Kashmir remains one of the world’s most contentious geopolitical flash points. In April 2025, India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed countries that share a tense border, came dangerously close to a major confrontation after militants attacked Indian tourists near the popular resort town of Pahalgam in Indian Kashmir. Against this backdrop, media coverage of Kashmir often focuses on violence and division.

What is overlooked in this coverage is Kashmir’s immense artistic, intellectual and spiritual heritage, one shaped by centuries of interreligious and intercultural exchange.

As a scholar of Sufism – traditions within Islam that emphasize inner transformation, love of God and a personal connection to the divine – I have spent several years studying the Kashmiri mystic and poet Nund Rishi.

Also known as Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Noorani, Nund Rishi lived from about 1378 to 1440. He founded the Rishi Sufi order, whose teachings emphasized simplicity, compassion, devotion to God and care for others.

The Rishi Sufis understood their tradition as both Islamic and deeply rooted in Kashmir’s religious past. Their adoption of the Sanskrit word “rishi,” meaning sage, reflected that connection with the region’s Hindu spiritual past. Nund Rishi’s poetry likewise draws on both Hindu and Islamic symbols and ideas. That legacy endures today.

Kashmir, the valley of philosophy and poetry

Since the third century B.C.E., Kashmir has been a center of learning and the arts for Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims alike.

Under the reign of Ashoka, an emperor who ruled from 304 to 232 B.C.E. and played a pivotal rule in spreading Buddhism across Asia, Kashmir became a major center of Buddhist learning.

As royal patronage shifted in the seventh century, support for Buddhism declined and Kashmir emerged as a center of Hindu literature and philosophy. Beginning in the eighth century, it also became an important hub for Shaivism, a major branch of........

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