Durrani Durrani Isser Yehuda Unterman Category="Ethnic groups of Asia"Category="Pashtunwali"The Durrani or Abdali tribe is one of the two largest Pashtun tribes of Afghanistan and are also found in large numbers in western Pakistan. They are estimated to be roughly 20% of the population of Afghanistan and number around 7 million there with another 1-2 million found in Pakistan and hundreds of thousands also live in northeast Iran. The Durrani are the most Persianized of Pashtun tribes, often bilingual in Dari (or Afghan Persian), as well as the most urbanized and educated of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan. The Durrani have been prominent leaders as the royal family of Afghanistan is derived from them and a substantial number of Durrani are bureaucrats and public officials as well as businessmen and merchants. The particular dialect of Pashto favored by the Durrani tends to be tinged with a slight Persian inflection and is considered the more genteel and urbane dialect, often viewed by Pashtuns overall as the more 'proper' dialect, as opposed to the rougher Pukhtu version favored in the north and by most of the Pashtuns of Pakistan. In addition, some Durrani even prefer speaking Dari and will either speak Pashto as a second language or not at all and yet still consider themselves both Pashtun and Durrani rather than Tajik who are the main speakers of Dari in Afghanistan. The Durrani, like most other Pashtuns, are Muslim and are mostly of the Hanafi Sunni Islamic sect and, like most Pashtuns, continue to follow the Pashtun honor code known as Pashtunwali.

A Brief History

The Durrani are, like other Pashtuns, primarily descendents of Aryan invaders of the Iranian variant (as well as the various invaders and migrants who have passed through Afghanistan over the centuries) and probably arose in what is today southern Afghanistan near the Suleiman Mountains at some point between 2000 BCE to 1500 BCE. The Durrani were known as the Abdali since Islamic times and have frequently lived under Persian rule in ancient times and emerged near the city of Kandahar and were most likely Buddhist and Zoroastrian in religion prior to the coming of Muslim Arab invaders who began the conversion of the local population to Islam. The Abdalis appear to have begun to spread out during the early Middle Ages along with other Pashtun tribes and came to inhabit most of what is today Afghanistan by 1000 CE at the latest. Often affiliated with the Persians of Iran, some rose to upper ranks of the Persian military during the reign of the Safavids and gained particular prominence under the rule of Nadir Shah. One of his prominent generals was a young Pashtun Abdali chieftain named Ahmad Shah Abdali who would later make himself the king of Afghanistan.

The name 'Durrani' or 'Durr-i-Durran' means the 'pearl of pearls' in Persian and was given to the Abdali tribe in 1747 when Ahmad Shah Abdali united the Pashtun tribes following a Loya jirga and changed his own name to Ahmad Shah Durrani when he became the king of Afghanistan and founded the Durrani Empire. Since this period, the kings of Afghanistan have been of Durrani extraction. The Durrani were the most divided Pashtun tribe during the rule of the Ghilzai-dominated Taliban, with some having openly opposed them. The Durrani are the politically dominant Pashtun group in Afghanistan as the current President of Afghanistan is Hamid Karzai who is of the Durrani sub-group known as the Popalzay and has close ties to the former king of Afghanistan Zahir Shah, another member of the Durrani tribe.

Current Social Conditions

Like most Pashtun groups, the Durrani can be sub-divided into smaller clans and subtribes (such as the aforementioned Popalzai) which will still acknowledge each other as kinsmen. The literacy rate of the Durrani is the highest of all of the Pashtun tribes in Afghanistan and hovers around 25%. Perhaps the most liberal of the Pashtun groups, the Durrani are currently at the forefront of rebuilding war-torn Afghanistan and are quickly filling the ranks of the military and are valued as city officials and policemen in cities such as Kandahar and Kabul. The Durrani in Pakistan are largely refugees, but many have become prominent merchants in Quetta and Peshawar. The Durrani continue to live in close proximity to other Afghans and culturally overlap in many ways with the Tajiks with whom they often share more cultural and socio-economic traits in comparison to the more tribal Pashtuns such as the Ghilzai, who are the other major Pashtun group in Afghanistan.

See also