The Pashtun Borderland

A Religious and Cultural History of the Taliban

Jan-Peter Hartung (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany)

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English

Cambridge University Press
19 December 2024

Asian history; Middle Eastern history; Islam; Geopolitics; Political geography

Since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021, the need to understand the group's history and ideology has only increased. Jan-Peter Hartung's timely study examines the phenomenon of the Taliban through a topographically, ethnically and geo-politically distinct space: the Pashtun Borderland of today's Afghanistan and Pakistan. Emphasising the central role of Pashtun ethnicity, Hartung covers approximately five hundred years of Pashtun history: from the early modern Mughal empire to the first Durrani Empire in the eighteenth century and the regional developments during the colonial period in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Drawing from a

wealth of primary source materials in Pashto, Persian, Urdu and Arabic, Hartung moves the discussion of the Taliban beyond the immediacy of journalistic reportage and security-orientated studies, to a nuanced analysis of

a wide range of actors and ideologies, refracting Afghanistan's present moment through the lens of its long cultural and religious history.

By: Jan-Peter Hartung (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg Germany)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 160mm, Spine: 36mm
Weight: 960g
ISBN: 9781009289276
ISBN 10: 1009289276
Pages: 592
Publication Date: 19 December 2024
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

1. Introduction; 2. Setting the Stage: Conceptualizing the 'Pashtun Borderland'; 3. Chief Trajectories of Militant Religious Activism in the Pashtun Borderland: The Antecedents; 4. Chief Trajectories of Militant Religious Activism in the Pashtun Borderland: Acceleration in the Twentieth and Twenty‑First Centuries; 5. Epilogue: Who and What Were – and Are – (The) Taliban?; Bibliography.

Jan-Peter Hartung has a MA in South and Central Asian Studies and Philosophy and a doctorate Study of Religions and a senior doctorate (Habilitation) in the Study of Islam. His special focus is on South Asia and the wider Persianate world from around the 18th century to the present.

Reviews for The Pashtun Borderland: A Religious and Cultural History of the Taliban

'This impressive volume makes multiple crucial interventions in the literature on Pashtuns. Hartung excavates vast reservoirs of local language sources for a longue durée social history that reframes the geographical context of cultural production using the borderscape concept while productively addressing class and other hierarchies in this polyvalent ideological space.' Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, James Madison University 'This is a deeply researched and illuminating history of the origins of the Taliban in the borderlands of contemporary Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is masterful in elucidating the processes that have shaped Islam and politics in this region and how they have come to be embodied in the phenomenon of the Taliban.' Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Princeton University