Kohistani

Kohistani is the collective name for the Dardic Indo-Aryan mountain peoples of Kohistan, the land of steep forests and pastures split between the Indus, Swat and Dir valleys. They speak a cluster of related tongues and stand close to their Shina and Kashmiri neighbours.

Once they ranged far more widely, for the Gibari-speaking Sultans of Swat ruled Swat, Dir, Buner and Malakand until the sixteenth century; between 1510 and 1515 the Yousafzai Pashtuns overran that sultanate and drove most Kohistanis back into the high valleys, where Pashtun settlement and conversion slowly Pashtunized some groups, who lost their old speech for Pashto.

The remaining valleys kept their small languages and their old valley politics, governed by local clans rather than outside kings, and entered the British period as isolated tribal hills.