History, society, building, dress, tradition and food: six things that make the province what it is, and where to read more on each.
Until 1896 Nuristan was Kafiristan, and the conquest by Amir Abdur Rahman changed its faith and its name. Much of the rest carried on: the languages, the tiered villages and their carving, the feasting and the archery. The six sections below take each part in turn, with a link to the page that tells it in full.
This page is about the culture; our article on who the Nuristani people are covers where they live, their tribes and their origins.
For a thousand years the valleys were Kafiristan, the land of the unbelievers to their Muslim neighbours, with a religion of many gods, carved wooden shrines and feasts of merit. Amir Abdur Rahman's army took the valleys in the winter of 1895 to 1896, the people were converted to Islam, and the country was renamed Nuristan, the land of light. It first became a province in the 1980s and was enlarged in 1993.
Read the full history of Kafiristan
The village is the unit that matters in Nuristan. Each has its clans, its elders and its council, the jirga, which still settles disputes over land, water and honour. In Kafiristan a man rose by feasting his whole village, and generosity to a guest is still a matter of honour: the guest is fed before the family, and a promise of protection is kept. Traditionally the men keep the herds and take them to the high pastures in summer, while the women farm the terraces.
Who are the Nuristani people? Origins, faith and daily life
Seen from the river, a Nuristani village looks like one building. The houses climb the slope in tiers, each set on the roof of the one below, so that the flat valley floor is left for fields and walnut trees. The walls are dry stone laced with cedar beams, which lets them flex in an earthquake, and the pillars, doors and balconies carry the carving the province is known for.
How the tiered timber villages are built
Men wear the long shirt and loose trousers of eastern Afghanistan, often dark, with white geometric embroidery at the chest and cuffs in the same diamonds and chevrons the carvers cut into house pillars. A woven wool scarf in teal, green or rust is wound once round the neck, and the pakol, which came over the passes from Chitral after 1896, is rolled high. Women's dresses are waisted and collared, which is unusual in Afghanistan, and worked in bright thread on a dark ground.
Nuristani clothing: what men and women wear, photographed in the valleys
Archery with the long wooden bow is still a celebrated pastime, and in Kamdesh contests draw whole villages to the riverbank. Nuristan kept the waj, an arched harp of a kind that disappeared from the rest of Asia long ago, and in Waygal people sing in parts. Many of the old festivals belonged to the religion before 1896, but the dancing at weddings and the feasting that gives a family its standing have carried on.
Nuristani music and dance: the harp, the songs and the old dances
Nuristani food is what a steep valley with a short summer can grow: wheat and maize baked as flat bread, cheese, butter and yoghurt from the herds, and walnuts, mulberries and apricots from the terraces. The honey of the Pech and Waygal valleys is on Slow Food's Ark of Taste, morels come from the forest in spring and trout from the rivers. Meat is kept for guests and weddings and shared from one dish, and green tea is offered at every hour.
Nuristani food: bread and cheese, honey, morels, river trout and the guestOur own photographs: the scarves and pakols described above, archery practice, a cooking fire in Waygal, and the Kantiwa valley under winter snow.
The articles behind this page: sourced, cited and written by people from the province.
The 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 KushKafiristan 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 NuristanNuristan 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 CraftsmenNuristan 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 DancesReady 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.
