Could the Taliban be genetically linked to the Jews?

By Haaretz Service, 14 January, 2010 Israel has asked an Indian geneticist to study the link between the Indian Pathans tribe and certain tribes of Israel, the Times of India reported this week. Geneticist Shahnaz Ali has been asked to study the link between the Afridi Pathans, based in the Lucknow region of India, and certain tribes of Israel who migrated across Asia thousands of years ago. Ali is based in Haifa where she is working in collaboration with Israel's prestigious university the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. Some experts attribute Israel's decision to fund the research to a theory supported by many that Afghanistan's Pashtun fighters, the community from which the Taliban draw their strength, are descendants of Afridi Pathans. This is not the first time speculations of a deep rooted connection between the two seeemingly unrelated people have been raised, yet this is the first time Israel's Foreign Ministry has decided to fund the research. Ali has been genetically analyzing blood samples of the Afridi Pathans of Malihabad which she collected earlier to confirm their Jewish origin. In an interview with the Times of India, Dr. Navras Aafreedi, a researcher in Indo-Judaic studies and one of the first proponents of the common origin theory in India said, "Shahnaz's research would be important if it does establish the genetic link between Pathans and Jews, as it could be seen as a scientific validation of a traditional belief about the Israelite origin of Pathans and can have interesting ramifications for Muslim-Jew relations in particular and the world at large." The Pathans in India are believed to be descendants of the Ephraim tribe, one of the 10 Israelite tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel who were exiled by Assyrian invaders in 721 BCE. Some descendants of these tribes lost tribes are said to have settled in India between 1202 C.E. and 1761 C.E., Afridi Pathans of Malihabad being one of them. "Malihabad in Lucknow district is the only Pathan, or Pashtun, territory safely and easily accesible to those interested in the probable Israelite origins of Pathans. It is certainly not possible to collect DNA samples in Afghanistan or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, where most of the Pathans or Pashtuns live," Aafreedi said. There are few Pathans left in India, primarily at places like Malihabad near Lucknow and Qayamganj in Farrukhabad, all of who Aafreedi appoached for the academic research. According to Aafreedi, the Afridi Pathans in India, even though they claim Israeli origin, are just as hostile and antagonistic towards Israel as Muslims anywhere else in the world.

Israelis and Taliban Separated at Birth?

Israel Finances Study About Pashtun Bloodlines

Simon McGregor-Wood, ABC News, Jan. 12, 2010

Don't tell the Taliban, but their ancestors may be Jewish.

Israel's foreign ministry is funding research into whether members of the ethnic tribe from which the Taliban draws its manpower have Jewish ancestors.

Pashtuns are the largest ethnic community in Afghanistan. It is widely believed they are an offshoot of the Pathans whose members are scattered across northern India and Pakistan. Both are today exclusively Muslim. Neither has any sympathy for modern Israel.

Scientists are now trying to determine whether the Pathans themselves are directly descended from the tribe of Ephraim which was exiled from the land of Israel by the invading Assyrians in 721 B.C. Pathan folklore and culture are filled with references to an Israelite past.

The last king of Afghanistan Zahir Shah who reigned in Kabul until 1973 reportedly claimed his family was descended from what he called the tribe of Benjamin.

The Taliban spare no effort in expressing their hatred for Israel. Any genetic link they may have with people of Jewish descent would be a dark irony.

Last year, a Persian blog item set off rumors suggesting that Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is of Jewish descent. Several global news outlets picked up the story and examined the notion of a Jewish Ahmadinejad, rooted in the claim that his original family name of "Sabourjian" links him to weavers of the Jewish prayer shawl.

But Meir Javednafar, an Iranian Jewish scholar on the Middle East, dismissed the idea, telling ABC News that the political vetting process would make it nearly impossible for someone to reach the post of president of the Islamic Republic without solid Muslim credentials.

Until now the supposed link between Pathans and Jews has only been discussed on the fringes of the academic and anthropological worlds. But now Shahnaz Ali, an Indian researcher from the National Institute of Immunohaematology in Mumbai has received a grant from Israel to test the theory with DNA samples she collected from Pathans in India. She will conduct her research at the prestigious Technion Institute in Haifa.

