idge which
overlooks the Kunar and terminating in the Panjkora river, so that the
district lies on a slope tilting gradually downwards from the Kunar ridge
to the Panjkora. Nawagai is the chief town of Bajour, and the khan of
Nawagai is under British protection for the safeguarding of the Chitral
road. Jandol, one of the northern valleys of Bajour, has ceased to be of
political importance since the failure of its chief, Umra Khan, to
appropriate to himself Bajour, Dir, and a great part of the Kunar valley.
It was the active hostility between the amir of Kabul (who claimed
sovereignty of the same districts) and Umra Khan that led, firstly to the
demarcation agreement of 1893 which fixed the boundary of Afghanistan in
Kunar; and, secondly, to the invasion of Chitral by Umra Khan (who was no
party to the boundary settlement) and the siege of the Chitral fort in
1895.

An interesting feature in Bajour topography is a mountain spur from the
Kunar range, which curving eastwards culminates in the well-known peak of
Koh-i-Mor, which is visible from the Peshawar valley. It was here, at the
foot of the mountain, that Alexander found the ancient city of Nysa and the
Nysaean colony, traditionally said to have been founded by Dionysus. The
Koh-i-Mor has been identified as the Meros of Arrian's history--the
three-peaked mountain from which the god issued. It is also interesting to
find that a section of the Kafir community of Kamdesh still claim the same
Greek origin as did the Nysaeans; still chant hymns to the god who sprang
from Gir Nysa (the mountain of Nysa); whilst they maintain that they
originally migrated from the Swat country to their present habitat in the
lower Bashgol. Long after Buddhism had spread to Chitral, Gilgit, Dir and
Swat; whilst Ningrahar was still full of monasteries and temples, and the
Peshawar valley was recognized as the seat of Buddhist learning, the Kafirs
or Nysaeans held their own in Bajour and in the lower Kunar valley, where
Buddhism apparently never prevailed. It is probable that the invader Baber
(who has much to say about Bajour) fought them there in the early years of
the 16th century, when on his way to found the Mogul dynasty of India
centuries after Buddhism has been crushed in northern India by the
destroyer Mahmud.

The Gazetteers and Reports of the Indian government contain nearly all the
modern information available about Bajour. The autobiography of Baber (by
Leyden and Erskine) gives i