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Kafiristan / Nuristan

Kafiristan, which literally means "the land of the infidel," was the name given to a tract of country enclosed between Chitrai and Afghan territory. It was formerly peopled by mountaineers, who maintained a wild independence. The inhabitants were mainly descended from the broken tribes of eastern Afghanistan, who, refusing to accept Islam in the 10th century), were driven away by the fervid swordsmen of Mahomet. In until 1896 they were finally subdued by Abdur Rahman, the amir of Kabul, who also compelled them to accept the religion cf Islam.

Kafiristan was the setting for Rudyard Kipling's short story The Man Who Would Be King (1888) and the movie with the same title starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine. The Man Who Would be King is a classic tale of adventure as the opportunistic, renegade and vagabond pair of Freemasons, Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnahan who decide to head off to Kafiristan in order to become Kings in their own right. According to Dravot, "They have two-and-thirty heathen idols there, and we 'll be the thirty-third and fourth. It's a mountainous country, and the women of those parts are very beautiful." [The elegance with which the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica article on Kafiristan was written suggests the hand of Rudyard Kipling.]

In 2002, the interim Government of Afghanistan created a separate province for the Nuristani peoples, today known as Nuristan. Located deep within the Hindu Kush mountain range, this sparsely-populated area is home to an Indo-European tribal community that speaks five unique languages. The harsh terrain and remote location of the region made it one of the last areas to be converted to Islam; the Nuristanis practiced animism until the late 19th century. The mountainous landscape makes Nuristan’s land difficult to cultivate, and many villagers rely on livestock as their source of livelihood. Furthermore, forests provide economic opportunities for woodworking and crafts. Women are responsible for crop production in Nuristan, while men generally raise livestock.

Kafiristan, as will be gathered from its meaning, was not a geographical term. In the early centuries of the establishment of Islam in these regions the term was applied to a very extensive area held by peoples who refused the new religion, and it included all the inaccessible country on both sides of the Hindu Kush and the Himalaya, as far as Little Tibet or Ladak. Both Badakhshan and Baltistan were included in Kafiristan as late as the middle of the sixteenth century, when Babur founded the Mughal Empire in India. All Yaghistan [unconquered territory], with Swat and Boner, were at the same period included in Kafiristan. By the 19th Century all these countries were professedly Musalman, and the term Kafiristan was then limited to a very restricted and gradually diminishing area on the southern slopes of Hindu Kush, directly to the north of Kabul. All the converted portion of the former Kafiristan to the south of the Himalaya and Hindu Kush, as far as the Pathan limits in Bajaur and Boner, was called collectively Kohistan.

In 1895, by the terms of an agreement entered into between the government of India and the ruler of Afghanistan, the whole of the Kafir territory came nominally under the sway of Kabul. The amir Abdur Rahman at once set about enforcing his authority, and the curtain, partially lifted, fell again heavily and in darkness. Nothing but rumours reached the outside world, rumors of successful invasions, of the wholesale deportation of boys to Kabul for instruction in the religion of Islam, of rebellions, of terrible repressions. Finally even rumor ceased. A powerful Asiatic ruler has the means of ensuring a silence which is absolute, and nothing is ever known from Kabul except what the amir wishes to be known.

Before their conquest by Abdur Rahman all the Kafirs were idolaters of a rather low type. There were lingering traces of ancestor worship, and perhaps of fire-worship also. The gods were numerous; tribal, family, household deities had to be propitiated, and mischievous spirits and fairies haunted forests, rivers, vales and great stones. Imra was the Creator, and all the other supernatural powers were subordinate to him. Of the inferior gods, Moni seemed to be the most ancient; but Gish, the war-god, was by far the most popular. It was his worship, doubtless, which kept the Kafirs so long independent. In life as a hero, and after death as a god, he symbolized hatred to the religion of Mahomet. The ministers of religion were a hereditary priest, a well-born chanter of praise, and a buffoon of low station, who was supposed to become inspired at each sacrifice, and to have the power of seeing fairies and other spirits whenever they were near, also of understanding their wishes. There was no human sacrifice except when a prisoner of war, after a solemn service at a shrine, was taken away and stabbed before the wooden tomb of some unavenged headman.

Very little of this country was known with accuracy and nothing at first hand until General Sir W. (then Colonel) Lockhart headed a mission to examine the passes of the Hindu Kush range in 1885-1S86. He penetrated into the upper part of the Bashgal valley, but after a few days he found himself compelled to return to Chitrai. Previously Major Tanner, R.A., had sought to enter Kanrisian from Jalalabad, but sudden severe illness cut short his enterprise.

