AMIR Hamza Khan Shinwari, or Hamza Baba as he is known, started writing poetry in Urdu when he was only in grade five. But his spiritual guide, Syed Abdul Sattar Shah Baacha, asked him to switch to ...

“What tyrant has attacked my mountains this year/ When I go to shovel the snow, I pick up only blood.” This verse from a recent Pashto poem written by Mukhtar Orakzai, translated into English, best ...

During the 17th and early 18th century, three very prominent Pashto poets honoured what today is Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan. They were, in chronological order, Khushal Khan Khattak, Rahman Baba ...

PESHAWAR: Pashto poetry is popularly known as relating to either love or war. Modern scholars, however, are starting to dig deeper to the ‘scientific core’ of Pukhtun verses. “This region’s classical ...