Nuristanis
This article needs additional citations for verification. (May 2014) |
Total population | |
---|---|
c. 125,000–300,000 Pashto, serving as the lingua franca and widely understood as a second language | |
Religion | |
Sunni Islam [3][4] | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Kalash, Pashayi, Kho |
The Nuristanis are an
In the mid-1890s, after the establishment of the
The Nuristan region has been a prominent location for war, which has led to the death of many indigenous Nuristanis.[14][15] Nuristan has also received abundance of settlers from the surrounding Afghan regions due to the borderline vacant location.[16][17]
Pre-Islamic religion
Noted linguist Richard Strand, an authority on Hindu Kush languages, observed the following about pre-Islamic Nuristani religion:
"Before their conversion to Islâm the Nuristânis practiced a form of
ancient Hinduism, infused with accretions developed locally".[18]
They acknowledged a number of human-like deities who lived in the unseen Deity World (Kâmviri d'e lu; cf. Sanskrit deva lok'a-).[18]
Mitch Weiss and Kevin Maurer describe the Nuristanis of having traditionally practising a "primitive" form of Hinduism, up until the late nineteenth century, before their conversions to Islam.[3]
Certain deities were revered only in one community or tribe, but one was universally revered as the creator: the Hindu god Yama Râja called imr'o in Kâmviri.[18] There is a creator god, appearing under various names, as lord of the nether world and of heaven: Yama Rājan, or Māra ('death', Nuristani),[19] or Dezau (ḍezáw) whose name is derived from Indo-European *dheig'h i.e. "to form" (Kati Nuristani dez "to create", CDIAL 14621); Dezauhe is also called by the Persian term Khodaii. There are a number of other deities, semi-gods and spirits. The Kalash pantheon is thus one of the few living representatives of Indo-European religion.
They believed in many deities, whose names resembled those of
Each village and clan had its guardian deity, with
The area extending from modern Nuristan to Kashmir was known as "Peristan", a vast area containing a host of Nuristani cultures and Indo-European languages that became Islamized over a long period. Earlier, it was surrounded by
The region was called "Kafiristan" because while the surrounding populations were converted to Islam, the people in this region retained their traditional religion, and were thus known as "Kafirs" to the Muslims. The Arabic word "Kufr" means disbelief and the related word "Kafir" means one who does not believe in Islam. Thus "Kafir" here is used to refer to their being non-Muslims; the province was therefore known as Kafiristan. The majority were converted to Islam during Abdur Rahman Khan's rule around 1895. The province is now known as Nuristan and the people as Nuristanis. However, among the rural population many old customs and beliefs like occasional production of wine have continued.[24][25]
History
In the 4th century BC, Alexander the Great encountered them and finally defeated them after they put up a stubborn and prolonged resistance, describing them as being distinct culturally and religiously from other peoples of the region.[1]
Nuristanis were formerly classified into "Siah-Posh (black-robed) and "Safed-Posh (white-robed)/Lall-Posh (Red-Robed).[26] Timur fought with and was humbled by the Siah-Posh.[27] Babur advised not to tangle with them. Genghis Khan passed by them.[28]
In 1014, Mahmud of Ghazni attacked them:
Another crusade against idolatry was at length resolved on; and Mahmud led the seventh one against Nardain, the then boundary of India, or the eastern part of the Hindu Kush; separating as Firishta says, the countries of Hindustan and Turkistan and remarkable for its excellent fruit. The country into which the army of Ghazni marched appears to have been the same as that now called Kafirstan, where the inhabitants were and still are, idolaters and are named the Siah-Posh, or black-vested by the Muslims of later times. In Nardain there was a temple, which the army of Ghazni destroyed; and brought from thence a stone covered with certain inscriptions, which were according to the Hindus, of great antiquity.[29]
Timur's encounter with Katirs/Kators
The first reference to Siah-Posh Kafirs occurs in Timur's invasion of
Timur's encounter with Kam Kafirs
Again, according to Timur's autobiography (Tuzak-i-Timuri), a military division of ten thousand Muslim soldiers was sent against the Siah-Posh (Kam) Kafirs under the command of General Aglan Khan to either slay these infidels or else to convert them into Islam. Tuzak-i-Timuri frankly admits that the regiment was badly routed by a small number of Siah-Posh Kafirs. The Muslim forces had to flee from the battle-field leaving their horses and armour. Another detachment had to be sent under Muhammad Azad which fought gallantly and recovered the horses and the armour lost by General Aglan and came back home, leaving the Siah-Posh alone.[31]
