Kafiristan

Kāfiristān or Kāfirstān (Pashto: کافرستان‎) is a historical region that covered present-day Nuristan Province in Afghanistan and its surroundings. This historic region lies on, and mainly comprises, the basins of the rivers Alingar, Pech (Kamah), Landai Sin, and Kunar, and the intervening mountain ranges. It is bounded by the main range of the Hindu Kush on the north, the city of Chitral in what is now Pakistan to the east, the Kunar Valley in the south, and the Alishang River in the west. Kafiristan took its name because the Nuristani inhabitants of the region, who once followed a form of ancient Hinduism, were non-Muslims and were thus known to the surrounding Muslim population as Kafir, meaning "infidel". They are closely related to the Kalash people, a fiercely independent people with a distinctive culture, language and religion.

Kafiristan or Kafirstan is normally taken to mean "land [-stan] of the kafirs" in Persian language, where the name kafir is derived from the Arabic kaafer, literally meaning a person who refuses to accept a principle of any nature and figuratively as a person refusing to accept Islam as his faith and is commonly translated into English as an "infidel" or "unbeliever". Kafiristan was inhabited by people who followed a form of ancient Hinduism, before large numbers were forced into Islam in the 1890s.

...
Wikipedia