrote against the Russian occupation in Afghanistan. Outside among the immigrants in Iran ‘Ali Fadai was one of the first to publish an anthology of resistance poems in 1984 (Majmu’ah-yi surud-i khun) to be followed by many more of its kind in the years to come. From 1951 to 1955 ‘Abdul-Hayy Habibi founded Azad Afghanistan party in Peshawar which had a publication with this name. It advocated democratic ideas and criticized the government for corruption and its abuses of human rights. Habibi after returning to Afghanistan in 19 headed the “Afghan Historical Society”, which was founded in 1942, and was one the first scholars to print critical editions of a number of classical Persian texts. Under the auspices of this society the periodical Ariyana was published for nearly three decades with significant contribution to the history, literature and art of the country. The publication of the encyclopedia Ariyana (Kabul, 1949-1969) was also an important step in advancement of literary and historical research. In 1965 a period of relative freedom became possible for the press and numerous periodicals and newspapers begun publication. Politically the most important among them were the newspapers Parcham and Khaleq of the Communist Party. One of the first novels that Tarzi translated from the nineteenth century French novelist Xavier de Montépin was the Tragedies of Paris, which along with his other translations became the source of inspiration for the first Afghan novels. The first work of fiction was Jahad-I Akbar by Muhammed Husain Jalanhari (1882-1960) in 1919, which depicts the struggle of the Afghans against British invaders. A graduate of Aligarth and a prolific writer Jalandhari was probably familiar with many Western style novels, but as a result of translations of Tarzi and others the language had become pliant and dynamic enough for fiction. In a vivid and rather conversational language the author relates the story of Dost Muhammed Khan’s son Vazir Muhammed Akbar Khan, who traditionally is regarded as the hero of the Anglo-Afghan wars. In the following years while the development of fiction continued historical novels and romantic novels or long stories were especially favored. In the fifties and sixties short stories became more prominent than long novels. Abdul-Rahman Pazhvak (1921-1985) could be taken as an example that in his stories such as “The Gypsy Girl” and “Sudabeh and Zal” and “People’s Legends” he goes to romance, classical literature and folklore. Rahnavard Zariyab (b.1924) is a novelist and short story writer of a later period who has published more than one hundred short stories. Some of them are written with great sophistication and depth. Zarif Sadiqi (b. 1942) in his novel “Escape from Darkness” (Kabul,1967) . ‘Alem Iftikhar (b.1951) is an interesting example of writer of regional novels and short stories. He vividly describes the lives of the villagers around his native Juzjan. Between 1953 and 1968 under the influence of the Communist Party of Afghanistan as well as the translation of Balzac, Maupassant, Dickens, London, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Sholokhov, Gorki and others, who had been translated mostly into Persian, writing of realistic stories in a local setting became very popular. Most of the writers were educated abroad and some like Babrak Arghand (b.1946) or Jalal Nurani (b.1948)