Conquest of Kafiristan

Conquest of Kafiristan
Date December 1895 – February 1896 Location Kafiristan, Afghanistan (modern-day Nuristan Province) Result Afghan victory Territorial changes Kafiristan incorporated into the Emirate of Afghanistan and renamed to Nuristan
Belligerents
Emirate of Afghanistan	Kafiristan
Commanders and leaders
Abdur Rahman Khan Mohammad Ali Khan Ghulam Haidar Khan Charkhi General Katal Khan Fayz Mohammad Charkhi	No centralised leadership
Strength
Unknown	Unknown
Casualties and losses
Unknown	Heavy Many executed or displaced

In the winter of 1895, Emir Abdur Rahman Khan conquered Kafiristan as part of his campaign to consolidate Afghan territorial control. The region was later renamed "Nuristan (Land of Light)" to reflect the population's conversion to Islam. Pre-Islamic shrines, idols, and ritual structures were destroyed, and religious leaders were either executed, marginalised, or co-opted. ^[1]

Background

Map of Kafiristan prior to its conversion to Islam in 1896

George Scott Robertson, medical officer during the Second Anglo-Afghan War and later British political officer in the princely state of Chitral, was given permission to explore the country of the Kafirs in 1890–91. He was the last outsider to visit the area and observe these people's polytheistic culture before their conversion to Islam. Robertson's 1896 account was entitled The Kafirs of the Hindu Kush. Though some sub-groups such as the Kom paid tribute to Chitral, the majority of Kafiristan was left on the Afghan side of the frontier in 1893, when large areas of tribal lands between Afghanistan and British India were divided into zones of control by the Durand Line.

The territory between Afghanistan and British India was demarcated between 1894 and 1896. Part of the frontier lying between Nawa Kotal in the outskirts of Mohmand country and Bashgal Valley on the outskirts of Kafiristan was demarcated by 1895 in an agreement reached on 9 April 1895. ^[2] Emir Abdur Rahman Khan wanted to force every community and tribal confederation to accept his single interpretation of Islam due to it being the only uniting factor. After the subjugation of Hazaras, Kafiristan was the last remaining autonomous part. ^[3]

Conquest

Abdur Rahman Khan's forces invaded Kafiristan in the winter of 1895–96 and captured it in 40 days according to his autobiography. Columns invaded it from the west through Panjshir to Kullum, the strongest fort of the region. The columns from the north came through Badakhshan and from the east through Asmar. A small column also came from south-west through Laghman. The Kafirs were resettled in Laghman while the region was settled by veteran soldiers and other Afghans. ^[4] The Kafirs were converted and some also converted to avoid the jizya . ^[3]

A few years after Robertson's visit, in 1895–96, Abdur Rahman Khan invaded and converted the Kafirs to Islam as a symbolic climax to his campaigns to bring the country under a centralised Afghan government. He had similarly subjugated the Hazara people in 1892–93. In 1896 Abdur Rahman Khan, who had thus conquered the region for Islam, ^[5] renamed the people the Nuristani ("Enlightened Ones" in Persian) and the land as Nuristan ("Land of the Enlightened").

The region was invaded by forces of Afghan Amir Abdur Rahman Khan in 1896 and most of the people were converted either by force or did so to avoid the jizya : ^[3]

References

1. Gregorian, Vartan (1969). The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan: Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880–1946. Stanford University Press. pp. 132–138, 212–216.
2. Vasily Bartold (17 October 2013). A Historical Geography of Iran. Princeton University Press. p. 85. ISBN   9781107662094.
3. Green, Nile (2017). Afghanistan's Islam: From Conversion to the Taliban. University of California Press. pp. 142–143. ISBN   9780520294134.
4. Sykes, Percy (10 July 2014). A History of Afghanistan: Volumes 1 and 2. Vol. 1. Routledge. p. 195. ISBN   9781317845874.
5. Tanner, Stephen (2002). Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban. Cambridge: MA: Da Capo Press. p. 64.