Are the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan descendants of
an Israelite tribe that migrated across Asia after it was exiled over 2,700
years ago?
This intriguing question has been asked by a variety of
scholars, theologians, anthropologists and pundits over the years, but has
remained somewhere between the realms of amateur speculation and serious
academic research.
But now, for the first time, the government has shown
official interest, with the Foreign Ministry providing a scholarship to an
Indian scientist to come to the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in
Haifa and determine whether or not the tribe that provides the hard core of
today's Taliban has a blood link to any of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and
specifically to the tribe of Efraim.
Shahnaz Ali, a senior research fellow at the National
Institute of Immunohaematology, Mumbai, has joined the Technion to study the
blood samples that she collected from Afridi Pathans in Malihabad, in the
Lucknow district, Uttar Pradesh state, India, to check their putative Israelite
origin.
Shahnaz, an expert in DNA profiling and population genetics,
will be supervised by Prof. Karl Skorecki, director of Nephrology and Molecular
Medicine at the Technion Faculty of Medicine. Skorecki is famous for his
breakthrough work on Jewish genetic research.
Shahnaz's research, which is expected to last anywhere
between three months and a year, will be supported by a scholarship from the
Foreign Ministry for the 2009-2010 academic year.
Shahnaz, who is staying in Haifa for the duration of her
research, earlier worked at the prestigious Central Forensic Science
Laboratory, Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). While the scholarship only provides
her with $600 per month (excluding travel to and from India), her work will be
followed closely by many here and abroad.
While the vast majority of Afghan Taliban are Pashtun, the
largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, the theory that they are descendants of
the Afridi Pathans is widespread in the area. The theory is based on a variety
of ancient historical texts and oral traditions of the Pashtun people
themselves, but no scientific studies by any accredited organizations have upheld
the claim. It continues to be believed by many Pashtuns, and has found
advocates among some contemporary Muslim and (to a lesser extent) Jewish
scholars.
Official confirmation of the link by the Technion would lend
immense weight to the argument. Afridi Pathans have an age-old tradition of
Israelite origin, which finds mention in texts dating from the 10th century to
the present day, written by Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars.
According to some researchers, members of the tribe still
observe many Israelite customs in their native places in eastern Afghanistan
and in the federally administered tribal areas of Pakistan's North West
Frontier Province, though they have lost all these traditions of theirs in
India. In Afghanistan and Pakistan they are all Muslim today and form the core
of the Taliban.
In his 1957 The Exiled and the Redeemed, Itzhak Ben-Zvi,
Israel's second president, wrote that Hebrew migrations into Afghanistan began
"with a sprinkling of exiles from Samaria who had been transplanted there
by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria (719 BC)."
Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, when asked about
his ancestors, claimed that the royal family descended from the tribe of
Benjamin.
On the academic level, British researcher Dr. Theodore
Parfitt has been conducting research on genetic effects and chromosome Y among
numerous tribes around the world. In India he is assisted by a young researcher
from the University of Lucknow - Dr. Navras Afreedi - who claims that his
ancestors were Afreedi, descendants of the tribe of Efraim, and that many of
the Pathans and other tribes are descendants of the Ten Tribes. Afreedi did his
post-doctoral work at Tel Aviv University, titled "Indian Jewry and the
Self-professed Lost Tribes of Israel in India."
Shahnaz's genetic research would examine Navras's theory
that Afridi Pathans are descendants of the tribe of Ephraim, which was exiled
in 721 BCE. The research uses DNA analysis to trace shared ancestries and
origins of certain populations of interest in the eastern provinces of India,
to map the cause of a certain disorder that is very frequent in the large
populations of those provinces, and to see if the DNA mutations originate in a
certain "founder event."
Shahnaz traveled to Malihabad and collected blood samples
from the tribal population there. It is thought that the Afridi Pathans
migrated from the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, areas that are now
"ground zero" in the war on terror. Shahnaz herself, while aware of
the possible connection, is cautious to jump to conclusions.
"The research itself will take some three months, and
after that we'll see what happens. It could take a huge amount of time to
analyze all the data, as it was taken from tribal people in India, and we will
need to examine how much the men from this tribe mixed in with the local
population," she said.
Navras welcomed Shahnaz's research grant. "It's a great
news that now my research would be analyzed scientifically," he said on
his blog.
"I don't know what would be the outcome of the DNA
analysis, but it would provide us a direction to resolve the complex issue. I
also hope that such effort will have positive ramifications and will bring the
Muslims and Jews close and enable them to forget historical animosity,"
Navras wrote.
There is an audio copy of this article at the top of the
original webpage, link below:
There was a comment about this on a related blog on the
jpost website which we found interesting:
As an Iraqi Jew who was born and lived in India, allow me to
share my thoughts.
First of all the Taliban is not an ethnic group. It is a
religious-political movement that has its base in those area that are
predominantly in the North West Frontier Agency and Waziristan area of Pakistan
and the mountainous Khyber area of Afghanistan. Unfortunately the Taliban by
and large rule those areas although the general population do not all welcome
their presence. Those tribal areas have their own customs that supersede Islam
where there is a contradictory ruling.
We Iraqi Jews have a folklore that for many years the Jews
in that area had their own kingdom ruled by a Jewish king. But they were isolated
from the Jewish world and lost all their knowledge of Judaism. When Islam came
to the doors of their kingdom they gave the usual ultimatums before waging war
– either convert to Islam and share in the battles and plunder or total war and
annihilation. The reigning king whose name was Shaul asked them what their
religion was about and upon being told that they believe in one deity and don’t
eat pork came to the conclusion that this sounded like the religion they once
belonged to and readily converted along with the popualtion.
There is also documentaion that a general from that area
once visited Spain to convince the king to join him in a battle to overthrow
the muslims who were ruling the holy land at that time. He told the Spanish
king that he had an army of 30,000 powerful warriors who would join forces with
the Spanish in the battle. His proposal was met with much suspicion and was
turned down. But this indicates that at least as late as the 14th or 15th
century there was a Jewish region in that area.
The Middle East