Research Into Taliban's Jewish Roots to Take Months

Dr. Navras Aafreedi from the University of Lucknow is himself a Pathan and believes his distant ancestors were Jews from the tribe of Ephraim. He has been studying the link for years.

"It's great news that my research would be analyzed scientifically. I also hope that such effort will have positive ramifications and will bring the Muslims and Jews close and enable them to forget historical animosity," he wrote on his blog.

The Afghan people are a mix of tribes and ethnicities. For years scientists have been investigating a group of Afghans living in the north of the country. They are blonde and are thought to be the descendents of the soldiers of Alexander The Great.

The research into the Taliban's Jewish roots will take many months. Long-lost family reunions are not being planned.

Lara Setrakian contributed to the reporting of this story.

Lucknow Pathans have Jewish Roots?

Israel Govt Has Asked Indian Geneticist To Study Link Between Afridis And The Lost Tribes

Sachin Parashar, The Times of India, New Delhi, January 11, 2010

New Delhi: Despite their animosity, do Jews and the Pathans in India come from the same ancestral stock — the biblical lost tribes of Israel? A subject of speculation among academicians in the past, the Israeli government has now asked an Indian geneticist, Shahnaz Ali, to study the link between the Afridi Pathans based in the Lucknow region and certain tribes of Israel who migrated from their native place to all over Asia a few thousand years ago.

Ali, who has been granted a scholarship by Israel’s foreign ministry to work on the project, is genetically analysing blood samples of the Afridi Pathans of Malihabad near Lucknow which she collected earlier to confirm their Israeli origin. Ali is based in Haifa where she is working in collaboration with the prestigious Technion — Israel Institute of Technology. ‘‘Shahnaz’s research would be important if it does establish the genetic link between Pathans and Jews, as it could be seen as a scientific validation of a traditional belief about the Israelite origin of Pathans and can have interesting ramifications for Muslim-Jew relations in particular and the world at large,’’ Dr Navras Aafreedi, a researcher in Indo-Judaic studies and one of the first proponents of the common-origin theory in India, told TOI. It is believed that the Pathan are descendants of the Ephraim tribe, one of the 10 Israelite tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel who were exiled by Assyrian invaders in 721BC. Some descendants of these lost tribes are said to have settled in India between AD1202 and AD1761, Afridi Pathans of Malihabad being one of them. According to experts, Israel’s decision to facilitate the research could also be because of the theory supported by many that Afghanistan’s Pashtun fighters, the community from which the Taliban draw their strength, are descendants of Afridi Pathans. ‘‘Malihabad in Lucknow district is the only Pathan, or Pashtun, territory safely and easily accessible to those interested in the probable Israelite origins of Pathans. It is certainly not possible to collect DNA samples in Afghanistan or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, where most of the Pathans or Pashtuns live,’’ Aafreedi said. India has only a sprinkling of Pathans, primarily at places like Malihabad near Lucknow and Qayamganj in Farrukhabad, predominantly of the Afridi tribe. But these were the only Pathans, said Aafreedi, who could be approached for academic purposes. According to Aafreedi, the Afridi Pathans in India, even though they claim Israeli origin, are just as hostile and antagonistic towards Israel as Muslims anywhere else in the world. Who Are The Lost Tribes? The term Ten Lost Tribes refers to the ancient Israeli tribes that disappeared from the Biblical account after Assyrians overran the Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC and sent them into exile. The tribes were named Asher, Dan, Ephraim, Gad, Issachar, Manasseh, Naphtali, Reuben, Simeon, and Zebulun. Two other tribes, Judah and Benjamin, had set up the Kingdom of Judah. The descendants of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin have survived as Jews. The belief persists that one day the Ten Lost Tribes would be found. Many groups claim descent from specific lost tribes. The Pashtuns – ethnic Afghans – are one such group.

Are Taliban descendants of Israelites?

