Texts of Islam

Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans: Æabd-ur-Raḥmān: Introduction

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This is a biographical introduction from H.G. Raverty's 1868 anthology of Afghan poetry, situating the Sufi devotional poet Mullā Abd-ur-Raḥmān within his cultural and literary tradition. Raḥmān was a 17th–18th century Mohmand Afghan mystic whose work centers on divine love in the Sufi tradition, and Raverty argues his verse stands apart from Persian poetry through its "fiery energy" and "natural simplicity." The biographical account emphasizes Raḥmān's extreme asceticism — he lived as a near-total recluse, spent his days weeping, and was accused of heresy by rival clerics for refusing to attend communal worship. A significant portion covers the complicated textual history of his work: after his death, friends who had collected his poems discovered that some had interpolated their own inferior verses and forged his name on them, requiring substantial editorial work to reconstruct an authentic corpus. Raverty notes he personally compared some sixty manuscript copies to prepare his own edition. The piece also corrects a popular claim that Raḥmān was a contemporary and poetic sparring partner of the warrior-poet Khushhāl Khān, marshaling chronological evidence to show Raḥmān was in fact a generation younger.

Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans: Æabd-ur-Raḥmān: Introduction

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