Tajikistan

Lore & Background

The territory was previously home to cultures of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, including the Oxus civilisation in the west. Parts were part of the Sogdian and Bactrian civilisations, and were ruled by the Achaemenids, Alexander the Great, the Greco‑Bactrians, the Kushans, the Kidarites, the Hephthalites, the First Turkic Khaganate, the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, the Samanid Empire, the Kara‑Khanids, the Seljuks, the Khwarazmians, the Mongols, the Timurids, and the Khanate of Bukhara. The region was later conquered by the Russian Empire, before becoming part of the Soviet Union. Within the Soviet Union, the country's borders were drawn when it was part of Uzbekistan as an autonomous republic, before becoming a constituent republic of the Soviet Union on 5 December 1929. On 9 September 1991, Tajikistan declared itself an independent sovereign state as the Soviet Union was disintegrating. A civil war was fought after independence, lasting from May 1992 to June 1997.

Reader's Guide

Tajikistan is a presidential republic consisting of four provinces. Tajiks form the ethnic majority, and their national language is Tajik. Russian is used as the official inter‑ethnic language. While the state is constitutionally secular, Islam is adhered to by 97.5% of the population. In the Gorno-Badakhshan oblast, there is considerable linguistic diversity, with languages such as Rushani, Shughni, Ishkashimi, Wakhi, and Tajik being spoken. Mountains cover more than 90% of the country. It is a developing country with a transitional economy dependent on remittances and on the production of aluminium and cotton. Tajikistan is a member of the United Nations, CIS, OSCE, OIC, ECO, SCO, and CSTO, and is a NATO PfP partner.

Did You Know?

• The term 'Tajik' ultimately derives from the Middle Persian Tāzīk, the Turkic rendition of the Arabic ethnonym Ṭayyi’.
• Before 1991, Tajikistan appeared in English as Tadjikistan or Tadzhikistan.