races — which extend as far as the farthermost frontiers of the Hindu race." Mahmud had gone to war against pagan Afghan while campaigning in the Sulayman mountains. Firishta states that Afghans fought on both sides during the war between Mu'izz al-Din and Pithorai in 1192 AD, which Encyclopaedia of Islam says probably indicates that they were not completely converted yet. In 1519, Babur mounted an attack on the fort of Bajaur and sent a Dilazak Afghan as an ambassador to the Gibri Sultan of Bajaur, Mir Haidar 'Ali, to surrender and enter his services. Gibri, a Dardic language of Bajaur, was also spoken by the royal family and nobility of the Swat Valley. The Gibris decided to resist and Babur's forces stormed it in two days. He ordered a general massacre of its inhabitants on the pretext that they had rebelled against Kabul's regime and were infidels who had forsaken Islam. The westward migration of Pashtuns from Sulaiman mountains to Qandahar and Herat is thought to have begun in the 15th century. In the 16th century, the area around Qandahar formed a bone of contention between the Ghilzais and Abdalis. The latter gave in and migrated to Herat during the reign of Safavid Shah Abbas I. Their migration displaced or subjugated the indigenous populations, especially the Tajiks who were also the dominant population in Kabul, Nangarhar and Laghman in east Afghanistan. Before the advent of Ghilzais of the Ahmadzai division in the late 16th century, Logar River was also a Tajik stronghold. The Pashtuns also displaced the original Kafirs and Pashayi people in Kunar Valley and Laghman Valley, located south of Kabul in east Afghanistan, to the infertile mountains. Regions to the south and east of Ghazni were the strongholds of Hazaras before the 16th century. They also lost Wardak to the tribe of the same name when the latter invaded in the 17th century. In Qandahar, the Farsiwanis, Hazaras, Kakars and Baloch people were subjugated. Conquests of Kafiristan Kafiristan is a mountainous region of the Hindu Kush that was isolated and politically independent until the Afghan conquest of 1896. Before their conversion to Islam, the Nuristanis or Kafir people practiced a form of ancient Hinduism infused with locally developed accretions. Kafiristan proper from west to east comprises basins of Alishang, Alingar, Pech or Prasun, Waigal and Bashgal. The region became a refuge of an old group of Indo-European