Tajiks

Tajiks (or Tadzhiks) are the original Iranian population of Central Asia, the present-day inhabitants of the nation of Tajikistan. Various groups of Tajiks, in Tajikistan, parts of central and southern Uzbekistan, northern Afghanistan, the Uighur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang in northwestern China, northern Pakistan, as well other parts of the Central Asia, sprang from various sources at various times and places; yet they all represent disparate branches of the common Iranian world. Tajiks were the first to settle in Central Asia, in the region that was later over-whelmed by peoples of Turko-Mongolian stock.

The origin of the word "Tajik" is disputed. Most scholars of the Tajik language currently believe that the word "Tajik" is derived from toj (crown). Some other scholars have suggested that the word was originally the name of an Arab tribe (Taj or Tazik) that invaded Central Asia, bringing Islam to the region in the seventh and eighth centuries. In medieval Tajiki-Farsi literature and historical chronicles the word "Tajik" was used in the general sense of "Persian," as the opposite of "Turk." In Russian usage of the sixteenth century and later, "Tajik" was applied to the urban populace of Central Asia, distinct from the ruling Uzbek nomads. Currently the term "Tajik" applies to the people of the Central Asian Trans-river, who are Europeans of Pamiro-Ferghanian type.

The Tajiks are Muslims, predominantly Sunnis of the Khanafi school; there are also 300,000 Shiʿa Imami Ismailis. Tajiks today speak different Iranian languages. In addition to Western Iranian (Tajiki and Dari), Tajiks in Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and China speak Eastern Iranian (Permian and Yaghnobi languages), using Tajiki, an Iranian tongue, as a common language.

Tajiks lived in houses constructed of mud and stones in urban centers and oases of Central Asia. They were famous gardeners, merchants, poets, and scholars. Tajik arts reached high levels, and the towns along the caravan routes linking the Near East, China, and India were centers of trade. The tenth through sixteenth centuries were a golden age for Tajiks. Their language served as a lingua franca in Central Asia and was the mother tongue of famous poets such as Rudaki (c. 859–940 or 941), Sa'di (c. 1213–1294), Hafez (c. 1325–c. 1389), Omar Khayyam (1048?–1131), and Firdawsi (c. 935–c. 1020). The celebrated medieval doctor Avicenna (Abuali Ibn Sina; 980–1037) also spoke the Tajik language.

Turko-Mongol tribes constantly migrated westward into the area inhabited by the Tajiks, pushing them to the periphery. By the early twentieth century the term "Tajik" was used to label so-called mountainous Tajiks (the population of Qarategin, Mastchah, Darvaz, and Badakhshan in modern Tajikistan), while Tajikispeakers on the plains were called Sart.

As an ethnic group the Tajiks never formed a stable political unit. Until the 1920s there was no official Tajik territorial-administrative unit. In Tajikistan there are four historical areas of the Tajik population: the valleys of the northern part of the country (Fergana Valley); the foothills and mountains of central Tajikistan (Zarafshon River basin); the foothills, mountains, and narrow valleys of southern Tajikistan (Qarategin, Khatlon); and the vast alpine country of Pamir. Each of these subgroups of Tajiks is marked by distinct political and material culture, physical appearance, dialect, customs, music, and folklore.

The valley dwellers of the north are descendants of the Sogdian culture, representatives of the rich urban civilization of Samarqand, Bukhara, Khujand, and Fergana. After Russian dominance was established in the area and according to the national delimitations drawn by the Soviets in 1924, the Tajik descendants of these cultural centers live in different states. The Tajiks of Sogd (former Leninabad) Province, known as Leninabadis, live almost exclusively in Tajikistan, while most of the Bukharan and Samarqandi Tajiks dwell in Uzbekistan. This part of the Tajik-populated area joined Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century, and these Tajiks experienced the political, cultural, and economic transformations of Communism.

The Tajiks of the central and southern regions, living in narrow valleys, foothills, and mountains, in contrast to the northern Tajiks, were almost completely independent and free of outside influence until the twentieth century. The most important of these groups were the Kulabi, Gharmi, Qarategini, and Hisari Tajiks. Their traditional communities were strongly attached to their places of origin. Both northern and southern Tajiks speak the Tajik language, albeit with dialectical peculiarities, and are Sunni Muslims.

In Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan region live other Iranian peoples known as Pamiris. Officially identified as Tajiks, they are ethnically and linguistically distinct from the previously mentioned groups of Tajiks. Pamiris are almost all Shiʿa Ismailis, speaking a language unconnected to Tajik and to other nonwritten Pamirian languages. In addition to 200,000 Tajikistan Pamiris in Gorno-Badakhshan, almost 100,000 Pamiris live in the adjacent mountain regions of Afghanistan, China, and Pakistan. The number of Tajiks in Tajikistan has risen from approximately 738,000 in 1926 (approximately 72 percent of the total population) to approximately 4.2 million in 2000 (69 percent of the population).

Like the Tajiks of Tajikistan, the Tajiks of the left bank of the Amu Dar'ya River, being autochthonous and the oldest inhabitants of today's Afghanistan, have no known common place of origin, nor is it known when they appeared here. Currently compact masses of Tajik population live in central Afghanistan—in Kabul Province, areas of Charikar, Istalif, Panjsher, Gurband, Salang, and the southern and northern slopes of the Hindu Kush. Another large group of Tajiks lives in western Afghanistan—in Herat, Ghor, and partly in Nimroz and Farakh Provinces. Tajiks constitute the main population of northeastern Baghlan, Takhor, Qunduz, and Badakhshan Provinces in Afghanistan. In the northern provinces of Balkh, Juzjan, Samangan, Fariab, and Badgis, Tajiks live together with Uzbeks and Turkmen.

Estimates of the number of Tajiks in Afghanistan vary widely from 25 to 50 percent or even more of the total population of the country. According to official data, Afghanistan's total population in 1987 reached 16.1 million. Thus, on the eve of the 1989 Soviet invasion, the number of Afghani Tajiks varied between 4 and 8 million. This number equals or even exceeds the number of Tajiks in Tajikistan. In addition to the Tajiks of Tajikistan and Afghanistan, more than 1 million Tajiks live in Uzbekistan, predominantly in Samarqand, Bukhara, and Surkhandarya Provinces. This disassociation of various groups of Tajiks has always been a principal obstacle to the creation of a unified Tajik state.

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