Posted on: 28 January 2012

'Kaffir, Kabul', 1836, by Godfrey Thomas Vigne FRGS
Watercolour

A Personal Narrative of a Visit to Ghuzni, Kabul, And Afghanistan ..., 1840 , p.384, wood engraving. The Siyahposh were a division of the Kafirs. On the Kafirs, see Vigne, pp.234-9.

- "Kafiristan or Kafirstan was a historic name of Nurestan (Nuristan), a province in the Hindukush region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Kafiristan takes its name from the inhabitants, the Kafirs, a fiercely independent people with distinctive culture, language and religion. In 1896 the country was conquered and forcibly converted to Islam by the Emir Abdur Rahman Khan, who renamed the people as Nuristani ("Enlightened Ones" in Persian) and the land as Nuristan ("Land of the Enlightened"). Kafirstan means "Land of the infidels" in the Persian. It has been claimed that "Kafir" comes from the Arabic kafir, translated as "those that reject Islam."

Source: V&A, London


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I have Vigne's book, as also Surgeon-Major Sir George S Robertson's classic account "The Kafirs of the Hindu Kush".

The Hindu Kush flowed red from the enslaved kafirs - three possibilities - embrace, submit, die.

Is it possible to read this online?

Will post it soon!

There is a group on facebook engaged in preservation of these people and working towards getting their areas recogonized as UNESCO site so that their identity can be preserved and these people who have existed for some millenia in their own identity are not converted forcibly to Islam ,http://www.facebook.com/groups/174053042611694/

thank you Gurpreet Singh Anand-we did Contact Rare Book society of India Offering Our Archives where you also Have Been Contributing since a few Years,,GRATEFULLY Admired your Concern-