Tajikistan
At 36'40' northern latitude and 41'14' eastern longitude, Tajikistan
is nestled between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to the north and west,
China to the east, and Afghanistan to the south. Tajikistan is home
to some of the highest mountains in the world, including the Pamir
and Alay ranges. Ninety-three percent of Tajikistan is mountainous
with altitudes ranging from 1,000 feet to 27,000 feet, with nearly
50% of Tajikistan's territory above 10,000 feet. Earthquakes are of
varying degrees and are frequent. The massive mountain ranges are
cut by hundreds of canyons and gorges; at the bottom of these run
streams which flow into larger river valleys where the majority of
the country's population lives and works. The principal rivers of
Central Asia, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, both flow through
Tajikistan, fed by melting snow from mountains of Tajikistan and
Kyrgyzstan. Flooding and landslides sometimes occur during the
annual spring thaw.
Contemporary Tajiks are the descendants of ancient Eastern Iranian
inhabitants of Central Asia, in particular the Soghdians and the
Bactrians, and possibly other groups, with an admixture of western
Iranian Persians and non-Iranian peoples, Mongols, and Turkic
peoples. Until the 20th century, people in the region used two types
of distinction to identify themselves: way of life--either nomadic
or sedentary--and place of residence. By the late 19th century, the
Tajik and Uzbek peoples had lived in proximity for centuries and
often used--and continue to use--each other's languages. The
division of Central Asia into five Soviet Republics in the 1920s
imposed artificial divisions on a region in which many different
peoples lived intermixed. |
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The current Tajik Republic hearkens back to the Samanid Empire (A.D.
875-999), which ruled what is now Tajikistan as well as territory to
the south and west, as their role model and name for their currency.
During their reign, the Samanids supported the revival of the
written Persian language in the wake of the Arab Islamic conquest in
the early 8th century and played an important role in preserving the
culture of the pre-Islamic Persian-speaking world. They were the
last Persian-speaking empire to rule Central Asia.
The expanding Russian Empire encompassed the territory that is now
Tajikistan, along with most of the rest of Central Asia during the
late 19th and early 20th centuries. Russian rule collapsed briefly
after the Russian Revolution of 1917, as the Bolsheviks consolidated
their power and were embroiled in a civil war in other regions of
the former Russian Empire. As the Bolsheviks attempted to regain
Central Asia in the 1920s, an indigenous Central Asian resistance
movement based in the Ferghana Valley, the "Basmachi movement,"
resisted but was eliminated by 1925. Tajikistan became fully
established under Soviet control with the creation of Tajikistan as
an autonomous Soviet socialist republic within Uzbekistan in 1924,
and as an independent Soviet socialist republic in 1929. |
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