In a tiny area you got:
Sunni Islam (light green)
Shia Islam (dark green)
Eastern orthodox Christianity (red)
Buddhism (pink)

If the Turk is your biggest and closest threat, you cosy up to the Russians and remain Christian. If the Russian is your biggest and closest threat, you cosy up to the Turks and adopt Sunni Islam. Simple. If you have ancient Persian connections, you adopt the Persian version of Islam. And if you are Russia, anxious to have some trustworthy subjects on the steppe border with Islam, you let some Mongol Buddhists come and settle there. Simple.

Mountains make everything isolated and insular, look at papua new Guinea, eight hundred languages in a nation of ten million people, that's fucked up

>>511316288 (OP)
Full map
south asia is pretty fucked too

>>511316482
>>511316627
Ok very interesting. Thanks

>>511316288 (OP)
mountainous tribal area
lebanon was sorta like that

>>511316288 (OP)
It's Peter pangea's belly button.

>>511316627
This. It's the mountains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8oXqRmi5fI

>>511316645
Isn't there an jewish oblast in eastern Siberia? The one with the Trans flag as their flag?
Map is suspect if it omits things like that.