Guides to the culture, history, languages and crafts of Nuristan, travel advice, and news from the valleys when it matters.
People write to us asking which Afghan gemstones are a good investment. The honest answer is that a few can hold their value and most are hard to sell at a profit. This is what the auction record shows, what the risks are, and how to buy if you still want to. It is general information, not financial advice, and we sell stones, so read it knowing that.
14 articles
Lapis lazuli means, word for word, stone of lazward: the Latin for stone joined to the Persian name of a blue stone from one valley in Afghanistan. That name gave English the word azure. Here is where it comes from, and what the stone has meant to the people who have held it for six thousand years.
Read more: Lapis Lazuli Meaning: Where the Name Comes From, and the Afghan Mine Behind ItSince December 2024 Nuristan's rough kunzite, beryl, morganite and tourmaline have been sold by open auction in Du Ab, Parun and Kamdesh, for sums that now run past 120 million afghanis a sale. What was sold, who bought it, where the money went, and what a buyer abroad should take from it.
Read more: Nuristan's Gemstone Auctions: What the State Sales of 2024 to 2026 Tell BuyersNuristan kept an arched harp of a kind that disappeared from the plains of Asia long ago, and a way of singing in parts that one scholar calls without parallel on the continent. The waj and the other instruments, the songs of Waygal, the dances of the old religion, and where to hear the recordings.
Read more: Nuristani Music and Dance: The Waj Harp, the Songs and the Old DancesNuristan carves its houses, its mosques and its chairs in cedar and walnut, in patterns older than anyone can date. What the horns, wheels and knots meant, who was allowed to sit in a carved chair, what happened to the wooden figures of the dead, and who the carvers were.
Read more: Nuristani Woodcarving: The Patterns, the Chairs and the CraftsmenSome Afghans have blue or green eyes and fair or red hair, and in Nuristan people ask about it more than anything else. How common it really is, what the measurements show, where the genes come from, and why the story about Alexander the Great has never been settled.
Read more: Why Do Some Afghans Have Blue Eyes and Blonde Hair?Kipling's story and John Huston's film are fiction, but the country in them was real. Kafiristan is today's Nuristan. What Kipling took from books, who the supposed real king was, what the story invents about the people, and what happened to the real Kafiristan eight years after it was written.
Read more: Is The Man Who Would Be King a True Story? The Real KafiristanOn 13 July 2008 a five-day-old American outpost at Wanat, the village Nuristanis call Want, was attacked at dawn. Nine American soldiers were killed. Where the village is, why the base was built there, what happened that morning, and what became of the valley afterwards.
Read more: The Battle of Wanat (2008): What Happened in the Waygal ValleyOn 3 October 2009 about 300 fighters attacked Combat Outpost Keating, at the bottom of a valley below Kamdesh in Nuristan. Eight American soldiers were killed in a day-long fight that became the book and film The Outpost. Where the valley is, why a base was built there, what happened, and how true the film is.
Read more: Battle of Kamdesh: COP Keating and the True Story Behind The OutpostThe Nuristanis are a people of a few hundred thousand in the high valleys of eastern Afghanistan, with their own branch of the Indo-Iranian languages and a history apart from every neighbour. Where they come from, what they believe, how they live, and straight answers to the questions people keep asking.
Read more: Who Are the Nuristani People? Origins, Language, Faith and Life in the Hindu KushOn 20 July 2026 a flash flood tore through Parun, the capital of Nuristan, killing at least 23 people and destroying the town's market. What is known, what the valley needs now, and how to help.
Read more: The Nuristan Flood of July 2026: What Happened in Parun, and How to HelpA pakol is the soft, flat-topped wool cap with a rolled brim worn in Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. What the word means, where the hat comes from, who wears it, how it is made, how to roll and wear one, and how to tell a handmade pakol from a factory copy.
Read more: What Is a Pakol? Meaning, Origin and How the Afghan Hat Is MadeNuristan's villages climb the mountainside in steps, each flat roof serving as the yard of the house above, framed in cedar and held together by carved columns. How the houses are built, why they stand where they do, and what the carving means.
Read more: Nuristani Architecture: How the Tiered Timber Villages Are BuiltKafiristan was the mountain country of eastern Afghanistan that is now Nuristan province, a block of high valleys on the southern side of the Hindu Kush between Kabul and Chitral. For a thousand years it was a land of carved wooden gods, wine and great feasts that outlasted every empire around it. Who the Kafirs were, what they believed, how it ended in the winter of 1895, and what survives.
Read more: Kafiristan: The History of Nuristan Before It Was NuristanMost of what makes a visit to Nuristan go well, for you and for the families who take you in, comes down to a few habits. This is what we tell our own guests before they set out, from how to behave in a house to what not to buy.
Read more: Visiting Nuristan Responsibly: How to Be a Good Guest in the ValleysReady to plan a visit, source Nuristani products, or discuss an investment? Your message goes to Obaid, who is from Nuristan, and his team in Afghanistan and the UK. We reply to every message.