Amir Mizroch , The Jerusalem Post, January 9, 2010

Are the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan descendants of an Israelite tribe that migrated across Asia after it was exiled over 2,700 years ago?

This intriguing question has been asked by a variety of scholars, theologians, anthropologists and pundits over the years, but has remained somewhere between the realms of amateur speculation and serious academic research.

But now, for the first time, the government has shown official interest, with the Foreign Ministry providing a scholarship to an Indian scientist to come to the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and determine whether or not the tribe that provides the hard core of today's Taliban has a blood link to any of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and specifically to the tribe of Efraim.

Shahnaz Ali, a senior research fellow at the National Institute of Immunohaematology, Mumbai, has joined the Technion to study the blood samples that she collected from Afridi Pathans in Malihabad, in the Lucknow district, Uttar Pradesh state, India, to check their putative Israelite origin.

Shahnaz, an expert in DNA profiling and population genetics, will be supervised by Prof. Karl Skorecki, director of Nephrology and Molecular Medicine at the Technion Faculty of Medicine. Skorecki is famous for his breakthrough work on Jewish genetic research.

Shahnaz's research, which is expected to last anywhere between three months and a year, will be supported by a scholarship from the Foreign Ministry for the 2009-2010 academic year.

Shahnaz, who is staying in Haifa for the duration of her research, earlier worked at the prestigious Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). While the scholarship only provides her with $600 per month (excluding travel to and from India), her work will be followed closely by many here and abroad.

While the vast majority of Afghan Taliban are Pashtun, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, the theory that they are descendants of the Afridi Pathans is widespread in the area. The theory is based on a variety of ancient historical texts and oral traditions of the Pashtun people themselves, but no scientific studies by any accredited organizations have upheld the claim. It continues to be believed by many Pashtuns, and has found advocates among some contemporary Muslim and (to a lesser extent) Jewish scholars.

Official confirmation of the link by the Technion would lend immense weight to the argument. Afridi Pathans have an age-old tradition of Israelite origin, which finds mention in texts dating from the 10th century to the present day, written by Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars.

According to some researchers, members of the tribe still observe many Israelite customs in their native places in eastern Afghanistan and in the federally administered tribal areas of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, though they have lost all these traditions of theirs in India. In Afghanistan and Pakistan they are all Muslim today and form the core of the Taliban.

In his 1957 The Exiled and the Redeemed, Itzhak Ben-Zvi, Israel's second president, wrote that Hebrew migrations into Afghanistan began "with a sprinkling of exiles from Samaria who had been transplanted there by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria (719 BC)."

Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, when asked about his ancestors, claimed that the royal family descended from the tribe of Benjamin.

On the academic level, British researcher Dr. Theodore Parfitt has been conducting research on genetic effects and chromosome Y among numerous tribes around the world. In India he is assisted by a young researcher from the University of Lucknow - Dr. Navras Aafreedi - who claims that his ancestors were Afreedi, descendants of the tribe of Efraim, and that many of the Pathans and other tribes are descendants of the Ten Tribes. Afreedi did his post-doctoral work at Tel Aviv University, titled "Indian Jewry and the Self-professed Lost Tribes of Israel in India."

Shahnaz's genetic research would examine Navras's theory that Afridi Pathans are descendants of the tribe of Ephraim, which was exiled in 721 BCE. The research uses DNA analysis to trace shared ancestries and origins of certain populations of interest in the eastern provinces of India, to map the cause of a certain disorder that is very frequent in the large populations of those provinces, and to see if the DNA mutations originate in a certain "founder event."

Shahnaz traveled to Malihabad and collected blood samples from the tribal population there. It is thought that the Afridi Pathans migrated from the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, areas that are now "ground zero" in the war on terror. Shahnaz herself, while aware of the possible connection, is cautious to jump to conclusions.

"The research itself will take some three months, and after that we'll see what happens. It could take a huge amount of time to analyze all the data, as it was taken from tribal people in India, and we will need to examine how much the men from this tribe mixed in with the local population," she said.

Navras welcomed Shahnaz's research grant. "It's a great news that now my research would be analyzed scientifically," he said on his blog.

