Pashayi

The Pashayi are an Indo-Aryan people of the river valleys of eastern Afghanistan, speaking Pashayi. They are regarded as indigenous to the region, possibly older than the Gandhara civilization, and were pressed into the poorer mountain valleys by waves of Ghilji Pashtun settlement.

Before Islam they followed a blend of Buddhism, Hinduism and local animism with shamanic rites and a goat cult; when Babur visited Darai Nur in the early sixteenth century the town was still famed for wine and pork had only just been forbidden. In 1582 Mirza Muhammad Hakim, governor of Kabul and brother of the Mughal emperor Akbar, campaigned from Laghman to Alishang and claimed the conversion of sixty-six valleys.

Pashtun pressure continued in the eighteenth century, when the leader Deishamir Baba conquered Darra-i Nur and brought its Kafir rulers to Islam, while Pashayi elders kept the people's identity through their marat councils.