Piero Morandi, An Italian Traveler in Kafiristan

Copyright © 2020 Luca VillaCopyright © 2020 The Silk Road House

Fig. 1. Map of the Kalasha andKati area on the Afghanistan-

Pakistan border.

137The Silk Road 18 (2020): 137–145

Luca Villa

Between 1968 to 1970, Piero Morandi, a collectorand art dealer of Venetian origin, twice visited

the regions of Chitral and Nuristan in order tolearn about the customs and culture of the so-called “Kafir” people. Until the Muslim emir AbdurRahman’s murderous military campaign in 1895,the Nuristan area, located in Afghanistan, wasknown as Kafiristan. “Kafir” is an Arabic word his-torically related to the spread of Islam. It referredto non-Islamic people as a whole, though not toJews and Christians, who were called “peoples ofthe Book” in the Islamic world.

After Abdur Rahman’s military campaign, the Kati(“Red Kafirs”) people’s culture almost disappeared.By contrast, the Kalasha (“Black Kafirs”), who in-habited Bumburet, Rumbur, and Birir valleys inthe present-day Chitral region of Pakistan, did notsuffer the same fate. This was due in large part tothe Durand Line, a border established in 1893 fol-lowing the Second Anglo-Afghan war, which sepa-rates Afghanistan from Pakistan [Fig. 1].

“Pedro” Morandi, An Unconventional Traveler

In 1968, Piero Morandi [Fig. 2], known as “Pedro”to many of his friends and acquaintances, arrivedin Chitral for the first time. With Piero was IngridBorum, a Danish painter who went along with himon previous visits toTurkey. At the time,Morandi was aroundtwenty years old. Theystayed for a while with theKalasha, then moved onto India and later toNepal. During the 1970s,Morandi decided to settledown in this Himalayancountry, where he died in2007. While based inNepal, he became a re-spected art dealer and

worldwide expert on Newari art.

In 1969, before leaving Italy for his second trip toChitral—when, along with the Venetian painterNini Morelli, he would also visit Nuristan for thefirst time—Morandi gave the Florence Museum ofAnthropology and Ethnology some selected ob-jects from his collection of Kalasha and Kati mate-rial culture. It was his first contribution to ourknowledge about these cultures—but not the last.Thirty years later, in 2000, the French music labelDisques Dom published a CD titled Pakistan-Afgha-nistan: Kafiristan/Nuristan-Chitral—Music andSongs for the series Albatros: document original demusique ethnique des peuples du monde. The albumincluded songs and melodies recorded by Morandiduring both of his travels. In recent years, the artcollector Gabriele Romiti acquired some photo-graphs and negatives from Morandi and Morelli’sjourney, which he initially attributed to Morandi.Romiti offered these to the Florence Museum ofAnthropology and Ethnology as a means of enrich-ing the Morandi collection. When I started to col-lect pieces of information about Morandi’s travelsfrom his companions, it became clear that NiniMorelli was the photographer. This discovery con-stituted the first step toward recovering the untoldstory of the Chitral and Nuristan travels made byPedro Morandi, whose legacy enhances our knowl-

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edge of a disappearing culture.

Nonetheless, Morandi only published a single arti-cle related to the Kalasha and Kati cultures. It wastitled Etnoresistenza kafira [Kafir ethnic resistance]and included in L’umana avventura [The human ad-venture], a periodical published by Jaka Book pub-lishing house, in 1980. The article demonstratesthat Morandi was very knowledgeable about con-temporary literature on the Kafirs. He was aware ofrecent contributions from Danish anthropologistsand also knew of fieldwork undertaken by the Nor-wegian linguist Georg Morgenstierne, as evidencedby a brief quotation from Morgenstierne’s essay.Ingrid Borum, who traveled together with Morandifrom 1966 to 1969, first to Turkey and then to Chi-tral, testified to Morandi’s expertise:

Piero�was,�already�in�1966-67,�passionately�studying�an-thropology�among�many�other�subjects,�mainly�in�En-glish,�and�he�was�rather�influenced�by�the�Royal�DanishLibrary,�where�he�found�books�about�Kafiristan,�such�asGeorge�Scott�Robertson’s�The Kafirs of Hindu Kush,�plusbooks�on�Danish�expeditions�to�Hindu�Kush/Nuristan�Af-ghanistan.�When�we�entered�Kalash�Kafiristan,�he�al-ready�knew�the�places�names�and�locations�of�the�holyspots.�Piero�was�always�reading,�taking�notes,�and�lear-ning�perfect�English�by�reading.�(Author�interview,�July

16,�2015)

