Afridi

Herodotus in his Histories, mentions a tribe named Aparytai (Ἀπαρύται) inhabiting the Achaemenid satrapy of Arachosia.[4] Thomas Holdich and Olaf Caroe have linked them with the Afridi tribe:[5][6][7][8]

The Sattagydae, Gandarii, Dadicae, and Aparytae (Ἀπαρύται) paid together a hundred and seventy talents; this was the seventh province

— Herodotus, The Histories, Book III, Chapter 91, Section 4

Aurel Stein described Afridis with more lighter/fair features, similar to their Dardic neighbors, in contrast to Afghan Pashtuns living on the other side of the KhyberPass, whom he described as darker/swarthier.[9]

The Afridis, along with other tribes of Pashtuns have also been alleged to be the descendants of the lost Jewish tribes. However, DNA and other research towards validating such claims has been inconclusive.[10][11][12]

The Afridis and their allies Khalils were first mentioned in the memoirs of Mughal Emperor Babar as violent tribes in need of subduing.[13] The Afridi tribes controlled the Khyber Pass, which has served as a corridor connecting the Indian subcontinent with Afghanistan and Central Asia. Its strategic value was not lost on the Mughals to whom the Afridis were implacably hostile.[14]

Over the course of Mughal rule, Emperors Akbar and Jahangir both dispatched punitive expeditions to suppress the Afridis, to little success.[15]

Under the leadership of Darya Khan Afridi, they engaged in protracted warfare against the Mughal army in the 1670s.[16] The Afridis once destroyed two large Mughal armies of Emperor Aurangzeb: in 1672, in a surprise attack between Peshawar and Kabul, and in the winter of 1673, in an ambush in the mountain passes.[17] The emperor sent his Rajpoot general Rai Tulsidas with reinforcements into the mountains to suffocate the revolt and liberate the mountain.[17][18] Allegedly, only five Mughal soldiers made it out of the battle alive the rest of Mughal were brutally slaughtered.[19][20][21]

During the First, Second, and Third Anglo-Afghan Wars, Afridis fought against the British; these skirmishes comprised some of the fiercest fighting of the Anglo-Afghan Wars.[22] Ajab Khan Afridi was a well-known independence activist against the British Raj.

The British colonial administration regarded the Pashtun Afridi tribesmen as "martial tribe" under the martial races theory.[23] Different Afridi clans also cooperated with the British in exchange for subsidies, and some even served with the Khyber Rifles, an auxiliary force of the British Indian Army.[23][24]

Shortly after the Partition of India and the creation of Pakistan, Afridi tribesmen were among the ranks of the Pashtun militias that invaded the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir in October 1947, sparking the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947–1948 and the ongoing Kashmir conflict.[25] Today, Afridis make use of their dominant positions along the Durand Line in areas of Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province by controlling transport and various businesses, including trade in armaments, munitions and goods.[1]