Native Names: kât'a, k'om, mum'o, kSt'o, bini'o, jâmc'o, and jâš'i, all speaking dialects of a single language.
Other Names: kântozi, kâmozi, kuštozi (Pashto names), "Katir", "Kam" (Robertson [1896]), "Bashgali" (from Khowar bašgali 'Nuristani; person from bašgal [the lanDai sin Valley]').
Location: the kt'ivi (Kântivâ) Valley in central Nuristân, the řâmg'al and kul'em Valleys of upper Laghmân (western Nuristân), the lânDâi s'in Valley of eastern Nuristân, some tributary valleys of the kun'ař (Kunar) River in Afghanistan, and pockets along the Afghanistan border in Chitrâl District, Pakistan.
Population: perhaps 40,000 – 60,000 for all ethnic groups.
Settlements:
Multi-Ethnic Language Name: kâmk'ata-viri or kâmk'ata-mumkSt'a-viri, terms coined (in the Kâmviri dialect) to encompass the dialects of the different ethnic groups. Non-indigenous names include "Bashgali" (from Khowar) and "Kati" (Morgenstierne 1926).
Linguistic Position of Kâmk'ata-viri: Kâmk'ata-viri forms with Vâs'i-vari the Northern
Group of Nuristâni languages (see the Table of Languages). A major
dialect division separates the kom, who speak kâmv'iri, from the kât'a, who
speak kât'a-vari. Within kât'a-vari there is a division between Western
kât'a-vari, spoken in kt'ivi and řâmg'al, and Eastern kât'a-vari, spoken in the
LanDai Sin Valley (except in the village of p'eřuk, where they speak the řâmg'al dialect).
The dialects of kt'ivi and řâmg'al are separated by minor differences. The
mum'o speak an essentially Eastern kât'a-vari dialect that incorporates features of
kâmv'iri. The kSt'o, bini'o, jâmc'o, and jâš'i speak the kâmv'iri
dialect. Being somewhat isolated, speakers on the Pakistan side of the boundary diverge slightly from
the dialectal norms of their more numerous cousins in Afghanistan.
Fârsi (Persian) from the neighboring Panjshir Valley has displaced kât'a-vari in
the villages of kiv'iST, bas'aidar, âć'agar, and guln'aSo in řâmg'al,
and Pashto has displaced kâmv'iri in the villages of p'âšaŋar, gâN'ür,
ćün'uk, š'âŋir, šâl'ikuT, and mâC'iamon in kun'ař.
History: After fleeing the Afghân takeover of their ancient lands around the confluence of the Kâbul and Kunar Rivers, the ancestors of the Kâta, Mumo, KSto, and Binio settled a single region: the Ktivi Valley and the area of its confluence with the Pârun Valley. There they encountered the autochthonous Jâši people, whom they displaced. Later, apparently, the Kom arrived at kâm'aTol (‘Kom Cliff') in the Kâmgal Valley south of Ktivi by a more circuitous route through Řâmgal. Their later arrival may account for their being branded as outsiders by their neighbors, who claim a common origin for themselves.
Some popular accounts of the origins of these peoples assert that they were Arabs who adopted the Jâši language when they settled in Ktivi. Such accounts were perpetrated by Muslim clerics eager to incorporate the pre-Islamic Nuristânis into the brotherhood of Islam. Claims of Arabic origins conflict with traditional accounts of Nuristâni origins and must be recognized as historical revisionism.
Popular accounts also raise the question of the relationship of the language of the Jâši people to the language of the Kâta and Kom. Such accounts assert that the latter peoples adopted the Jâši language after they entered Nuristân, and that they used to call their language jâšv'iri ‘Jâši Language'. If the Kâta and Kom had indeed adopted the Jâši language, we would have to infer that the Jâši spoke a Nuristâni language; but such an inference does not accord well with popular accounts of the Jâšis' origin.
By such accounts, the Jâši are considered to be descendants of Alexander the Great's army, with their name derived from Arabic "jaš" ‘army' (properly jaiš, from the root *jyš ‘be agitated'). This account is viewed by local intellectuals as apocryphal; why should alleged Greeks call themselves by a name taken from Arabic centuries later, and from whom would such Greeks have adopted a Nuristâni language? Furthermore, descent from Alexander's army is attributed in often conflicting popular accounts to other groups in the region, including the Vâsi, the people of the bâr'i caste, and the Kalasha of Chitral, and one suspects that such attribution is merely a romantic way of accounting for otherwise uncertain origins.
