Pashtuns

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Pashtuns (also Pakhtuns), Pathans or ethnic Afghans are people that form one ethnic group, which is made up of approximately 42 million individuals living in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as in certain major cities of India and western parts of Iran. The Pashtuns (Pash-tunes) usually speak their native Pashto language, but many of them also use Urdu, Hindi, Persian, English, and other languages of the region for their daily communication purposes. The word Pathan is usually applied to individuals who reside outside their native land and have mixed with the Indian culture.

[edit] Notable people

Sultan Ghuizzuddin Ghuri, son of Bahauddin Suri, was one of the Ghurid rulers in the late 1100s	Sultan Ala-ud-din Khilji (Ghilzai), ruler of Khilji dynasty who ruled India from 1296 to 1316	Sultan Ibrahim Lodhi, the last ruler of the Lodhi dynasty who ruler India from 1517 to 1526	Sher Shah Suri (Sher Khan), founder of the Suri Empire in India during the 1500s
Mirwais Khan Hotak (Mirwais Neeka), defeated the Persian Empire (Shia Safavids) and established the first Afghan state in 1709	Mir Mahmud Hotak, invaded Persia and further defeated the Persian Empire (Safavids) until he became Emperor of Persia in 1722	Ahmad Shah Durrani (Ahmad Shah Baba), founder of the Durrani Empire (Afghan Empire) at Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 1747	Shah Shujah Durrani, 5th king of Afghanistan, sitting inside his Kabul Palace in 1839
Dost Mohammad Khan, founder of the Barakzai Dynasty in Afghanistan, is sitting with his youngest son in 1841	Ghulam Hyder Khan, 4th son of Dost Mohammad Khan, led Afghan forces at the Battle of Ghazni in 1839	Gul Mohammad Khan, leader of the Ghilzais during the First Anglo-Afghan War	Sher Ali Khan was ruler of Afghanistan during the Second Anglo-Afghan War
Ayub Khan defeated the British forces in the famous Battle of Maiwand in July 1880	Abdur Rahman Khan was ruler of Afghanistan from 1880 to 1901	King Habibullah Khan ruled Afghanistan from 1901 to 1919	King Amanullah Khan ruled Afghanistan from 1919 to 1929, during the Third Anglo-Afghan War
Inayatullah Khan, brother of Amanullah, was only king for several days	Mahmud Tarzi was one of Afghanistan's greatest intellectuals who is known as the father of journalism in Afghanistan	King Mohammed Nadir Khan, ruler of Afghanistan from 1929 to 1933	King Mohammed Zahir Shah, ruler of Afghanistan from 1933 to 1973
Abdul Ghaffar Khan (on the left next to Gandhi) was s political and spiritual leader known for his non-violent opposition to British rule in India	Muhammed Ayub Khan, President of Pakistan from 1958 to 1969	Yahya Khan, sitting next to US President Richard Nixon, was the President of Pakistan from 1969 to 1971	Imran Khan, belonging to the Niazi sub-tribe, was a world famous cricket player and now a politician in Pakistan
Abdul Ahad Momand, the first Afghan who reached space and spent 9 days aboard MIR space station in 1988	The Afghan girl, appearing on the cover of the June 1985 National Geographic magazine	Ali Ahmad Jalali, worked for Voice of America for over 20 years, now a Professor at the National Defense University in the United States	Zalmay Khalilzad, served as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations
Ashraf Ghani, Chairman of the Institute of State Effectiveness and a Commisioner at the UNDP	Shahrukh Khan, world famous Bollywood actor since 1992	Hamid Karzai, leader and President of Afghanistan since 2001	Abdul Rahim Wardak, Defense Minister of Afghanistan
Gul Agha Sherzai, Governor of Nangarhar	Tooryalai Wesa, Governor of Kandahar	Aftab Ahmad Sherpao, Politician in Pakistan	Anwar-ul-Haq Ahady, Finance Minister of Afghanistan from 2002 to 2009
Mohammad Hanif Atmar, Interior Minister of Afghanistan