Afghanistan
Etymology

Some scholars suggest that the root name Afghān is derived from the Sanskrit word Aśvakan, which was the name used for ancient inhabitants of the Hindu Kush. Aśvakan literally means "horsemen", "horse breeders", or " cavalrymen " (from aśva, the Sanskrit and Avestan words for "horse").

Historically, the ethnonym Afghān was used to refer to ethnic Pashtuns. The Arabic and Persian form of the name, Afġān, was first attested in the 10th-century geography book Hudud al-'Alam. The last part of the name, " -stan ", is a Persian suffix meaning "place of". Therefore, "Afghanistan" translates to "land of the Afghans", or "land of the Pashtuns" in a historical sense. According to the third edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam:

The name Afghanistan (Afghānistān, land of the Afghans / Pashtuns, afāghina, sing. afghān) can be traced to the early eighth/fourteenth century, when it designated the easternmost part of the Kartid realm. This name was later used for certain regions in the Ṣafavid and Mughal empires that were inhabited by Afghans. While based on a state-supporting elite of Abdālī / Durrānī Afghans, the Sadūzāʾī Durrānī polity that came into being in 1160 / 1747 was not called Afghanistan in its own day. The name became a state designation only during the colonial intervention of the nineteenth century.

The term "Afghanistan" was officially used in 1855, when the British recognized Dost Mohammad Khan as king of Afghanistan.
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