Timur does not boast of any killings or imprisonment of the Siah-Poshes as he does for the Katirs and numerous other communities of India proper. Also, he gives no further details of his conflict with the Siah-Poshes in his Tuzak-i-Timuri after this encounter, which clearly shows that the outcome of the fight against the Siah-Poshes was very costly and shameful for Timur.[32][33]
Other references to these Kafirs are made in the fifteenth and later in sixteenth century during the
In 1839, the Kafirs sent a deputation to Sir William Macnaghten in Jalalabad claiming relationship with the fair skinned British troops who had invaded the country[34]
Settlement in Chitral
At the time of the Afghan conquest of Kafiristan, a small number of Kom and Kati Kafirs fled east to Chitral (modern Pakistan) where they were allowed to settle by the Mehtar. There they practised their faith for a few more decades, before finally converting to Islam as well. The final known non-converted Kafir was settled in a Chitrali village known as Urtsun.[35] This Kafir's name was Chanlu, and he converted in 1938, several months after being interviewed about the cosmology of the Kati.[36]
In Chitral, the Nuristanis are known either as Bashgalis (as most migrated from a valley of Nuristan called Bashgal in the Chitrali
Pre-1895 Kafir society
Prior to 1895, the Kafirs of the Hindu Kush were classified into two groups: the Siah-posh (black clad) and the Safed-posh (white clad) Kafirs, also known as the Lal-posh (red-clad), so-called because of the colour of the robes they wore. But the British investigator George Scott Robertson who visited Kafiristan and studied the Kafirs for about two years (1889–1891) improved upon the old classification by recognising that the Safed-posh Kafirs were actually members of several separate clans, viz, the Waigulis, Presungulis or Viron, and the Ashkuns.[38] The later three groups of the Kafirs used to be collectively known as Sped-Posh Kafirs.
The term Siah-posh Kafirs used to designate the dominant group of Hindu Kush Kafirs inhabiting the
The Siah-Posh tribe was divided into Siah-posh Katirs or Kamtoz, Siah-posh
All Siah-posh groups of Kafirs were regarded as of common origin. They all had a common dress and customs and spoke closely related dialects of Kati.[40] Nicholas Barrington et al. reported that the Waigulis and Presungulis referred to all Siah-posh Kafirs as Katirs.[41]
While the Kamtoz of the lower Bashgul valley were the most numerous, the Kam of the upper Bashgul valley were the most intractable and fierce and dreaded for their military prowess.[42]
Origin hypotheses
- Some earlier writers had speculated and propagated the myth that the Kafirs of the Hindu Kush may have descended from the army of Eric S. Margolis.[50]
- The Siah-Posh Kafirs themselves claim to have descended from certain Koresh (Gurashi/Gorish or Goraish) a name linked to Persia who was born in the Cabul country.[58] Keruch, according to Bellew is the name of a Rajput clan which may have been adopted into the Rajput nation though of different race and descent.[59] Thus, Bellew seem to relate Siah-Posh Kafirs to the Iranians.
- Kafirstan. There they probably found other races already settled, whom they vanquished, drove away, or enslaved, or with whom they amalgamated.[60]
- According to Donald Wilber and other recent writers,
Soviet–Afghan War (1979-1989)
General
Genetics
In a 2012 research on
Tribes
Most Nuristanis are from the Kata Family and Janaderi Branch. However, there are other Nuristani tribes as well, some of the Kata of Janaderi people live in Ozhor (now
The Nuristani do not have a formal tribal structure as the Pashtuns do, however they do designate themselves by the names of the local regions they are from.[1]
In total, there are 35 such designations: five from the north–south valleys and 30 from the east–west valley.
Some of these tribes include:
See also
- Kho people
- Dardic people
- Burusho people
- Gurjar
- Dogan (deity)
- Kata-vari dialect
References
- ^ a b c "Afghanistan - Nuristani". countrystudies.us.
- ^ "Afghanistan population statistics". GeoHive. Retrieved 4 June 2016.
- ^ ISBN 9780425253403.
Up until the late nineteenth century, many Nuristanis practised a primitive form of Hinduism. It was the last area in Afghanistan to convert to Islam—and the conversion was accomplished by the sword.
- ^ ISBN 9781610690188.
Living in the high mountain valleys, the Nuristani retained their ancient culture and their religion, a form of ancient Hinduism with many customs and rituals developed locally. Certain deities were revered only by one tribe or community, but one deity was universally worshipped by all Nuristani as the Creator, the Hindu god Yama Raja, called imr'o or imra by the Nuristani tribes.
- ^ Karl Jettmar. Cultures of the Hindukush (PDF). Franz Steiner Verlag. p. 51.
