a people inhabiting Afghanistan (q.v.), aid, according to their own traditions, descended from Melic Talut, that is, from king Saul. Sir William Jones has conjectured that they are a remnant of the ten tribes of Israel carried off in the Captivity. He says, “We learn from Esdras that the ten tribes, after a wandering journey, came to a country called Arsareth, where we may suppose they settled. Now the best Persian historians affirm that the Afghans are descended from the Jews; and they have among themselves traditions of the same import. It is even asserted that their families are distinguished by the name of Jewish tribes; though, since their conversion to Islamism, they have studiously concealed their origin. The language they use has a manifest resemblance to Chaldaic; and a considerable district under their dominion is called Hagareth, which might easily have been changed from Arsareth.” The Afghans still preserve a strong resemblance to the Jews in their customs and ritual observances. They contract marriages chiefly with their own tribes; they adhere to the Levitical law in the brother marrying the widow of his deceased brother whenever the’ brother has died without issue; divorces are permitted among them, and a ceremony prevails among one of their tribes bearing a marked resemblance to the Feast of Tabernacles, Their language also contains a greater number of Hebrew words than any other in India.<\/p>\n
Afghans a people inhabiting Afghanistan (q.v.), aid, according to their own traditions, descended from Melic Talut, that is, from king Saul. Sir William Jones has conjectured that they are a remnant of the ten tribes of Israel carried off in the Captivity. He says, “We learn from Esdras that the ten tribes, after a wandering … Continue reading “Afghans”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-encyclopedic-dictionary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}