"I don't know what would be the outcome of the DNA analysis, but it would provide us a direction to resolve the complex issue. I also hope that such effort will have positive ramifications and will bring the Muslims and Jews close and enable them to forget historical animosity," Navras wrote.

Gene travel: To Malihabad via Israel?

Ashish Tripathi, The Times of India, Lucknow, November 5, 2009

Shahnaz Ali, a senior research fellow at the National Institute of Immuno-Hematology, Mumbai, has been awarded a scholarship by the government of Israel for the academic year 2009-2010, to study the DNA of Afridi Pathans of Malihabad in Lucknow to confirm whether they are of Israelite origin or not. Shahnaz Ali had collected blood samples of the Afridi Pathans of Malihabad in October 2008, when she was associated with the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Kolkata. Now, with the scholarship in hand, she will conduct the analysis of the DNA at Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa. The study will be done under the supervision of scientist, Professor Karl Skorecki. The theory of the Israelite origin of Afridi Pathans was brought into focus by Indo-Judaic studies scholar, Navras Jaat Aafreedi. He did his doctoral and post-doctoral research at the universities of Lucknow and Tel Aviv respectively. Shahnaz's genetic research would examine Navras's theory that Afridi Pathans are descendants of the lost Israelite tribe of Ephraim, which was exiled in 721 BC. When contacted, Shahnaz expressed her pleasure at being selected for the scholarship. "The theory has been a matter of curiosity since long and now I hope a scientific analysis would provide us with some answers about the Israelite origin of Afridi Pathans. We still don't know what the truth is, but efforts will certainly give us a direction," said Shahnaz. Navras, who himself is an Afridi Pathan, has been working on the hypothesis of the Israelite origin of Afridi Pathans since 2002. He invited Professor Tudor Parfitt and Yulia Egorova of SOAS, London University to collect mouth swabs of Afridi Pathans in November 2002. The swabs were analysed at the University College London by Neil Bradman and Mark Thomas, but the results were never made public. Navras also welcomed the development. "It's a great news that now my research would be analysed scientifically. I don't know what would be the outcome of the DNA analysis, but it would provide us a direction to resolve the complex issue. I also hope that such effort will have positive ramifications and will bring the Muslims and Jews close and enable them to forget historical animosity," he said. Navras was awarded PhD degree in 2005 by Lucknow University, on his research on Afridi Pathans based on religious and secular texts written by Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars. Later, in June 2007, he did his post-doctoral research from the Graduate School of Historical Studies, Tel Aviv University, on the "Traditions of Israelite Descent among Certain Muslim Groups in India". It was after navras presented his paper on Afridi Pathans in October 2007 at the 19th annual conference of the Midwest Jewish Studies Association, USA, he was contacted by Shahnaz, who wanted to scientifically analyse the findings. In October 2008, Shahnaz, then a Senior Research Fellow at the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Kokata, came to Malihabad in Lucknow and collected blood samples. Navras said that as per history, ten Israelite tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel were exiled by the Assyrian invaders in 721 BC. It is believed that some descendants of these lost tribes settled in India between AD 1202 and AD 1761. Afridi Pathans of Malihabad are said to be one of them. Some Israeli academicians have visited Malihabad in the last few years to study customs and traditions of Pathans to find if they have any resemblance to Israelite traditions.

Inikah Suku Israel yang Hilang?

Oleh: Farzand Ahmed, India Today, 6 November 2006

http://unseenhands.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/inikah-suku-israel-yang-hilang/

Studi baru-baru ini telah menemukan bahwa asal-usul suku Afridi Pathan di sebuah kota kecil bernama Uttar Pradesh berasal dari ‘suku hilang’ Israel yang sesuai dengan Bibel. Namun suku Pathan tidak bersedia menerima diri mereka sebagai Yahudi. Malihabad, sebuah kota kecil yang terkenal akan buah-buahannya, di daerah pinggiran Lucknow, akan menarik perhatian Anda. Tempat yang mahsyur dengan buah mangga Dussheri yang manis dan harum itu telah melahirkan beberapa syair Urdu dan Persia terindah. Dan pernyataan tersebut tak berakhir di situ. Kota berdebu itu kini dianggap memiliki sesuatu yang dapat ditelusuri hingga masa Bibel. Di antara penduduk Malihabad terdapat sebuah suku berperawakan tinggi, berkulit kuning langsat, dan bertubuh tegap, yang menyebut diri mereka sebagai penyair dan prajurit Afridi Pathan. Selain itu, sebuah panah raksasa yang terletak di gerbang masuk kota didedikasikan untuk Bab-e-Goya, seorang penyair dan prajurit terkenal. Namun bukti-bukti yang berkembang menyiratkan bahwa leluhur mereka bukanlah Muslim tapi Israel dan mereka sebenarnya bukan berasal dari wilayah Afghanistan-Pakistan tapi ternyata merupakan salah satu ‘suku hilang’ Israel. Di Malihabad, di jantung kota Uttar Pradesh, mereka sangat menonjol dengan ciri-ciri fisik mereka yang unik.

Kini sebuah studi yang dilakukan oleh salah satu anggota suku mereka sendiri, Navras Jaat Aafreedi, yang dipublikasikan baru-baru ini dalam bentuk e-book berjudul “The Indian Jewry & The Self-Professed ‘Lost Tribes of Israel’ in India”, menelusuri garis silsilah mereka hingga ke salah satu ‘suku hilang’ Israel. Navras mengatakan, “Tujuan utama penelitian ini (untuk gelar doktor dari Universitas Lucknow) adalah untuk menelusuri leluhur suku Afridi Pathan.” Untuk membuat studinya lebih kredibel, ia mendapat bantuan dari tim peneliti internasional termasuk Profesor Tudor Parfitt, direktur Centre of Jewish Studies di Universitas London, dan Dr Yulia Egorova, seorang ahli bahasa dan sejarah dari Rusia. Tim tersebut mengunjungi Malihabad dan mengumpulkan sampel DNA dari 50 pria Afridi yang tidak memiliki hubungan secara paternal, guna memperkuat informasi mengenai silsilah Israel mereka. Para peneliti mempelajari hubungan Israel dengan Pathan di beberapa daerah perbatasan Pakistan serta kaitannya dengan Afridi Pathan di Malihabad, Uttar Pradesh, dan Qaimganj (Farrukhabad), juga dengan suku Pathan di Aligarh, Sambhal, dan Barabanki, di samping suku-suku di Kashmir, Manipur, dan Guntur di Andhra Pradesh.

Para sejarawan dan ilmuwan seperti Profesor S.N. Sinha (mantan kepala departemen sejarah di Universitas Jamia Millia Islamia), dan Profesor V.D. Pandey (kepala departemen sejarah India zaman modern dan pertengahan di Universitas Lucknow), menyatakan bahwa penelitian Navras menjadi studi ‘yang penting’ mengenai Yahudi di India dan hubungannya dengan Uttar Pradesh. Menurut Bibel, terdapat 12 suku Israel. Kerajaan utara terdiri dari 10 suku yang dibuang dan kemudian dianggap ‘hilang’. Empat dari ‘suku hilang’ tersebut telah ditemukan di India: Afridi, Shinlung di Timur Laut, Yudu di Kashmir, dan suku non-Muslim di Guntur. Para sejarawan percaya bahwa Afghan adalah keturunan Israel – nama lain cucu Ibrahim, Jacob atau Yakub. Mereka datang ke wilayah yang dikenal sebagai Perbatasan Barat Laut dan Afghanistan; dan setelah pindah mereka dipanggil Afridan, dalam bahasa Persia berarti ‘baru tiba’ dan karena itu memperoleh sebutan ‘Afridi’. Banyak dari Afridi-Afghan masih mengikuti tradisi Yahudi seperti Sabbath dan khitanan pada hari ke-8 kelahiran bayi. “Ada 3 kelompok utama Israel atau Yahudi di India: Bene Israel (kelompok tebesar), Cochini (kelompok terkecil), dan Baghdadi. Pathan di Malihabad dan Farrukhabad menyebut diri mereka sebagai Bani Israel, yang berarti Anak-anak Israel (Children of Israel). Suku-suku Bani Israel juga ditemukan di Aligarh dan Sambhal, Moradabad.

