Nuristani People - History

History

Nuristanis are first mentioned in the Rigveda, the collection of ancient Vedic Sanskrit hymns sacred to Hindus. In the Rigveda, they appear as Alinas, and fought on the side of the sage Vishvamitra in the Battle of the Ten Kings.

Specifically, the Rigveda describes the victory of the Bharatas over Vishvamitra's Puru regiment and its Nuristani, Pashtun, Balochi, Kashmiri, and Bhrigus allies.

Rigveda 7.18.7 says

Together came the Pakthas, the Bhalanas, the Alinas, the Sivas, the Visanins. Yet to the Trtsus came the Ārya's Comrade, through love of spoil and heroes' war, to lead them

• Alinas: One of the tribes defeated by Sudas at the Dasarajna, and it was suggested that they lived to the north-east of Nuristan, because the land was mentioned by the Chinese pilgrim Hiouen Thsang.

Like certain other groups in the region, they sometimes exhibit physical characteristics of light hair, eyes, and skin. There is a large number of these people who live in Chitral, Pakistan the eastern border of Nuristan. Most of these people are from the KATA Family and Janaderi Branch. However there are other Nuristani tribes as well, some of KATA of Janaderi people live in Ozhor (now Karimabad), Gobor, Buburat, Ayun, Broze and Mastuj. There is a very popular rock associated with this tribe located in Karimabad (Juwara) called kata bont (Kata is the name of the tribe; bont meaning "stone" in the Chitrali language).

In 4th century BC, Alexander the Great encountered them and reduced them after a stubborn and prolonged fight, describing them as being distinct culturally and religiously from other peoples of the region.

Nuristanis were formerly classified into "Siah-Posh (black-robed) Kafirs" and "Safed-Posh (white robed)/Lall-Posh (Red-Robed) Kafirs". Timur fought with and was humbled by the Siah-Posh Kafirs. Babur advised not to tangle with them. Genghis Khan passed by them. In the 19th century, it was typical of the Kafirs to boast about having killed the sons of Ali.

The region is so called "Kafiristan" as the surrounding populations were converted to Islam, the people in this region retained themselves, thus known as "Kafirs".The Arabic word "Kufr" means not only to disbelieve, but also to blaspheme, and therefore, its derivative "Kafir" means one who commits blasphemy against Allah in the Islamic tradition. The "Kafir" here is used to refer to their being non-Muslims and the Nurestan province was hence known as Kafiristan, before the majority were forcefully converted to Islam during Abdur Rahman Khan's rule around 1895. They are now known as Nuristani. However, they have retained some of their old customs and traces of their previous beliefs, which is considered incompatible with the new belief and is disappearing.

"Kafir" has also been traced to Kapiś (= Kapish), the ancient Sanskrit name of the region that included historic Kafiristan; which is also given as "Ki-pin" (or Ke-pin, Ka-pin, Chi-pin) in old Chinese chronicles. That name, unrelated to the Arabic word, is believed to have mutated at some point into the word Kapir. Kapiś, the name of the people of Kapiś/Kapiśa, is believed to have changed to Kapir and then Kafir, because of the lack of 'p' in Arabic. This is similar to how Parsi changed to Farsi.