Other accounts assert through the similarity of names that the Jâši are related to the Pashto-speaking Jâji tribe of the province of Paktiâ to the south. Such a view probably arises from the Kâmviri voiced pronunciation of the palatal spirant š intervocalically, which some speakers have confused with j. The more conservative Kâtaviri pronunciation shows no such voicing, and it is improbable that a š and a j would have been phonetically confused in earlier times.The š in the name jâši does imply a non-Nuristâni source; if the name were "true" Nuristâni, we would expect from the historical sequence of sound changes a ć rather than a š. If the Jâši were originally outside the Nuristâni linguistic community, as the popular accounts seem to indicate, then they could not have supplied a Nuristâni language to the Kâta and Kom. More likely the Jâši were originally an Indo-Aryan-speaking group, just like the other peoples of the region before the Nuristânis sought refuge there. After the Kom and Kâta occupied Jâši territory, they coined the epithet jâšv'iri to refer to their own language, and the Jâši ultimately adopted the language of the Nuristâni-speaking invaders.
For a native view of the history of the Kom and the Jâši, see the text on Kom history.
Today the Jâši and all the peoples of Nuristân who emanated from the Ktivi region, including the Kâta from Ktivi proper, the KSto from Kust, the Mumo from Mum, the Binio from Buni, and the Kom from KâmaTol, speak one language, albeit with dialectal divisions. These divisions were furthered as the people emigrated out from their upper Pech homeland.
At the outset, most likely, the Jâši occupied the highlands above the confluence of the Nicingal and LanDai Sin Valleys at the site of the present Kom town of Kombřom (Kâmdesh), as well as other unspecified sites up and down the LanDai Sin Valley. It is uncertain whether they were exiled there from the upper Pech region as a result of the Kâtas' arrival or were already dispersed throughout central and eastern Nuristân.
Probably the next to emigrate were those Kâta who moved to the upper Landai Sin Valley. They alone maintain present tense verbal stems in -ta-, which is the regular phonetic development in Kâmkataviri of the ancient present participal ending -nta-, with loss of nasal before a voiceless stop. The remaining groups later adopted an Indo-Aryan form of this participial base, -nda-, with voicing of the postnasal consonant, perhaps from the south via ÂSkuNu; later this ending became -na- through the normal Kâmkataviri development of nd to n.
Subsequently, the peoples of Buni, Kust, and Mum may have migrated to the middle LanDai Sin Valley around its confluence with the Nicingal Valley. The Binio from Buni occupied the highlands on the LanDai Sin side of the watershed, and the KSto from Kust occuped the Nicingal side and the lowlands along the LanDai Sin downriver from the confluence. The Mumo from Mum occupied the region above the confluence. The inhabitants of cetrâs, a community at the first bend of the Pârun River, reportedly migrated to the Bumboret Valley in Chitral. These people may have been related to the Mumo, as evidenced by the local names for that valley: Kâmkataviri mum'aret, KalaSa-mun mumur'et ("Bumboret" is a Khowar [Chitrali] corruption). Today Cetrâs, Kust, and Buni fall within Vai and SaNu territory.
The remaining Kâta population of Ktivi expanded to the west into the Kulem and Řâmgal Valleys.
The migrations of these groups were probably driven by the usual processes of social fission in the region: exile resulting from murder or incest-taboo violations, and pressure to find new pasturelands resulting from economic competition and population growth.
With the lack of better accounts, any chronology of these migrations is speculative. The order given above is inferred on a principle of "first gets best," which assumes that the most recently arrived group appropriates the most desirable land available. A ranking of groups according to the desirability of their territory would indicate the order of their arrival, providing no group expropriated another's land.
Nuristânis classifiy land by use: they must have flat areas (tul) that they can cultivate and mountain pastures (so˜) to feed their livestock in the summer. Low-lying land that supports livestock in the winter (Sor) is desirable; areas without Sor require stockowners to stall feed their animals during winter. A group's territory is thus more valuable if it has both so˜ and Sor. Grazing land being equal, value is proportional to the agricultural output of the territory's tul.
It appears that Sor in the homelands of Ktivi and Mum was lacking, while the communities of Kust and Buni commanded marginal Sor. Each of these groups apparently occupied ecological niches simliar to those that they left, so that in eastern Nuristân the Kâta and Mumo lacked Sor, the Binios' Sor was marginal, but the KSto and the Jâši had it downriver along the LanDai Sin.
Making up for their lack of Sor, the Kâta occupied the most tul, dispersed among several villages along the LanDai Sin. Kâtagal, as this area is called, supported some 6000 persons in 1970, in a territory greatly expanded since their initial entry into the area. The Mumos' tul in 1970, around the villages of mum'ořm, mâNg'ül, and sâsk'ü˜, supported a population of perhaps 700. Of these two groups, we would infer that the Kâta beat the Mumo to the best land.
