I do not wish to jump into Afghanistan’s messy and ridiculous ethno-politics, but my friend AK published an intriguing thread on Twitter/X on the origins of Pathans. Hence this note, which is proffered from the standpoint of history and geography.
Afghan as an Ethnonym
Abu ʿAbdallah Muhammad ibn Ahmad Jayhani, vizier (from 914 to 922) to the Samanid dynasty (r. 819–999 AD) of eastern Iran and Transoxiana, wrote a seven-volume geography, The Book of Routes and Kingdoms (Kitab al-masalik wa al-mamalik). This geography is not to be confused with Istakhri’s book that bears the same name (published ca. 340/951). Jayhani’s geography has not survived, but some of it was incorporated into books written by other authors; for example, the geographies of Ibn Hawqal (pub. ca. 367/977) and al-Muqaddasi (pub. ca. 375/975). According to Vladimir Barthold in his 1937 preface to the anonymous geography, Hudud al-ʿAlam (ca. 372/982; 1937, 1970), ‘the Afghans (Afghanan, [referenced in MS folio 16a]) are mentioned as a people [in Jayhani’s geography]; until now ‘ʿUtbi [the author of Tarikh-i Yamini, on Ghaznavids, Sebüktegin and Mahmud] was considered the oldest author mentioning this ethnographical term (al-Afghaniya)’ (Hudud al-ʿAlam, p. 30). From the preface to Hudud al-ʿAlam, its seems the Afghans mentioned by Jayhani were in Ghaznin (Ghazni). But as Hudud al-ʿAlam states in the geography section, Ghaznin is
a town situated on the slope of a mountain, extremely pleasant. It lies in Hindustan and formerly belonged to it, but now is among the Muslim lands. It lies on the frontier between the Muslims and the infidels. It is a resort of merchants, and possesses great wealth.
Hudud al-ʿAlam, § 24, ¶ 19 (i.e., p 111)
Later histories mention ‘Afghans’ (awghan or awghanan) in various contexts. For example, Sayf al-Harawi’s Tarikhnama-yi Harat (ends ca. 720/1320) mentions Afghans in the military of the Kart kings of Herat. Sayf al-Harawi is precise in his use of ethnonyms; every ethno-linguistic group is noted, such as Baluchi, Sistani, Harawi, Ghuri, Tajik, etc. By ‘Afghan,’ Sayfi means a specific ethno-linguistic group, not broadly ‘people from Afghanistan.’ Afghans are mentioned as tribal militias in central Iran in the post-Mongol age (see Mahmud Kutbi, Tarikh-i Ahl-i Muzaffar).
Irrespective of whether one relies on Jayhani’s lost geography (Jayhani died in 925) or ʿUtbi’s chronicle of the Ghaznavids (ends ca. 410/1020), mention of ‘Afghans’ as ethnonym is between 925 and 1020 AD—and then as peoples living in territories that once belonged to India. Afghans drifted westwards from their Indian homelands (Sulayman Mountains) to Ghaznin and further west.
Afghanistan as a Toponym
The territory identified as the home of Pathans/Afghans is the Sulayman Mountains, now in Pakistan, but India before partition. Vartan Gregorian was one of the scholars to identify the Sulayman range as the Indian homelands of Pathans/Afghans: ‘The Afghan tribes of the Suleiman Range were used by the Ghaznawids in their periodic incursions into India’ (V. Gregorian, Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, Stanford Univ Press, 1969, p. 15; see also pp. 29–30). Sayf al-Harawi is possibly the first pre-modern author to use ‘Afghanistan’ as a toponym, but the lands referenced by him do not correspond with modern Afghanistan (see my History of Herat).
Perspectives 
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