Texts of Islam

Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans: Æabd-ul-Ḥamīd: The Poems of Æabd-ul-Ḥamīd

Summary only - full text stays on its own separately-gated source. Read the full text at the source »

This is a collection of classical Pashtun poetry, drawn from H.G. Raverty's 1868 anthology of Afghan verse, primarily featuring the poet Hamid. The poems work within the conventions of Persianate lyric tradition, moving across three interlocking registers: ascetic moralizing (the world as a deceitful harlot, the flesh as enemy, carnality as the devil's counsel), erotic mysticism (the beloved as tyrant and salvation, love as simultaneously consuming fire and supreme commerce), and didactic verse on discipline and proper conduct. The dominant voice is that of a speaker torn between worldly attachment and spiritual renunciation, using the language of Sufi love poetry — the moth and flame, Majnun's madness, Zulaikha's abandonment of sovereignty — where the beloved may be read as human or divine. What distinguishes these poems is their unusually blunt, colloquial register alongside their ornate imagery: the world is called "a seller of barley though an exposer of wheat," and grief itself becomes "the Mughal" oppressing the lover. The collection is particularly valuable as a rare English-language window into pre-colonial Afghan literary culture, showing a sophisticated tradition engaged with wider Islamicate poetics while retaining a distinctly earthy, epigrammatic directness.

Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans: Æabd-ul-Ḥamīd: The Poems of Æabd-ul-Ḥamīd

Related pages View as graph →