Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- ethnic group
- Subclass of
- Dard people
- Country
- Pakistan
- Population
- 6000
- Image
- Pakistan valley kalash people festival.jpg
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- Commons category
- Kalash people
- topic's main category
- Category:Kalash people
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Encyclopedic overview
The Kalash (Kalasha: کالؕاشؕا, romanized: Kaḷaṣa), or Kalasha, are a small Indo-Aryan indigenous people native to the Chitral region in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. They form the smallest ethnoreligious group in Pakistan, practising what scholars consider a form of animism and ancestor worship with elements of Indo-Iranian (Vedic- or Hindu-like) religion, and as such are considered unique among the people of Pakistan.
Most of the Kalash gradually converted to Islam after the advent of the Muslim rule in Chitral in the 14th century, except for a small number who continued to uphold their religion and customs and were gradually restricted to the Kalasha Valleys of Bumburet, Rumbur and Birir. In the past the Kalasha people inhabited several other valleys as well, including Jinjeret Kuh, Urtsun, Suwir, Kalkatak and Damel.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Kalash people” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
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