Tirahi (Pashto: تيراهي) are Indo-Aryan people who are native and original inhabitants of Tirah valley. They are closely related to their Dardic neighbours[1] and speak Tirahi language, a nearly extinct if not already extinct[2] Indo-Aryan language which may still be spoken by older adults, who are likewise fluent in Pashto, in a few villages in the southeast of Jalalabad in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan.[3] They were the previous inhabitants of Tirah and the Peshawar Valley in modern-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.

The Tirahis were expelled from Tirah by the Afridi Pashtuns.[4] Georg Morgenstierne claimed that Tirahi language is "probably the remnant of a dialect group extending from Tirah through the Peshawar district into Swat and Dir."[5]

See also

References

  1. ^ Arlinghaus, Joseph Theodore (1988). The Transformation of Afghan Tribal Society: Tribal Expansion, Mughal Imperialism and the Roshaniyya Insurrection, 1450-1600. Duke University. p. 177.
  2. ^ "Tirahi". Ethnologue. It is very likely that this language is extinct. The Tirahi are "a group of unclear origin, almost completely assimilated by Pashtun" (Pstrusinska and Gray 1990).
  3. ^ "Tirahi". Ethnologue.
  4. ^ Konow, Sten (1933). Acta Orientalia, Volumes 11-12. Munksgaard. p. 161.
  5. ^ Turner, R. L. (1 January 1934). "Review of Report on a Linguistic Mission to North-Western India". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (4): 801–803. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00112675. JSTOR 25201006. S2CID 163506530.
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