Of the groups that had Sor, the Jâši occupied the best contiguous tul in the area, around the present site of Kombřom. This land supported a population in 1970 of around 2000 persons. The KSto had the next best tul, along the Nicingal and LanDai Sin Rivers, encompassing what are today the villages of kStořm, âg'uru, ürm'ür, mer'ořm, and kâm'u. In 1970 the land around these villages supported a combined population of about 900 persons. The Binio had an allotment of perhaps a third of the tul currently around Kombřom, on the LanDai Sin side of the watershed. Although the Binio have been reduced to only about twenty households today, their former land could have supported some 500 persons. Of these groups we would infer that the Jâši got the best land first, followed by the KSto, followed by the Binio.
The Kom, who had been harassing their neighbors with raids and demands of tribute, arrived later at their present site of k'ombřom, after the aggrieved neighbors summarily drove them out of KâmaTol. The story is told, both among the Kom and among the people of central Nuristân, that a young woman from Ktivi, married to a man from SaNu, set out from that village to show off her new baby to her father back home. As she passed the entrance to the Kâmgal Valley, some Kom men accosted her, killed her baby, and spirited her off to their home in KâmaTol, where she was held prisioner. Taking pity on her, a bâr'i (lower caste artisan-slave) of the Kom helped her escape, and she arrived home in Ktivi to tell her blind old father what had befallen her. He was so outraged that he induced the people of Ktivi, SaNu, Jâmac, and Amešdeš to rid their area of the Kom scourge. They attacked KâmaTol during a Kom festival, when the inhabitants were stupefied after days of drinking, and killed everyone there. Only a few score people, who had been tending their flocks in the outlying pastures, escaped.
The escapees fled east to the Landai Sin Valley, settling at the site of the present village of sâsk'ü˜. A misfortunate omen rendered that site unsuitable, so they set their eyes on the level ground of Clay Ridge, high above the confluence of the Landai Sin and the Nicingal Rivers. The Jâši population of that spot, intimidated by the approaching Kom, retreated down the valley to the side valleys of Pitigal and UštroT, where they remain today, encapsulated in Kom territory. The Binio were likewise encapsulated within Kom territory in their small village of Binořm. The Kom maintained generally hostile relations with the Kâta, KSto, Mumo, and SaNu.
In the succeeding centuries the Kom fought a series of wars with the KSto, leaving them until quite recently with only the land around their separated settlements of KStořm and Dungal. The ninth war (if that was indeed the proper count, or merely an auspicious number) was fought in 1929. Allied with the KSto at that time was the entire Kâta tribe, led by General Abdul Vakil Khân of Ktivi, a great hero of the third Anglo-Afghan war. Despite their overwhelming superiority in manpower, the KSto and Kâta forces were defeated by the Kom, who burnt down KStořm and drove the inhabitants into exile. The ensuing settlement was long and litiginous. The KSto eventually regained most of their land, but they had to pay a heavy tribute to the Kom, including twenty-five girls as wives for the victors.
As the recent war against the Soviet Union progressed and the initial unity of the Nuristâni forces gave way to the factionalism of the foreign-backed Afghân parties in Pâkistân, ethnic differences between the Kom, KSto, and Kâta flared up once again. In 1986 fighting between Kom and KSto broke out briefly, with the Kâta again supporting the KSto. The demands of the national conflict forced cooler heads to quell the fighting before much damage was done, but the hostility evidently smoldered.
After the defeat of the Soviet Union and the fall of the communist government in Kâbul, disputes between the Kom and the KSto over water rights sprang up. The Kom alleged periodic KSto acts of sabatoge against the channel that brings much of the Koms' irrigation water from the mountain above KStořm. Hostilities were narrowly averted several times since 1992, until the last week of June, 1998.
Details are still scarce, but during that week the Koms' patience was pushed past the limit. Two men from Kombřom were killed in a skirmish with some KSto. A Kom tribal force from most of the Kom communities gathered together and marched on KStořm. They demanded that the killers be handed over for justice. The KSto refused, and hostilities ensued. In the end a dozen people were killed and a score were injured. In a repeat of the scenario of 1929, but with the Kâta too divided to intervene, the Kom routed the KSto and burned KStořm to the ground.
It remains to be seen whether a settlement reminiscent of that of the 1929 war will allow the KSto to regain their land, or whether they will be consigned to permanent exile. Some Kom, including those from Ćünuk and Pâšaŋar in the Kunar Valley, abstained from the hostilities, and many Kom with close kinsmen among the KSto feel ambiguous toward the action. These neutrals will most likely play a key role in any reconciliation.
Further topics: