Pashtunization

Pashtunization (Pashto: پښتون‌ جوړونه‎), also called Pathanization, is a process of cultural or linguistic change in which someone or something non-Pashtun becomes accultured to Pashtun influence. The Pashtun people are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and the second largest in Pakistan.

People become Pashtunized when they settle in Pashtun-dominated areas and adopt Pashtun culture, either by adapting the Pashto language or absorbing Pashtunwali customs. Pashtunization is a specific form of cultural assimilation and has been taking place in Pashtun-populated regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan for several centuries.

"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."

The Khilji were originally Turkic tribes who had long domiciled in Afghanistan and gradually adopted the Pashtun culture. Some of them left the area during the Mongol invasion of Central Asia towards the Indian subcontinent, where they built empires such as the Khilji, Lodi, and Suri dynasties of Delhi. They are considered by historians as ethnic Afghans (Pashtuns).

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