Nuristanis

The Nuristanis are an Indo-Iranian ethnic group native to the Nuristan Province (formerly Kafiristan) of northeastern Afghanistan and Chitral District of northwestern Pakistan. Their languages comprise the Nuristani branch of Indo-Iranian languages.

In the mid-1890s, after the establishment of the Durand Line when Afghanistan and the British Indian Empire reached an agreement regarding the Indo-Afghan border as the region of Kafiristan became part of the Great Game and for a period of time, Emir Abdur Rahman Khan conducted a military campaign to secure the eastern regions and followed up his conquest by imposition of Islam; the region thenceforth being known as Nuristan, the "Land of Light". Before their conversion, the Nuristanis practised an Indo-Iranian (Vedic- or Hindu-like) religion. Non-Muslim religious practices endure in Nuristan today to some degree as folk customs. In their native rural areas, they are often farmers, herders, and dairymen.

The Nuristan region has been a prominent location for war, which has led to the death of many indigenous Nuristanis. Nuristan has also received abundance of settlers from the surrounding Afghan regions due to the borderline vacant location.

The Nuristanis practised what authors consider as a form of animism and ancestor worship with elements of Indo-Iranian (Vedic- or Hindu-like) 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.

They acknowledged a number of human-like deities who lived in the unseen Deity World (Kâmviri d'e lu; cf. Sanskrit deva lok'a-).

However, recent research by Jakob Halfmann shows that the pre-Islamic Nuristani religion was heavily influenced by local accretions of Hinduism, evidenced in most theonyms being loanwords from Indo-Aryan.

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. The names of multiple Nuristani deities resembled those of Iranian and old Vedic sources.