There are several ethnic groups in Afghanistan which traditionally lead a peripatetic life. This means they are nomadic and their main occupations centre around providing services to the settled populations they travel among, like peddling particular goods or performing music. In this way, they contrast both with the settled population and with the pastoralist nomads. They are of low social status and are known to outsiders as Jats, a derogatory term that none of the groups use as a self-designation.
Name
The term Jāt is derogatory and none of the peripatetic groups uses it for itself, although they do employ it in reference to other peripatetic communities. It is unclear how these distinct groups acquired the name Jat.
In neighbouring South Asia, the term Jat refers to a large cluster of agriculture castes, some especially in the Balochistan are connected with camel breeding and herding.
Social characteristics
Generally, what defines groups is a nomadic lifestyle, with their main occupation being the provision of services such as the manufacture and sale of agricultural implements, bangles, drums and winnowing trays as well as providing entertainment such as performing bears and monkeys, fortune-telling, singing. Most Jats have a network of clients and customers scattered over a broad region, and they migrate between these known clients clusters, occasionally adding new ones. Secondly, each Jat group specializes in a particular activity, for example the Ghorbat of western Afghanistan are sieve makers, shoe repairers and animal traders, while the Shadibaz peddle cloth, bangles and haberdashery.
These communities are endogamous and some have secret languages.
Ethnic groups
Below is a brief overview of the main known groups of peripatetics. The information in this table, as well as in the rest of this article, is relevant to the situation in the 1970s. This is likely to have changed significantly in the turmoil since then.
Baluch
The Baluch (Baluč) should not be confused with either the much larger ethnic group of the Baluch people (even though they speak the same language), or with one of the subgroups of the peripatetic Vangawala. The Baluch were also known as Chalu, Herātī and Jat-Baluch. Numbering approximately 2,500 individuals in the 1970s, they claim to have ultimately migrated from Balochistan. For a long time they were in association with the Jamshidi tribe, for whom they worked as blacksmiths and jewellers. This relationship came to an end with the droughts of the middle of the 1960s, the ensuing poverty reportedly driving them to prostitution and the provisions of entertainment, which were their chief occupations in the 1970s. Only some of the men played music, but all of the women were engaged in singing, dancing and prostitution. The latter activity was at that time stigmatised and illegal, but unlike many prostitutes in the settled areas, the Baluch women did not try to conceal their identity in public and dressed and behaved in a way that made them immediately recognisable as such. Women received clients in their summer camps, their husbands (or fathers if unmarried) setting the price and collecting the official earnings. Although some women did not like the job, many said they thought it was an easy way to get pleasure and money. The men stated they would have preferred it if their wives did not have to work as prostitutes, but they nonetheless were happy that they themselves did not have to work. Both the men and the women held their clients in "infinite contempt" and often referred to them as "the dogs". Polygyny was common in the group.
Ghorbat
The Ghorbat (Ġorbat) are the most widely dispersed peripatetic community, consisting of about 600 nuclear families as of the 1970s. Their origin is ultimately west-Iranian, and they speak local varieties of Persian in addition to Ghorbati (also known as Magadi or Qāzulāgi), a secret language with a heavy Persian base.
Jalali, Pikraj, Shadibaz and Vangawala
These four communities claim descent from ancestors who migrated in the 19th century from the Dera Ismail Khan and Dera Ghazi Khan areas of eastern Balochistan (nowadays Pakistan). The Jalali and the Pikraj give successive droughts and famines as the reason for their migration, while the Shadibaz and the Vangawala state that their ancestors were fleeing from blood feuds ultimately triggered by the abduction of kinswomen. All four groups speak closely related varieties of the Indo-Aryan Inku language, which is likely related to the Saraiki of their areas of origin.