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

Nuristan Province Nuristan, also spelled as Nurestan or Nooristan (Pashto: ; Katë: ), 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, with a ...

, eastern

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

, formed by the

Landai Sin River The Landai Sin River ( ''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 is fed from glacie ...

which empties into the

Kunar River The Chitral River, also known in Afghanistan as the Kunar River, is a long river in northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. It originates from the Chiantar glacier, located at the border of Gilgit Baltistan and Chitral in Pakistan. At A ...

(also called the Chitral River) at

Barikot Barikot () (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 Swat Valley with a po ...

Kamdesh District Kamdesh District (Kamdeish District, , ) is a district of Nuristan Province in eastern Afghanistan,Kamdesh Kāmdēsh (, ), 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 meeting place of two rivers, with one c ...

. 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 fundamentalist revival movement within Sunni Islam, originating in the late 19th century and influential in the Islamic world to this day. The name "''Salafiyya''" is a self-designation, claiming a retur ...

cleric

Mawlawi Afzal Mawlawi (Islamic title), Mawlawi Mohammad Afzal (born – 2012) was a Panjpiri-educated Afghan clergyman of the Kom people (Afghanistan), Kam tribe from Barg-i-Matal, Nuristan Province. He studied in Deoband, and later at Akora, Pakistan, before te ...

founded the

Islamic Revolutionary State of Afghanistan The Islamic Revolutionary State of Afghanistan (), also known as the Islamic Revolutionary State of Nuristan, () was a small Salafist Islamic state located in the north of Bashgal Valley, Nuristan Province. It was founded by Mawlawi Afzal during t ...

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