In Denmark, Morandi prepared for his journey toChitral by reading the aforementioned books andMorgenstierne essays. Looking at the related liter-ature, however, the most relevant contributionsfrom Mergenstierne were published afterMorandi’s travels (see Di Carlo, 2010: 292-93). Nev-ertheless, from 1926 to 1965, Morgenstierne edited

a large number of articles related to linguis-tic and cultural issues in Nuristan, most ofwhich Morandi probably could have read inthe Copenhagen libraries. Likewise, duringhis wandering youth, Pedro irregularly at-tended Ca’ Foscari University in Venice.There he took Oriental languages classes to-gether with students who later becamescholars in Bologna, such as Claudia Poz-zana and Maurizio Pistoso. The latter, inconversation with the author, recalled thatProfessor Gianroberto Scarcia had givenMorandi his translation of the Ṣifat-Nāma-yiDarvīš Muḥammad Hān-i Ġāzī (1965), a bookwhich narrates the military campaign led byan Indian Moghul against the Kati people of

Nuristan in 1582.

During both of his travels with Borum and Morelli,Morandi acquired objects to bring back to Italy toserve as a record of his experiences. Once, accord-ing to Borum, Morandi exchanged his clothes forsome artifacts, with no regret for the loss. NiniMorelli told the author that an opportunity to col-lect Kalasha objects arose when they found somerelics from a cemetery that had been scatteredafter a landslide. In that way, Morandi also ac-quired grave goods. The artifacts now held in theAnthropology and Ethnography Museum in Flo-rence are labeled as having come from a graveyard,too. According to Borum’s statements, Morandicollected these during their journey to Chitral.During the second stay in the same mountainousarea of Pakistan and in Nuristan, together withNini Morelli, they also collected two urei, which aremetal wine goblets traditionally used by theKalasha and Kati peoples [Fig. 3]. Unfortunately,

Fig. 2. Portrait of Piero Morandi. Nini Morelli collection.

Fig. 3. Two urei, metal wine goblets. Nini Morelli collection.

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they disappeared from the Italian consulate in Pe-shawar some time after being deposited there bythe two travelers. As for the objects obtained dur-ing the 1970 trip to Nuristan and Chitral, the au-thor could find no trace of these at all. Thanks tothe photographic documentation undertaken byNini Morelli, however, we can still obtain a glimpseof the traditional art from these areas [Figs. 4-5].

The Photographic Collection at the FlorenceMuseum of Anthropology and Ethnology

The last pictures, made in Nuristan in 1970 [Figs.3-5], come from Nini Morelli’s collection, whichwere stored in her house in Venice. They consist ofan extensive number of black and white diapositi-ves and negatives. The pictures of the ureis, the ter-racotta bowl, and the two chairs portray artifactsfrom Nuristan. According to Morelli, most of thesephotographs were taken as they passed throughthe villages of Wama,Waigal, and Nishei-grom, along with se-veral other placesvisited during theirmonth in Nuristan.Upon the conclusionof this trip, which in-cluded visits to Indiaand Nepal, PieroMorandi addednotes about theseplaces on the photo-graphic envelopes,drawn chiefly fromMorelli’s memories.

Morelli made the pictures using three different ca-meras: a Rollei, a Nikon-F, and “my grandfather’s oldLeica.” Her private collection enriches the large setof photographs published in 1999 by Max Klim-burg in The Kafirs of the Hindu Kush: Art and Societyof the Waigal and Ashkun Kafirs. Klimburg went toNuristan during the 1970s, to a region not far fromMorandi’s travels. In this two-volume work, Klim-burg was able to include an extensive number ofphotographs taken by the Danish researcher Len-nart Edelberg, who had taken part in the Third Da-nish Central Asian Expedition (1948-49 and1953-54) and returned to the region in 1964 and1970 (Barrington et al. 2005: 3).

The reason Morelli could take photographs sofreely was due to the friendly disposition of a mannamed Khalil. Khalil was an art dealer in Kabuland the son of the Nuristan governor [Fig. 6]. Heaccompanied Morandi and Morelli during their

travels through Af-ghanistan. The Vene-tian artist recalledthose days someyears ago in a conver-sation with the au-thor. “When we werein Nuristan,” Morellisaid in 2016, “I wentto the Indrakun Gar-den, a forbiddenplace for women.They did not let mego inside. So I wentthere secretly, and Istarted to take pictu-

Fig. 4. Terracotta vessel. Nini Morelli collection. Fig. 5. Wooden chairs. Nini Morelli collection.

Fig. 6. Khalil (right, seated) was an art dealer and son of the Nuristan governor. Nini Morelli collection.

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res of the grapevines. They appeared two hundredyears old to my eyes. Then my grandfather’s Leicabroke! I couldn’t take pictures from the IndrakunGarden, unfortunately, but a French traveler [I]met in Chitral later fixed my camera.”

