Kho peopleThe Kho (koʊ, ) or Chitrali people, are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group native to the Chitral District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Gupis-Yasin and Ghizer districts in Gilgit-Baltistan of Pakistan. They speak an Indo-Aryan language called Khowar. The Kho people spread throughout Chitral from the northern part of the region, specifically from the Mulkhow and Torkhow Valley. According to Morgenstierne, the original abode of the Kho was northern Chitral in the valleys around Mastuj.
NuristanisThe Nuristanis, formerly known as Kafiristanis, are an ethnic group native to the Nuristan Province 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 reached an agreement on various frontier areas to the British Empire for period of time, Emir Abdur Rahman Khan conducted a military campaign in Kafiristan and followed up his conquest with forced conversion of the Kafirs to Islam; the region thenceforth being known as Nuristan, the "Land of Light".
Nuristan ProvinceNuristan, also spelled as Nurestan or Nooristan (Dari: ; Kamkata-vari: Nuriston), is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the eastern part of the country. It is divided into seven districts and is Afghanistan's least populous province, with a population of around 167,000. Parun serves as the provincial capital. Nuristan is bordered on the south by Laghman and Kunar provinces, on the north by Badakhshan province, on the west by Panjshir province. The origins of the Nuristani people traces back to the 4th century BC.
Nuristani languagesThe Nuristani languages, also known as Kafiri languages, are one of the three groups within the Indo-Iranian language family, alongside the much larger Indo-Aryan and Iranian groups. They have approximately 130,000 speakers primarily in eastern Afghanistan and a few adjacent valleys in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Chitral District, Pakistan. The region inhabited by the Nuristanis is located in the southern Hindu Kush mountains, and is drained by the Alingar River in the west, the Pech River in the center, and the Landai Sin and Kunar rivers in the east.
Chitral (princely state)Chitral (or Chitrāl) (چترال) was a princely state in alliance with British India until 1947, then a princely state of Pakistan until 14 August 1947. The area of the state now forms the Chitral District of the Malakand Division, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. During the reign of Mehtar Aman ul-Mulk, the dynasty's sway extended from Asmar in the Kunar Valley of Afghanistan to Punial in the Gilgit Valley.
South AsiaSouth Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethnic-cultural terms. As commonly conceptualised, South Asia consists of the countries predominantly Afghanistan Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian subcontinent and defined largely by the Indian Ocean in the south, and the Himalayas, Karakoram, and Pamir mountains in the north. The Amu Darya, which rises north of the Hindu Kush, forms a part of the northwestern border.
Burusho peopleThe Burusho, or Brusho, also known as the Hunzukuch, are an ethnolinguistic group indigenous to the Yasin, Hunza, Nagar, and other valleys of Gilgit–Baltistan in northern Pakistan, with a tiny minority of around 350 Burusho people residing in Jammu and Kashmir, India. Their language, Burushaski, has been classified as a language isolate. Although their origins are unknown, it is claimed that the Burusho people "were indigenous to northwestern India and were pushed higher into the mountains by the movements of the Indo-Aryans, who traveled southward sometime around 1800 B.
KafiristanKāfiristān, or Kāfirstān (کاپیرستان; کافرستان; Land of Infidels), is a historical region that covered present-day Nuristan Province in Afghanistan and its surroundings. This historic region lies on, and mainly comprises, the basins of the rivers Alingar, Pech (Kamah), Landai Sin river and Kunar, and the intervening mountain ranges. It is bounded by the main range of the Hindu Kush on the north, Pakistan's Chitral District to the east, the Kunar Valley in the south and the Alishang River in the west.
Laghman ProvinceLaghman (Dari/Pashto: ) is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the eastern part of the country. It has a population of about 502,148, which is multi-ethnic and mostly a rural society. Laghman hosts a large number of historical landmarks, minarets, monuments, and other cultural relics that are manifestation of its old history and culture. The city of Mihtarlam serves as the capital of the province. In some historical texts the name is written as "Lamghan" or as "Lamghanat".
Durand LineThe Durand Line (د ډیورنډ کرښه; ), forms the Afghanistan–Pakistan border, a international land border between Afghanistan and Pakistan in South Asia. The western end runs to the border with Iran and the eastern end to the border with China. The Durand Line was established in 1893 as the international border between India and the Afghanistan by Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat of the Indian Civil Service, and Abdur Rahman Khan, the Afghan Emir, to fix the limit of their respective spheres of influence and improve diplomatic relations and trade.
