Kunar Province in the context of "Laghman Province"

Nuristan (Pashto; Dari: نورستان, lit. 'Land of Light'), also spelled as Nurestan or Nooristan, known as Nuriston (Katë: نورستان), and historically known as Kafiristan (Pashto, Dari: کافرستان lit. 'Land of Infidels') until 1896, is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the eastern part of the country. It is divided into seven districts and is Afghanistan's least populous province, with a population of around 167,000. Parun serves as the provincial capital. Nuristan is bordered on the south by Laghman and Kunar provinces, on the north by Badakhshan province, on the west by Panjshir province, and on the east by Pakistan.

The origin of the local Nuristani people has been disputed, ranging from being the indigenous inhabitants forced to flee to this region after refusing to surrender to invaders, to being linked to various ancient groups of people and the Turk Shahi kings. Some Nuristanis claim being descendants of the Greek occupying forces of Alexander the Great. It was formerly called Kafiristan (Pashto: كافرستان) ("Land of the Infidels") until the inhabitants were forcibly converted from an animist religion with elements from Indo-Iranian (Vedic- or Hindu-like) religion infused with local variations, to Islam in 1895, and thence the region has become known as Nuristan ("Land of Light"). The region was located in an area surrounded by Buddhist and Hindu civilizations which were later taken over by Muslims.

The Nuristani languages, known earlier as Kafiri languages, are one of the three groups within the Indo-Iranian language family, alongside the Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages. They have approximately 214,000 speakers primarily in Nuristan and Kunar provinces in northeastern Afghanistan and a few adjacent valleys in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Chitral District, Pakistan. The region inhabited by the Nuristanis is located in the southern Hindu Kush mountains, and is drained by the Alingar River in the west, the Pech River in the center, and the Landai Sin and Kunar rivers in the east. More broadly, the Nuristan region is located at the northern intersection of the Indian subcontinent and the Iranian plateau.

The Nuristani languages were not described in literature until the 19th century. The older name for the region was Kafiristan due to the pre-Islamic religious practices of its residents, but this term has been abandoned in favor of Nuristan ("land of light") after the region's people were converted to Islam.

The Gandhara grave culture of present-day Pakistan is known by its "protohistoric graves", which were spread mainly in the middle Swat River valley and named the Swat Protohistoric Graveyards Complex, dated in that region to c. 1200–800 BCE. The Italian Archaeological Mission to Pakistan (MAIP) holds that there are no burials with these features after 800 BCE. More recent studies by Pakistani scholars, such as Muhammad Zahir, consider that these protohistoric graves extended over a much wider geography and continued in existence from the 8th century BCE until the historic period. The core region was in the middle of the Swat River course and expanded to the valleys of Dir, Kunar, Chitral, and Peshawar. Protohistoric graves were present in north, central, and southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province as well as in north-western tribal areas, including Gilgit-Baltistan province, Taxila, and Salt Range in Punjab, Pakistan, along with their presence in Indian Kashmir, Ladakh, and Uttarakhand.

The grave culture has been regarded as a token of the Indo-Aryan migrations but has also been explained by local cultural continuity. Estimates, based on ancient DNA analyses, suggest ancestors of middle Swat valley people mixed with a population coming from the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor, which carried Steppe ancestry, sometime between 1900 and 1500 BCE.

The Yusufzai or Yousafzai (Pashto: یوسفزی, pronounced [jusəpˈzai]), also referred to as the Esapzai (ايسپزی, pronounced [iːsəpˈzai]), or Yusufzai Afghans historically, are one of the largest tribes of Pashtuns. They are natively based in the northern part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Malakand, Dir, Swat, Shangla, Buner, Swabi, Mardan, Bajaur, Peshawar, Tor Ghar), to which they migrated from Kabul during the 16th century, but they are also present in parts of Afghanistan, including Kunar, Kabul, Kandahar and Farah. Outside of these countries, they can be found in Ghoriwala District Bannu (Mughal Khel), Balochistan Sibi (Akazai), Chagai (Hassanzai) and Rohilkandh.

Most of the Yusufzai speak a northern variety of Pashto and some southern variety of Pashto (as in case of Mughal Khel) and Afghan dialect Persian.

Nangarhar (also spelled Nangrahar, Ningrahar, and Ningarhar, Pashto: د ننګرهار ولایت, romanized: Da Nangarhār Wilāyat and Dari: ولایت ننگرهار, romanized: Wilāyat-e Nangarhār) is one of the major eastern provinces of Afghanistan and serves as a key political, economic, and cultural gateway between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It borders Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province to the east and south, while internally it is adjacent to the Afghan provinces of Kunar, Laghman, Kabul, and Logar. The provincial capital is Jalalabad, a lowland city located along the Kabul River that functions as the principal administrative, commercial, and educational center of the region.

Covering an area of approximately 7,700 square kilometers and hosting an estimated population of around 1.8 million people (as of 2023), Nangarhar is defined by its fertile river valleys, semi-arid plains, and the lower reaches of the Spin Ghar mountain range, which forms the natural frontier with Pakistan. The province's landscape is shaped by the Kabul, Kunar, and Surkh Rod rivers, which support extensive agricultural production and sustain some of Afghanistan's most densely populated rural districts.