Abdul Rahman Mohmand, known with affection as Rahman Baba, is one of the most celebrated poets of the Pashto language. A Sufi who lived near Peshawar in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, he left a single diwan of verse on love, humility and devotion. His poems are still recited and sung by Pashto speakers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and his shrine is a gathering place for poets and musicians.
A quiet life near Peshawar
Rahman Baba’s exact dates are uncertain: sources place his birth around 1632 or 1650 and his death between about 1706 and 1715. He belonged to the Ghoryakhel branch of the Mohmand Pashtuns and is said to have been born in Bahadur village at Hazarkhwani, near Peshawar, during the Mughal era. According to one account he studied first in his home area and later in Kohat.
Accounts describe him as learned but modest. Unlike his famous contemporary Khushal Khan Khattak, he did not take up arms against the Mughal empire, and tradition remembers him living a simple, peaceful life devoted to faith and poetry.
The diwan
His Diwan contains 343 poems, most of them ghazals. Their language is simple and fluent, easy for listeners of every background, yet it carries complex philosophical ideas. Recurring themes are divine and human love, tolerance, good deeds and the danger of pride. One couplet holds that healing another person’s wounded heart is greater than building the Kaaba. For many Pashtuns his verse holds a spiritual authority second only to the Quran.
The Diwan spread quickly: it was widely known by 1728, and dozens of manuscript copies survive, including copies in the British Library and the Bodleian Library, and the Pashto Academy in Peshawar also holds manuscripts. One richly illustrated copy, with 47 paintings, was made in Kashmir in 1798 for Abdallah Khan Barakzai. The first printed edition, prepared by the missionary T. P. Hughes, appeared in Lahore in 1877.
Legacy
Rahman Baba is often called the Rumi of Pashto literature, and the Afghan literary critic Mohammad Zarin Anzor has described him as the best-known and best-loved Sufi poet in Afghanistan. Anzor stresses how he rose above tribal identity, calling himself simply a lover concerned with all humanity. His poems have been translated into English, notably by Robert Sampson and Momin Khan and by the scholar Annemarie Schimmel, and into Urdu and Punjabi.
His tomb, under a large domed shrine at Hazarkhwani on the southern edge of Peshawar, draws poets, musicians and admirers, especially for the annual urs held in his memory.