As mentioned previously, a small part of the Mo-randi-Morelli photographic collection has beenstored at the Florence Museum of Anthropologyand Ethnology. These pictures portray the Prun ce-lebration, which nowadays persists only in the Birirvalley of Chitral. Thus the set of photographs con-tribute to our knowledge of the Kalasha culture.Pierpaolo Di Carlo, who spent some time in theKalash valleys with Alberto and Augusto Caco-pardo, wrote extensively about the Prun celebra-tion (2007, 2009). After being shown photographsfrom the Florence collection by the author, DiCarlo noticed that some of the girls portrayed inthe Morelli pictures wear the soh’olyak, a traditio-nal Kalasha hat adorned with dog rose berries. TheKalasha girls wear this peculiar hat only during theinitiation ceremony (Kal. soh’olyak sambi’ek “towear the soh’olyak”) on the last day of the Prun ce-lebration [Fig. 7]. Alberto Cacopardo also confir-med Di Carlo’s identification of the hat, whilenotes added by Morandi on the photographic en-velopes found at Morelli’s home dispelled any re-maining doubts.

Therefore, we can conclude that the set of pictures

given to the Florence Museum by Gabriele Romiti,who was unaware of the total extent of the collec-tion, most likely depicts the last day of the Pruncelebration in 1970. The photographs [Figs. 8-16]capture the singers, musicians, and dancers’ arran-gements at this moment in time, as described pre-cisely in Di Carlo’s I Kalasha del Hindu Kush (2009).The photographs taken by Nini Morelli [Figs. 8-9]recall Di Carlo’s descriptions of the singers’ postu-res and their change in number, based on the per-formance. Thanks to these pictures, it is possibleto identify the shimmering cloaks worn by themost prominent singers to distinguish themselvesfrom their companions (Di Carlo 2009: 192). DiCarlo’s description of the Prun celebration dances(see also Di Carlo, 2007) is detailed and exhau-stive. It can be regarded as a useful commentary onMorelli’s photographs. The author invites readersinterested in learning more about Di Carlo’s con-tributions to consult his works listed in the biblio-graphy. As Di Carlo wrote, Morgenstierne himselfattended the celebration, which the Norwegianlinguist called přũ-nat (viz. “Prun dances”). It appe-ars to confirm the research carried out by Morandiduring his travels to Nuristan and Chitral, whichwere aimed at gathering anthropological researchmaterial in the form of recordings and images inhopes of enriching our knowledge about the Kala-sha. The same kind of scrupulous photographic re-port assembled during the 1970 Prun celebration

Fig. 7. Young girls wearing the so-h'olyak hat during the Prun celebra-

tion. Florence Anthropology andEthnology Museum Collection.

Fig. 8. Kalasha singers during the Pruncelebration. Florence Anthropologyand Ethnology Museum Collection.

Fig. 9. Kalasha singers during the Pruncelebration. Florence Anthropologyand Ethnology Museum Collection.

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Figs. 10-13. Performance of the ca~ dances. Florence Anthropology and Ethnology Museum Collection.

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Figs. 14-16. Performance of d'ushak (or drazha'ilak) songs. Florence Anthropology and Ethnology Museum Collection.

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was taken in different circumstances. It is thuspossible to observe these performances throughmany sets of photographs kept in Morelli’s privatecollection.

We know that Morandi asked Morelli to stay inChitral during the subsequent autumn, but she re-fused due to the hard weather conditions and thelack of food. In any case, in several different cir-cumstances during their spring-summer visit toNuristan and Chitral, she made the same kind of

scrupulous photographic report as was taken du-ring the 1970 Prun celebration. Morandi and Mo-relli's trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan isdocumented through many sets of photographskept in Morelli's private collection, such as those ofa shepherd storing milk in goatskin in his moun-tain hut [see Figs. 17-22]. I invite institutions inte-rested in further enhancing the utility of Morelli’sextensive photographic collection to contact me.The photographs concern the ceremonies, landsca-

Figs. 17-22. A shepherd in Chitral storing milk in his mountain pasture hut. Nini Morelli collection.

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pes, and daily activities of the Kalasha people. Itwould be an unworthy end to Morelli’s story to lether photographic collection gather dust. Whencombined with the work of Morandi, these two im-portant scholarly resources can go a long ways to-ward preserving the story of a nearly forgottenculture and people.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Luca Villa is an independent researcher in thefield of cultural history. He received his M.A. in In-dian Philosophy at the University of Bologna and aPh.D. in Indology and Tibetology at Turin Univer-sity. After working together with different publicand private institutions, he currently collaborateswith Fondazione Del Monte and Fondazione Gio-vanni XXIII for the religious sciences, photogra-phic inventories, and web-based projects. E-mail: <villagood@gmail.com>.

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