The Landai Sin Valley, or the Bashgal Valley, is a geographical feature of

Nuristan Province Nuristan, also spelled as Nurestan or Nooristan (Dari: ; Kamkata-vari: ), 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, wi ...

, eastern

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

, formed by the

Landai Sin River The Landai Sin River ( ps, لنډی سين ''Lanḍai Sīn'', "Short River"), also called the Bashgal River (), is located in eastern Afghanistan. It rises in the Hindu Kush range near the Mandol Pass in the Nuristan Province of Afghanistan, and ...

which empties into the

Kunar River The Kūnaṛ River ( ps, د کونړ سيند), also known in its upper reaches as the Mastuj ( ps, مستوج سين), Chitral ( khw, کونڑ سين; ur, دریائے کونڑ), or Kama River ( khw, کامې سين), is about long, located ...

(also called the Chitral River) at

Barikot Barikot ( ur, بریکوٹ‎) (Pashto: بریکوټ) is a town located in the middle course of the Swat River in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. It is located about away from Mingora and the Butkara Stupa. It is the entrance town to the central S ...

Kamdesh District Kamdesh District (Kamdeish District, ps, کامدېش ولسوالۍ, fa, ولسوالی کامدیش) is a district of Nuristan Province in eastern Afghanistan,

in Nuristan, Afghanistan. The largest town in the valley is

Kamdesh Kāmdēsh ( ps, کامدېش, fa, کامدیش), or Kamdeish, is a town in the Landai Sin Valley, and the center of the Kamdesh District in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan. It is located at the general area of Yurmir () which is beside the meetin ...

. The lower Bashgal Valley is inhabited by the Kom people.

History

During the period of British influence in the 19th century, the Landai Sin Valley was considered part of Chitral State. In the 1980s,

Salafist The Salafi movement or Salafism () is a reform branch movement within Sunni Islam that originated during the nineteenth century. The name refers to advocacy of a return to the traditions of the "pious predecessors" (), the first three generati ...

cleric

Mawlawi Afzal Mawlawi Mohammad Afzal (born – 2012) was a Panjpiri-educated Afghan clergyman of the Kam tribe from Barg-i-Matal, Nuristan Province. He studied in Deoband, and later at Akora, Pakistan, before teaching at a madrassa in Karachi, and then in hi ...

founded the

Islamic Revolutionary State of Afghanistan The Islamic Revolutionary State of Afghanistan ( fa, دولت انقلابی اسلامی افغانستان) was a small Salafist Islamic state located in the north of Bashgal Valley, Nuristan Province. It was founded by Mawlawi Afzal during the n ...

in Landai Sin, which established consulates in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.*Robert D. Crews, Amin Tarzi. ''The Taliban and the crisis of Afghanistan''. Harvard University Press, 2008. , 9780674026902. Pg 338.

References

Landforms of Nuristan Province Valleys of Afghanistan {{Nuristan-geo-stub