Speaking generally, the country consists of an irregular series of main valleys, for the most part deep, narrow and tortuous. into which a varying number of still deeper, narrower and more twisted valleys, ravines and glens pour their torrent water. The mountain range of Metamorpnic rock, which separate the main drainage valleys, are all of considerable altitude, rugged and difficult, with the outline of a choppy sea petrified. During the winter months, when the snow lies deep, Kafiristan becomes a number of isolated communities, with few if any means of intercommunication.

The old division of the tribes into the Siah-Posh, or the black-robed Kafirs, and the Safed-Posh, or the white-robed, was neither scientific nor convenient, for while the Siah-Posh had much in common in dress, language, customs and appearance, the Safed-Posh divisions were not more dissimilar from the Siah-Posh than they were from one another. Perhaps the best division was into (1) Siah-Posh, (2) Waigulis, and (3) Presungalis or Viron folk. The black-robed Kafirs consisted of one very large, widely spread tribe, the Katirs, and four much smaller communities, the Kam, the Madugalis, the Kashtan or Kashtoz, and the Gourdesh.

At the time of their forcible conversion to Islam, little respect was shown to women, except in particular cases to a few of advanced years. Usually they were mistresses and slaves, saleable chattels and field-workers. Degraded, immoral, women overworked and carelessly fed, they were also, as a rule, unpleasant to the sight. Little girls were sometimes quite beautiful, but rough usage and exposure to all weathers soon made their complexions coarse and dark. They were invariably dirty and uncombed. In comparison with the men they were somewhat short. Physically they were capable of enormous labour, and were very enduring. All the field-work fell to them, as well as all kinds of inferior occupations, such as load-carrying. They had no rights as against their husbands or, failing them, their male relations. They could not inherit or possess property.

The great majority of the tribes were made up of clans. A person's importance was derived chiefly from the wealth of his family and the number of male adults which it contained. The power of a family, as shown by the number and quality of its fighting men as well as by the strength of its followers, was the index of that family's influence. Weak clans and detached families, or poor but free households, carried their independence modestly. The lowest clan above the slaves sought service with their wealthier tribesmen as henchmen and armed shepherds.

By intricate ceremonial, associated with complicated duties, social and religious, which extended over two years, punctuated at intervals by prodigious compulsory banquets, rich men could become elders or jast. Still further outlay and ostentation enabled the few who could sustain the cost to rank still higher as chief or Mir. Theoretically, all the important and outside affairs of the tribe were managed by the jast in council; actually they were controlled by two or three of the most respected of that class.

Very serious questions which inflamed the minds of the people would be debated in informal parliaments of the whole tribe. Kafirs have a remarkable fondness for discussing in conclave. Orators, consequently, were influential. The internal business of a tribe was managed by an elected magistrate with twelve assistants. It was their duty to see that the customs of the people were respected; that the proper seasons for gathering fruit were rigidly observed. They regulated the irrigation of the fields, moderating the incessant quarrels which originated in the competition for the water; and they kept the channels in good repair. Their chief, helped by contributions in kind from all householders, entertained tribal guests. He also saw that the weekly Kafir Sabbath, from the sowinfe to the carrying of the crops, was carefully observed, the fires kept burning, and the dancers collected and encouraged. Opposition to these annual magistrates or infraction of tribal laws was punished by fines, which were the perquisites and the payment of those officials. Serious offences against the whole people were judged by the community itself; the sentences ranged as high as expulsion from the settlement, accompanied with the burning of the culprit's house and the spoliation of his goods. In such cases, the family and the clan refusing to intervene, the offender at once became cowed into submission.

Their moral charateristics were said to be passionate covetousncss, and jealousy that smothers prudence. Before finally destroying, it endangered their wildly cherished independence. Revenge, especially on neighbouring Kafirs, was obtained at any price. Kafirs were said to be subtle, crafty, quick in danger and resolute, as might be expected of people who had been plunderers and assassins for centuries, whose lives were the forfeit of a fault in unflinchingness or of a moment's vacillation. Stealthy daring, born of wary and healthy nerves and the training of generations, almost transformed into an instinct, was said to be the national characteristic. Ghastly shadows, they flitted in the precincts of hostile villages far distant from their owa valleys, living upon the poorest food carried in a fetid goat skin bag; ever ready to stab in the darkness or to wriggle through apertures, to slay men, women and babies as they slept. Then, with clothing for prize, and human ears as a trophy, they sped, watchful as hares, for their far-away hills, avenger Pathans racing furiously in their track. Kafirs, most faithful to one another, never abandoned a comrade.