Nūrestān

Nūrestān, also spelled Nūristān, formerly (until 1895) Kāfiristān, historic region in eastern Afghanistan, about 5,000 square miles (13,000 square km) in area and comprising the upper valleys of the Alīngār, Pīch, and Landay Sind rivers and the intervening mountain ranges. Its northern boundary is the main range of the Hindu Kush, its eastern the Pakistani border, its southeastern the Konar (Kunar) Valley, and its western the mountain ranges above the Panjshēr and Nejrāb valleys. The region is mountainous, rainy, and forested.

Nūrestān’s regional unity and distinction from the rest of Afghanistan spring from its isolation and the common cultural characteristics shared by its people, who strongly cherish independence, have a clan organization with village governments, and are now settled agriculturists (growing cereals and fruits and raising livestock) living in the valleys. They speak various Kafir languages. The region did not become part of Afghanistan until the 1890s, when ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, the Afghan emir, conquered it and forcibly converted the inhabitants to Islam. He subsequently changed its name from Kāfiristān (“Land of the Kāfirs”—i.e., infidels) to Nūrestān (“Land of the Enlightened”). The forests of Nūrestān provide most of Afghanistan’s timber.

An early European account of the inhabitants of Kāfiristān is given in George Scott Robertson’s The Kafirs of the Hindu Kush, based on Robertson’s stay in the village of Kamdesh in 1890–91. The book’s publication in 1896 coincided with the military offensive and forced conversion by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. Remnants of the area’s pre-Islamic religion and culture have survived among the few thousand members of the Kalash ethnic group living in and around the city of Chitral, Pakistan.