Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/855

KAFI-KISTAN 821 retracted north of the same line above Laghman. Indeed Kafir villages, though now deserted, exist within Darah Nur, only 20 miles from Jalalabad. It is believed that the Kafir settlements on some points also pass to the north of Hindu Kush. Tribes of Kafir kindred, subdued and converted by the Mahometans in comparatively recent times are known as Nt/ncha, or " half-and-half." Many of these are on good terms with the Kafirs, and trade is carried on through their mediation. A most interesting account by Lieutenant- Colonel Tanner, of some tribes of this class, will be found in the Proc. Roy. Geoff. Soc. quoted below. The most important portion of the Kafir tribes apparently occupies the valleys which drain (by the Pech river) into the Kuner or Chitral river, below Chaghanserai, in about 34 49 N. lat. The most easterly occupy the valley running south from the Dorah Pass, and joining the same river at Birkot, about 35 15 N. lat. Others are on the headwaters of the Alingar and Alishang rivers, which join in Laghman, and the most westerly on the sources of the river of Tagao. Surrounded by people professing Islam and cherishing slavery, the Kafirs are naturally objects of kidnapping incursions, and these they revenge by sallies from their mountain fastnesses to plunder and kill. Wood, in 1838, found the valley of the Upper Kokcha in Badakhshan deserted on account of Kafir forays. The Lahori Pass from Dir into Chitral was within recent years so beset by Kafir robbers that many Mussulman wayfarers were annually killed, whose graves were marked by cairns and flags, and designated "The Tombs of the Martyrs." Hundreds of those dismal memorials lined the road and damped the traveller s spirits. Raverty mentions a savage invasion of Kafiristan made some thirty years ago by the chief of Bajaur from the south-east, in which villages were sacked and burnt, and the people carried off and sold. Faiz Bakhsh speaks of a like invasion from the north in 1870 by the prince of Badakhshan, which penetrated by the Dozakh Darah or " Hell-glen " to Kator (which he calls the Kafir capital), bringing back a large number of captives, whom he saw at Faizabad. Whatever difficulty from within prevents the exploration of the Kafir country is due apparently to this atrocious treatment at the hands of their Moslem neighbours. But the Kafir wars are far from being all external. Some of the tribes wage war with one another, so constant and deadly that Biddulph says their fights with their Mussulman neighbours are comparatively desultory and harmless. Kafirs are said, however, never to kill men of their own village. The country is, as far as can be gathered, a land of lofty mountains, dizzy paths, and Lair-rope bridges swinging over torrents, of narrow valleys laboriously terraced, but of wine, milk, and honey rather than of agriculture; the valleys on the eastern side, however, are described as thickly wooded and very fertile. Though table-lands are spoken of, arable land is scanty. Over the greater part of the country the winter is severe ; hence the people depend much on dairy-produce, and consume vast quantities of cheese and curd, besides meat, and fruit, fresh or dried. The hill country of the Kafirs, and of kindred races long continu ing in paganism, which extended from the north of Cabul to the borders of Kashmir, was known to mediaeval Asiatics, more or less loosely, as Bilaur, a name of ancient origin, which we find in Marco Polo as Bolor. Pashai also, from the name of one of those races now Mussulman, seems to have had a vague application to part of this region ; this name also occurs both in Marco Polo and in Ibn Batata. Kator likewise has sometimes received a like vague extension. The first distinct 7iiention of Kafirs as a separate race seems to be in the history of Timur. When that prince, in March 1398, arrived at Andarab on his way to invade India, lie was met with a cry for help against the Kator and Siah-posh (or "black-clothed ") Kafirs ; and he entered the country of the Kator from the upper part of the Panjhir valley. It was still winter in the highlands, and the difficulties were great. Timur himself was let down the snows by glissade in a basket guided by ropes. The chief of the Kafirs was called the ruler of Kator, a title which is possibly pre served in the title of the king of Chitral (see KASHKAK), besides surviving in the name of one of the greater Kafir tribes. Timur distinguishes between Kator and Siah-posh ; for he speaks of detaching 10,000 horse against the Siah-posh country, which lay to the left, therefore, it would seem, to the north of the country entered by him. This detachment met with great disaster. Timur himself claims decided success, but probably found the country quite impracticable, for he speedily emerged again at Khawak. He speaks of the abundant fruit trees, of the wine, of the language "distinct from Turki, Persian, Hindi, and Kashmiri," of the weapons as arrows, swords, and slings. The ruler was styled AddlsM, his residence Jorkal, and another large place Shokal. Timor caused an inscription to be cut in the defiles of Kator record ing his invasion and its route. Masson tells us that in the Kafir country, on the Najil or Alishang river, there is a structure, still known as Timur s castle. Weliear of the Kafirs again in the Memoirs of Baber, of their raids in Panjhir, of their wine and fondness for it, every man carrying slung round his neck a khig or leathern bottle. The ^ occasional mentions of the Kafirs in the Ain-i-Akbari seem borrowed from Baber, bat this work contains another passage (Gladwin s translation, 1784, ii. 195) which, probably originated a story about the Kafirs descent from Greeks, hot yet quite obsolete in Europe. In fact, however, the passage does not appear to refer to the " Kafirs " at all, but to the claim to descent from Alexander of the princes reigning in Swat before the present Yuzufzai, a claim remarkable enough in itself, and maintained by many other princes of the hill states north of Hindu Kush. Again, Benedict Goes, travelling from Peshawar to Cabul in 1603, heard of a city (or country) called Cappcrstam, into which no Mahometan might enter on pain of death. Hindu traders might enter, though not into the temples. The people were said never themselves to enter their temples except in black dresses. The country abounded in grapes ; the natives drank wine, of which Goes tasted ; and all this was so strange tlvat he suspected the people might be Christians. Little or nothing is heard of the Kafirs after this till the publication of Rennell s Memoir of Map of Hindostan (1788), followed twenty-six years later by Elphiiistoiie s Caubul, in which a considerable amount of substantial information regarding the Kafirs was given by that admirable writer, of whom the Afghans believed, and with justice, that he had a telescope with which he could see what passed on the other side of a mountain. The most favourable opportunity ever offered for the exploration of Kafiristan was during the British occupation of Cabul in 1839-40; and a Kafir deputation invited a risit from those whom they had been led to regard as kindred. But they were coldly received, owing to the great jealousy of such intercourse shown by the Afghans. Colonel Tanner of the Artillery made a spirited attempt to reach the country from Jalalabad in 1879, and spent some time among the Mahometans of Darah Nur, whose language and customs indicate affinity to their heathen neighbours. But he was carried away dangerously ill, on the very day when a Kafir party arrived at the village to escort him into their country. Similar invitations were brought to Major Biddulph in Chitral in 1878. This officer was unable to avail himself of these, but he had unusual opportunities of seeing and gaining information about the people, and his chapter on the Sidh-posh is the most authentic account yet available. But there are no doubt local differences, and we must not assume that to be untrue which varies from Biddulph s statements. The Kafirs are in fact only an aggregation of tribes, probably belonging to one general race, but whose present close juxtaposition is the result of various accidents and invasions which have driven them, in part at least, from the lower countries, and concentrated them in this highland region. They have themselves vague stories to this effect, and (like the Karens of Burmah) one that they formerly possessed writing. Elphinstone heard a Kafir story that brought them from Kandahar. This may have been a dim tradition, not of the place now so called, but of the Kandahar of the older Arab geographers, Gandaritis of Ptolemy, and Gandhdra of the Hindu books, viz., the region