Nuristani Peoples Resist Islamic Conversion

1446

In the remote Hindu Kush valleys of what is now eastern Afghanistan, the Nuristani peoples maintained their polytheistic religion against increasing pressure from surrounding Muslim kingdoms and raiding parties. Their carved wooden temples and elaborate ancestor cults would survive another four and a half centuries until the Afghan king Abdur Rahman Khan forcibly converted them in 1896. They were the last pagan holdouts in the greater Central Asian world.