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The name Afghānistān (Persian: افغانستان, [avɣɒnestɒn]) means "land of the Afghans", which originates from the ethnonym "Afghan". Historically, the name "Afghan" mainly designated the Pashtun people, the largest ethnic group of Afghanistan. The earliest reference to the name is found in the 10th-century geography book known as Hudud ul-'alam. The last part of the name, -stān is a Persian suffix for "place".
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In the early 19th century, Afghan politicians adopted the name Afghanistan for the entire Durrani Empire after its English translation had already appeared in various treaties with Qajarid Persia and British India.
In 1857, in his review of J.W. Kaye's The Afghan War, Friedrich Engels describes "Afghanistan" as:
"an extensive country of Asia ... between Persia and the Indies, and in the other direction between the Hindu Kush and the Indian Ocean. It formerly included the Persian provinces of Khorassan and Kohistan, together with Herat, Beluchistan, Cashmere, and Sinde, and a considerable part of the Punjab ... Its principal cities are Kabul, the capital, Ghuznee, Peshawer, and Kandahar."
Afghanistan was officially recognized as a sovereign state by the international community after the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919 was signed.
Afghanization
It is widely acknowledged that the terms "Pashtun" and Afghan are synonyms, a fact that is mentioned in the 17th-century poetry of Pashtun national poet Khushal Khan Khattak:
"Pull out your sword and slay any one, that says Pashtun and Afghan are not one! Arabs know this and so do Romans: Afghans are Pashtuns, Pashtuns are Afghans!"
Pashtunization (Afghanization) has been going on in the region (between modern Afghanistan and Bangladesh) since at least the 8th century. It is a process of a cultural or linguistic change in which something non-Pashtun (non-Afghan) becomes Pashtun (Afghan).
"In the eighth and ninth centuries ancestors of many of today's Turkic-speaking Afghans settled in the Hindu Kush area (partly to obtain better grazing land) and began to assimilate much of the culture and language of the Pashtun tribes already present there."
Afghan dynasties
According to Ta'rikh-i Yamini (author being secretary of Mahmud of Ghazni), Afghans enrolled in Sabuktigin's Ghaznavid Empire in the 10th century as well as in the later Ghurid Kingdom (1148–1215). From the beginning of the Khilji dynasty in 1290, Afghans are becoming more recognized in history among the Delhi Sultanate of India. The later Lodi dynasty and Sur dynasty of Delhi were both made up of Afghans, whose rule stretched to as far as what is now Bangladesh in the east.
Last Afghan empire
Regarding the modern sovereign state of Afghanistan, the Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Iranica, and others explain that the political history of Afghanistan begins in 1709 with the rise of the Hotaki dynasty, which was established by Mir Wais Hotak who is regarded as "Mirwais Neeka" ("Mirwais the grandfather").
"The modern Afghan kingdom begins with the rise to supremacy first of the Ghalzais and shortly afterwards of the Durranis under Ahmed Shah."
The Encyclopaedia of Islam states:
"The country now known as Afghanistan has borne that name only since the middle of the 18th century, when the supremacy of the Afghan race became assured: previously various districts bore distinct apellations, but the country was not a definite political unit, and its component parts were not bound together by any identity of race or language. The earlier meaning of the word was simply "the land of the Afghans", a limited territory which did not include many parts of the present state but did comprise large districts now either independent or within the boundary of British India."
British India eventually became Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.