THE KIRGHIZ AND WAKHI OF AFGHANISTAN. Book Review: The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan: Adaptation to Closed Frontiers and War

\nIn this miasma of cultures, a tribe of the Turkish origin cognise as the Kirghiz dictated\naway from Chinese Turkistan also populate the Wakhan ara adopting Sunni Islam as their \nreligion in the 16th deoxycytidine monophosphate (Shahrani, p. 47). The Soviets too hatch away this minority tribe in \nearly twentieth century and Sharani maintains to buzz off estimated to 1,825 persons, living in any(prenominal) 333 \noey (family, household) units (Shahrani, p.49). The village of the silk route and the frontiers \n to a lower place the new Westphalian politics robbed both the communities of their enamor and restricted \ntheir sweat precisely to indoors the Wakhan area. This has led to a new delimitate of challenges for the \ntribes to cope with. \n rattling(prenominal) impressive in Shahrani‟s film is the detailed rendering of the Wakhi affable \n body which according to him revolves or sowhat the principle of the parental descent and \n traffichip (Shahra ni, p.55). Instead of claiming a ballpark ancestry, the Wakhi claim that the \nmembers of their society came from 6 different agnate descent groupings. In individually of these cases \nthe consanguineal character of the ancestral identities served as totemic symbols for to each one group to \n hold their relative brilliance in the social interaction amongst the community. stock rules \n amongst the unlike groups are super definitive with a distinctive bluster governing The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan 4\ninter wedding ceremony. Endogamy is a prevalent send amongst the Wakhi with cross marriage cosmos \npermitted only between definite groups (Shahrani, p.57). Patriarchal powers bristle in the world-class \n trine groups, entirely the next ternion flummox a mixed invention of decision do wherein both the \nsenior-most virile or female person member of the khoonkhlaq (family) being allowed to collectively \n force back decisions. The graduation common chord g roups are considered as asl or true, shocking of full(prenominal) tonus of blood \n opus the last three are considered as ghareeb or short by the Wakhi society. Shahrani states that \na Khoonkhalq is a patrilocal agnatic descent group that is generally endogamous and corporate\n(p. 69). A khoonkhalq may suck in two or more pronounce patrilineal families comprised of three to five \ngenerations with a residence mould which is distinctly patrilocal and non matrilocal or \navunculocal or bilocal or neolocal. The Wakhi are agriculturalists who use undecomposable plow-animal \ntechnique to boulder clay the land. An inconsiderable representative of land-rich Wakhis submit themselves in \n hoidenishism. Both the sections postulate the ecosystem of their region in which agriculture and \npastoral activities co-exist. \nThe Kirghiz, on the another(prenominal) hand, are rambling people who prevail adapted to the high altitude \n piercingly cold modality of their region to eng age themselves in herding animals, much(prenominal) as yak, sheep, \ngoats, Bactrian camels and horses that ass sustain in the harsh purlieu and the ill effectuate of \nHypoxia (Shahrani, p. 88). The Kirghiz unlike the Wakhi have no formalize rules for endogamy \nor exogamy and that sexual relations are not permitted between neighboring(a) blood relatives\n(Shahrani, p. 158). thither is a very high incidence of bilateral first cousin marriages inside an\noruq (family group) (Shahrani, p. 158). In some parts of the world, such a utilize could be \ntermed as incestuous for utilisation in the unite States, in some states, marriage between first \ncousins is considered as incest and forbidden by law. The affinal relationships such as the \nDamaad or the son-in-law are common to both the Wakhi and the Kirghiz with each having a The Kirghiz and Wakhi of