- ^ "Kalash Religion" (PDF). people.fas.harvard.edu. Harvard University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 November 2013. Retrieved 1 May 2011.
- ^ "Wlodek Witek (CHArt 2001)". chart.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 21 July 2011.
- .
- ^ Ewans, Martin (2002). Afghanistan: a short history of its people and politics. Harper Perennial. p. 103.
- ^ A Former Kafir Tells His 'Tragic Story'. Notes on the Kati Kafirs of Northern Bashgal (Afghanistan) / Max Klimburg, East and West, Vol. 58 – Nos. 1–4 (December 2008), pp. 391–402
- ^ Reflections of the Islamisation of Kafiristan in Oral Tradition / Georg Buddruss Journal of Asian Civilizations — Volume XXXI — Number 1-2 – 2008, Special Tribute Edition, pp. 16–35
- ^ 'The pacification of the country was completed by the wholly gratuitous conquest of a remote mountain people in the north-east, the non-Muslim Kalash of Kafiristan (Land of the Unbelievers), who were forcibly converted to Islam by the army. Their habitat was renamed Nuristan (Land of Light).' Angelo Rasanayagam, Afghanistan: A Modern History, I.B. Tauris, 2005, p.11
- ISBN 9781845111755.
Prominent sites include Hadda, near Jalalabad, but Buddhism never seems to have penetrated the remote valleys of Nuristan, where the people continued to practise an early form of polytheistic Hinduism.
- ^ Hauner, M. (1991). The Soviet War in Afghanistan. United Press of America.
- ^ Ballard; Lamm; Wood (2012). From Kabul to Baghdad and back: The U.S. at war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
- ^ "Nuristan a Safe Passage for Taliban to Enter North and North-Eastern Parts of Afghanistan". Archived from the original on 29 October 2013. Retrieved 4 January 2014.
- ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 October 2013. Retrieved 2 October 2013.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ a b c Strand, Richard F. (31 December 2005). "Richard Strand's Nuristân Site: Peoples and Languages of Nuristan". nuristan.info. Archived from the original on 1 April 2019. Retrieved 19 January 2012.
- ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 November 2013. Retrieved 1 May 2011.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ Witzel, Michael (2012). The Origin of the World's Mythologies.
- ^ Witzel, Michael (2005). Vala and Iwato: The Myth of the Hidden Sun in India, Japan, and beyond (PDF).
- ^ Klimburg, M. "Nuristan". Encyclopaedia Iranica.
- ^ Cacopardo, Alberto M. (2016). "Fence of Peristan - The Islamization of the "Kafirs" and Their Domestication". Archivio per l'Antropologia e la Etnologia: 69, 77.
- JSTOR 1790347.
- ^ "Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture" (PDF). nanzan-u.ac.jp.
- ^ Holdich, Thomas Hungerford. The Gates of India. p. 270.
- ^ Majumdar, Dr Ramesh Chandra; Pusalker, Achut Dattatraya; Majumdar, Asoke Kumar. "Tuzak-i-Timuri", in The History and Culture of the Indian People, Vol VI. 1977. p 117.
- ^ Albinia, Alice (2010). Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 225.
- ^ ʻAlī Muḥammad Khān, James Bird. The political and statistical history of Gujarát p. 29
- ^ 'See: Tuzak-i-Timuri, III, pp 400.
- ^ History & Culture of Indian People, Vol VI, p 117, R. C. Majumdar, A. D. Pusalkar, K. M. Munshi.
- ^ Ref: Tuzak-i-Timuri, pp 401-08.
- ^ History & Culture of Indian People, Vol VI, p 117, R. C. Majumdar, A. D. Pusalkar, K. M. Munshi.
- ^ Memoir of William Watts McNair - J. E. Howard, 2003, A Visit to Kafiristan on Internet Archive, Evening Meeting, 10 December 1883, Processing of the Royal Geographical Society .
- .
- ^ Shahzada, Hussam-ul-Mulk. "The Cosmology of the Red Kafirs" (PDF). Beiträge zur Südasienforschung: 26.
- ^ Admin (25 October 2019). "Survey conducted on identity, literacy of Kataviri language". Chitral Today. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
- ^ The Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, 1896, p 74 sqq., George Scott Robertson, Arthur David McCormick.
- ^ Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, 1977 edition, p 127, John Biddulph; An Inquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan, 1891, p 146, Henry Walter Bellew; The Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, 1896, pp 71, 74 sqq., George Scott Robertson, Arthur David McCormick.
- ^ The Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, 1896, pp 74, 76 George Scott Robertson, Arthur David McCormick.
