o - Aceh Books website

NURISTANIS 569
pairers of radios, the taxi drivers and sellers of Western clothing are all foreigners
from other states.
Nupe compromise and adaptability may well explain why Bida and other Nupe
towns have been free to date from the violent disturbances in other areas of
northern Nigeria. The relatively weak observance of Islam among the Nupe has
meant the Islamic sects have so far found little adherence. Similarly, because
there is no active proselytism, the substantial Christian communities in some of
the hinterland villages around Bida have not caused the friction that might be
imagined from the experience of other areas. Both Islam and Christianity will
continue to make progress over traditional religion in Nupe in the foreseeable
future, but the increasing secularism of the Nigerian state as a whole makes it
unlikely that there will be a regrowth of monolithic Islamic state institutions.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Hansford, K., et al. An Index of Nigerian Languages. Accra, Ghana: Summer Institute
of Linguistics, 1976.
Nadel, S. F. A Black Byzantium. London: Oxford University Press, 1942.
. Nupe Religion. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954.
Unpublished Manuscript
Blench, R. M. "The Ethnohistory of the Niger-Kaduna Peoples and Its Relation to Their
Linguistic Subgroupings." Paper presented to the Colloquium on African Languages,
Afrikaanse Taalkunde, Rijksunuversiteit te Leiden, September 7, 1982.
R. M. Blench
NURISTANIS In the final decade of the nineteenth century a little-known
people called the Kafirs became the last pawns in the "Great Game" between
British and Russian imperialism in Afghanistan. The warlike Kafirs formed a
hitherto impenetrable island of Aryan polytheism in the surrounding ocean of
Islam. In the West their mysteriousness and steadfast resistance to Islam inspired
Kiplingesque stories, and their geopolitical fate was chronicled in the headlines.
Although the Kafirs lay in the westward path of the expanding British Raj,
Britain conceded the Kafirs to the sphere of influence of the Amir of Afghanistan,
whose kingdom formed a buffer between the converging British and Russian
empires. In the winter of 1895-1896 the Amir's army subjugated the Kafirs,
and his mullahs set about converting them to Islam. By 1898 all the Kafirs within
the Amir's domain had embraced Sunni Islam. To commemorate their acceptance
of the light of Islam, the Amir changed the name of their country from Kafiristan,