Perkampungan Pathan-Afridi di Malihabad telah ada sejak tahun 1202, ketika desa Bakhtiarnagar didirikan oleh Mohammad Bakhtiar Khilji. Sebagian besar suku Pathan datang pada sekitar pertengahan abad 17 dan semua suku migran mengambil kepemilikan atas desa-desa di sekitar Malihabad. Namun, gelombang terbesar migran Pathan, terutama Afridi, tiba di Malihabad satu abad kemudian saat terjadi lima invasi Ahmad Shah Abdali antara tahun 1748 dan 1761. Banyak Israel-Afridi di Malihabad dan Qaimganj memperoleh kedudukan terkemuka di bidang peperangan, politik, literatur, dan olah raga. Jika Dr. Zakir Husain, seorang Israel-Pathan, Presiden India ke-3 dan pendiri Universitas Jamia Millia Islamia berasal dari Farrukhabad, Malihabad bangga memiliki Nawab Faqueer Mohammad Khan ‘Goya’ (penyair dan anggota istana Awadh yang kemudian pindah ke Pakistan), Ghaus Mohammad Khan (pemain tenis), dan Anwar Nadeem (artis, penulis, dan penyair).

Terdapat sekitar 1200 sampai 1300 suku Pathan di Malihabad, dan setengah dari mereka, menurut penelitian terbaru, adalah Israel-Afridi. Penelitian tersebut telah menimbulkan kegemparan di antara Afridi Pathan karena mereka tidak bersedia mengakui identitas ke-Yahudian mereka. Tidak seperti suku-suku lainnya yang telah bersedia menyatakan pertalian mereka dengan ‘suku hilang’ Israel, Afridi Pathan bersikap tdiak percaya tentang status ke-Yahudi-annya. Kengganan ini terbukti ketika Qavi Kamal Khan (91 tahun), salah satu anggota suku Afridi Pathan di kota, mengatakan, “Saya telah mendengar bahwa kami memiliki garis silsilah Israel, tapi kami bukan Yahudi. Kami adalah Afridi.” Namun, para sejarawan mempercayai penelitian Navras dapat menjadi tonggak penting dalam penelitian sejarah-genealogis yang berangkat dari Lucknow yang tak dikenal, untuk menemukan kembali pertalian yang hilang dalam perjalanan waktu. Studi tersebut, sekali lagi, membuktikan bahwa dunia ini ternyata adalah desa global.

Lost and Found?

 

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The Sunday Indian, 4 May - 10 May, 2009

THE AFRIDI PATHANS OF MALIHABAD, A TOWN NOT FAR FROM LUCKNOW, MAY TRACE THEIR LINEAGE TO ONE OF THE FORGOTTEN TRIBES IN ISRAEL. PUJA AWASTHI EXPLORES THE TRAIL... 

 

Does Malihabad, a sleepy town 27 kilometres from Lucknow, one that yields some of the sweetest mangoes and even sweeter Urdu poetry, also hold a piece of one of the world's most fascinating puzzles - what haapened to Israel's lost tribes? One bit of research on the subject, titled The Indian Jewry and the Self-Professed 'Lost Tribes of Israel' in India, authored in 2006 by a 30-year-old scholar called Navras Jaat Aafreedi, that has drawn wide appreciation in Israel, holds that the 600-plus Afridi Pathans of Malihabad (probably like those living in Qayamganj, Farukhabad, 270 kilometres from Lucknow) have descended from the Ephraim, one of the ten tribes driven out of northern Israel by the Assyrians in 721 BC. (The migrations of these 10 tribes went unrecorded and they gradually melted into larger populations and were hence lost). Citing ancient Persian and Jewish texts and illustrating with existing practices and beliefs among the Afridi Pathans, Aafreedi says they came to India between 1202 and 1761 AD from what is today known as the North West Frontier Province (Pakistan) and from Afghanistan, where the Ephraim had settled after being ejected from Israel. They journeyed as part of the conquering army of Ahmad Shah Abdali and moved to Malihabad, which was home to other Pathans(though not of Israelite descent). To curry favour with India's non Pathan rulers of the time, they kept quiet about their origins, finally losing its knowledge. That contention, fascinating as it is, is yet to be backed by scientific evidence. In 2002, a team led by Tudor Parfitt, professor of Modern Jewish Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and author of The Lost Tribes of Israel: The History of a Myth (Phoenix, 2003), collected mouth swabs of 50 paternally unrelated Afridi Pathan males from Malihabad to test them for possible genetic links to Israelites. While the results of the study are yet to be made public, Parfitt, in an e-mail interview, says of them: "They were neutral, that is, they did not say anything one way or the other." In October 2008, Shahnaz Ali, a research assistant at the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Kolkata, collected blood samples from 53 subjects from Malihabad. "This is a fascinating subject," says Ali, who is likely to be sponsored by the Israeli government to begin her tests at the Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, in May 2009. What makes Malihabad and Qayamganj's Afridi Pathans important subjects of study is also the fact that the other, much larger concentration of their kind, in Afghanistan and Pakistan (where they make large parts of the Taliban) is unavailable for any academic inquiry. Three other groups in India - the Kashmiris, the Benei Menashe of the Northeast and the Benei Ephraim (Madigas) of Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, claim descent from Israel's lost tribes. Of these, the Benei Menashe (Chin, Lushai and Kuki tribes of Mizoram and Manipur) were studied by CFSL, a study that did not make the cut with the Israeli scientific establishment that objected to the gene sequencing methods employed. That makes the Afridi Pathans only the second such group to be scientifically studied. The search for Israel's lost tribes is much more than a tantalizing secret that has lured the world for centuries. Backing it is a Biblical prophecy that holds that apocalypse will be triggered when the lost tribes return to Israel, while legal sanction is provided by Israel's Law of Return, 1950, that gives every Jew (practicing or otherwise), anywhere in the world, the right to return to Israel and gain Israeli citizenship. If that were to happen and people of Israelite descent from far flung corners of the world were indeed to return home, the socio-political ramifications would be massive. Aryeh Gallin, Founder and President of the Root and Branch Association Limited, a 27 year old Israel-based volunteer organisation working to better relations between Israel and the world, believes that the research has the potential for "critical and positive impacts on the geo-political situation in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir and India", besides serving as a "powerful spiritual counterforce and antidote to the Taliban/Deobandi/Salafi/Wahabi poison." "The reunion of Muslim Pathans and Jews will be a catalyst in reconciliation between Muslims and Jews worldwide, between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Pakistan, and will have as one of many additional side effects a positive influence on relations between Muslims and Hindus in India," says Gallin, who is part of the large and growing band of lost tribe enthusiasts. Some critics point out that this search is merely a clever trick to lure poor from the world over to feed the growing ranks of soldiers pushed into service for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as to swell the country's pool of cheap labour. But for Qavi Kamal Khan (93), the oldest living Afridi Pathan of Malihabad, the suggestion that he could be of Israelite descent is simply an abomination. "Bahut burri qaum hai (It is a very bad community)," he says. His criticism, like those of most other Indian Muslims flows from a strong disapproval of Israel's conflict with Palestine. The fact that Aafreedi, who has made the claim, is Khan's nephew holds for little. "No other authority has said that. I do not want to be a Yehudi (Jew), I am an Afridi Pathan," Khan says with obvious pride for being part of a community that among other greats has produced India's third president Dr. Zakir Husain and Ghaus Muhammad Khan, the first Indian to reach the Wimbledon's quarter finals in 1939. The possibilities held out by the research have begun to attract tour operators to explore a "Jewish circuit", with Malihabad at its centre. Aafreedi builds a cautious defense for his research. "No historian can ever say his work will be definitive for all times to come. But all the evidence that we have so far, convinces me." If science were to back that conviction, Malihabad might well be forced out of its slumber.