In 1083/1672-73 Ashraf succeeded his father Khushal Khan in the chieftaincy of the Khattak tribe, but in 1092/1681 he was betrayed into the hands of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb by his brother Bahram and died in captivity.
Henry George Raverty stated in his work Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans (London, 1867) that Afzal, upon the assumption of the chieftainship, put his uncle (and rival) Abdul Qader to death[3] does not bear examination; the latter translated the Golestan of Sheikh Saadi in 1124/1712.
Another uncle of Afzal, Gawhar Khan, in 1120/1708, gave testimony to Afzal's good chieftainship and to his consuming literary interests, which were aimed at collecting his grandfather's works and having them copied to save them from oblivion, and inspiring Gawhar Khan and other members of the family to use their talents in translating into Pashto some of the great works in Persian and Arabic.
The first and last parts are translations from the Persian work Makhzan-e Afghani (or Tarikh-e-Khan Jahani) written by Nimat Allah al-Harawi in 1020/1611.
It includes long extracts from the bayaz (notebook) of his grandfather Khushal Khan and relates events up to the year 1136/1723-24.