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Nurestan Province (also spelled Nuristan) is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. It was formed in 2001 from the northern parts of Laghman province and Konar province.
Located on the southern slopes of the Hindu Kush mountains in the northeastern part of the country, Nurestan spans the basins of the Alingâr, Pech, Landai Sin, and Kunar rivers. It's capital is Nurestan. It is bordered on the north by Badakhshan province, on the west by Kapisa province, on the south by Laghman and Konar provinces, and on the east by Pakistan.
Until the 1890s, the region was known as Kafiristan (Persian: Land of the Infidels) because of its inhabitants: the Nuristani, an ethnically distinctive people (numbering about 60,000) who practiced animism. The region was conquered by Amir Abdur Rahman Khan in 1895-96 and the Nuristani were forcibly converted to Islam. The region was renamed Nurestan, meaning Land of the Enlightened, a reflection of the "enlightening" of the pagan Nuristani by the "light" of Islam.
Nurestan was the scene of some of the heaviest guerrilla fighting during the 1979-89 invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by Soviet forces.
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