Nuristani

The Nuristanis are an Indo-Iranian people of the Hindu Kush valleys of Kafiristan, later called Nuristan, in northeastern Afghanistan. Their languages form a distinct Nuristani branch of the Indo-Iranian family. Muslim writers called them Kafirs and their country Kafiristan because they kept their polytheistic religion while surrounding peoples adopted Islam.

Mahmud of Ghazni raided their valleys in 1020 and 1021 and Timur attacked the black-robed Siah-Posh clans in 1398, but neither conquest proved lasting. In the early seventeenth century the Mughal emperor Jahangir received a Kafir delegation at Jalalabad.

The clans lived in independent valley communities, farming terraced wheat and barley fields, herding goats and making wine, ordered by customary law and worship of gods such as the creator Imra and the war god Gish. Throughout 1337 to 1837 they remained unconquered beyond the reach of Muslim states centred on Kabul.