Editing Amir Kror (section)

== A LOOK AT AMIR KROR'S POETICAL PIECES ==

The poetical piece that Amir Kror left behind and was recorded in Tarikhi Suri of Mohammad bin Ali Busti and subsequently copied by Shaikh Kata in his book Larghuni Pashtana and has reached us through a third medium (Pata Khazana) is the earlier Pashto poem at our disposal to date, and not definitely the earliest or most ancient piece of Pashto poetry. For it is possible that there would be another work or even works older than Amir Kror's epics which have not come to hand and of which we do not know as yet. But from the viewpoint of maturity of its style, manner of expression, and content this ancient piece shows that Pashto poetry should have passed through its earlier stages already to reach this degree of literary maturity. And this poem is about one century older than the older preserved Dari poems of Abu Nafs Sughdi and Abas Meruzi (2nd century H), Hanzala Badghisi (died 220 H./834 A D), Feroz Mashrioi (280 H./893 A D.) and Abu Saleek C'argoni (280 H./893 A.D.)

The sequence or chain of eloquence in the Pashto language does not begin with this epic of Amir Kror, but it is the only piece left to us from those days. And as we see, this chain has been continued in the court of Ghor during the later periods also.

(1) With respect to the metrical structure and poetical measure it does not resemble any of the recorded structures or meters that have been imitated from the Arabic or Dari prosody of Khalil bin Ahmad in the later Pashto poetry. But we know that the singers of popular Pashto songs always exist in every village and tribe, and they have many varied and independent meters which are based on the number of syllables and stress or accent, which signify the prosodic character of the language.  This epical poem of Amir Kror, whose literal translation was given in the foregoing pages, is based on these special poetic measures. That is to say in each stanza first there are two rhyming hemistiches of fourteen syllables each. These ale followed by a shorter hemistich of six or seven syllables ending in the repeating hemistich of six syllables. This last repeating hemistich is called kasr in Pashto.

(2) This old poem, with its poetic measure, has also a special feature from the viewpoint of linguistics, for it is entirely free of foreign words, and with the exception of the Arabized proper names that have entered it, all the other words are Pashto words. It also contains words that are not used any longer, but in their roots they show a connection with the living words, which indicates that there were wide rules of derivation and grammatical changes in this language some of which are not seen today. For example zaran (brave) derived from zra (heart) dashan (enemy) an adjective derived from dush (horrid), and palan (foot) an adjective derived from pal (footstep).

3) There are some words in this old poem which do not convey their original old meaning and are no longer used in the language. For instance, the word mun which in Hindi means heart, soul, and will.[9] According to Alberuni, actually it is heart, and also since the locality of will is the heart, it is called mun,[10] and this word as used in Amir Kror's poem conveys the meaning of will and determination. And perhaps, the gerund manal meaning to accept also comes from this root.

The words atal (champion, hero, genius), dariz place of standing, hask which is now an adjective, high, and nmanz comes horn the root of nmunz, nmanzal and the namaz of Dari. These are instances of the gradual change of language during the last ten centuries. And we know also that Pashto language at that time was much purer than it is today.

4)  In olden times (about the composition of this epic) among the adverbial particles and suffixes of place we had ""iz"" and it conveyed the meaning of adverb of place. For example, in this poem we have the word dariz from adre and ""iz"" which together mean the Arabic mumber and mawqaf (pulpit and stand) and today we no longer have such adverbs of place. But in the writings of the middle poets also there were such particles of adverb as a sample of which we have only two other words: khatiz (i.e. place of rising--East) and lwediz (or place of setting-West) instead of which we use lmar khata and lmar lweda today.

5) As regards content also this old epic is a ""pure and unmixed"" poem for, there is the pure and simple feelings of rule implied in it contained by admixtures of other literary qualities. Its thought too—like its poetic mold—is pure and unadulterated. From this we could infer that though the Arabized names of places like Jurum and Hariwalrod are indicative of the author's association with the Abbassid Arabs, the helpers of Abu Muslim Mervzi, and the missionaries of the Abbas family caliphate who were certainly Arabic speakers—the intellectual influence of the Arab culture was not widely spread. For the word Jurum (Garamser) as attested by Billazuri, has been used in a poem by Ibn Mufarrigh, an Arab poet (around 60 H./ 679 A.D.) from the first half of the first century (H.) to refer to this same Garamser of southern Afghanistan,[11] and was present till the time of Minhaj Siraj (13th century).

6) Considering the maturity and beauty of this poem together with its verbal and conceptual ripeness, it could safely be said that Pashto poetry has had a good background at the time when this piece was composed by its author, and is not a newborn without any precursor. Since we see that the various kinds of Pashto poetry continue with considerable force and solidity after this period also, we can state that Pashto was an original language with a strong foundation and capacity and solidity for expressing a variety of ideas and epical, emotional and literary content a thousand years ago. And following that during the Islamic period it has brought into existence a literature that is rich and full of content in Central Asia one of whose cradles was the land of Ghor and the courts of the Suri family rulers.