- ^ A passage to Nuristan: exploring the mysterious Afghan hinterland, 2006, p 80, Nicholas Barrington, Joseph T. Kendrick, Reinhard Schlagintweit, Sandy (FRW) Gall.
- ^ The Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, 1896, pp 2,3, 76, George Scott Robertson, Arthur David McCormick - Nuristan.
- ^ Aryan idols: Indo-European mythology as ideology and science, 2006, p 53, fn 109, Stefan Arvidsson, Sonia Wichmann - Social Science.
- ^ See also: Thesaurus craniorum, 1867, p. 137, Joseph Barnard Davis; Afghanistan, 2002, p 8, Martin Ewans.
- ^ Aryan idols: Indo-European mythology as ideology and science, 2006, p 53, Stefan Arvidsson, Sonia Wichmann.
- ^ Appletons' Annual Cyclopædia and Register of Important Events of the Year, 1897, p 8, Published by D. Appleton & Co.
- ^ Cf: The New International Encyclopaedia edited by Daniel Coit Gilman, Harry Thurston Peck, Frank Moore Colby 1911.
- ^ P. 39 Empire of Alexander the Great By Debra Skelton, Pamela Dell
- ^ P. 162 The Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush by Sir George Scott Robertson
- ^ P. 64 War at the top of the world: the struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Tibet By Eric S. Margolis
- ^ Central Asia, 1985, p 118, Published by Area Study Centre (Central Asia), University of Peshawar.
- ^ An Inquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan: Prepared and Presented to the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists (London, September 1891) pp 35, 47, 87, 134, 141, 144, 195, Henry Walter Bellew - Afghanistan.
- ^ H. W. Bellew: "...the Kafir (Infidel) of the Sanskrit Kambojia are said to be Koresh from a people of that name (Kuresh Perian, and Keruch Rajput) known to have anciently inhabited these eastern districts of the Paropamisus of the Greeks" (See: An Inquiry Into the Ethnography of Afghanistan: Prepared and Presented to the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists (London, September 1891), p 195).
- ^ H.W. Bellew: "The name Koresh or Kurush is said to be national designation of Kafir tribes north of Lughman; and it is not impossible that it may have been family name of Cyrus, king of Persia who was born in Cabul country" (See: An Inquiry Into the Ethnography of Afghanistan: Prepared and Presented to the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists (London, September 1891)p 134, Henry Walter Bellew - Afghanistan.
- ^ Cf:The Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, 1896, p 158, George Scott Robertson, Arthur David McCormick; The Cyclopædia of India and of eastern and southern Asia, commercial industrial, and scientific: products of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, useful arts and manufactures, 1885, p 202, Edward Balfour.
- ^ The Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, 1896, p 158, George Scott Robertson, Arthur David McCormick.
- ^ North of Laghman or Lamghan.
- ^ An Inquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan: Prepared and Presented to the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists (London, September 1891), 1891, p 134, Henry Walter Bellew - Afghanistan.
- ^ An Inquiry Into the Ethnography of Afghanistan: Prepared and Presented to the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists (London, September 1891), 1891, p 134, Henry Walter Bellew - Afghanistan.
- ^ The Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, 1896, pp 75, 76, 157, 165, 168, George Scott Robertson, Arthur David McCormick.
- ^ Afghanistan: its people, its society, its culture, 1962, p 50, Donald Newton Wilber, Elizabeth E. Bacon.
- ^ Afghanistan, 2002, p 8, Martin Ewans
- ^ Cf: Afghanistan, 1967, p 58, William Kerr Fraser-Tytler, Michael Cavenagh Gillett.
- ^ Country Survey Series, 1956, p 53, Human Relations Area Files, inc.- Human geography.
- ^ "Richard Strand's Nuristan Site OLD LOCATION". Users.sedona.net. Archived from the original on 22 August 2005. Retrieved 4 June 2016.
- PMID 22470552.
- ^ Burnes, Elexander (1838). "On the Siah-posh Kafirs" (PDF). Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal.
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External links
- Nuristani Tribal Tree – US Naval Postgraduate School Note: this source has been evaluated as "totally unreliable" by the leading scholarly authorities on Nuristan.
- Strand, Richard F. (1997). "Nuristan: Hidden Land of the Hindu Kush".
- Strand, Richard F. (2001). "Peoples and Languages of Nuristân". Archived from the original on 1 April 2019. Retrieved 19 January 2012.
- Strand, Richard F. (1999). "Lexicons of the Hindu-Kush".
- Richard Strand's Nuristân Site: [2]