Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country located in Central Asia. Dushanbe is the capital and largest city of the country, with a population of over 1.2 million. Tajikistan borders Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east; it is narrowly separated from Pakistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor. Its total population exceeds 11 million.
The territory was previously home to cultures of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, including the Oxus civilisation in the west. Parts of the country 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. Since the end of the war, newly established political stability and foreign aid have allowed the country's economy to grow. The country has been led since 1994 by Emomali Rahmon, who heads an authoritarian regime and whose human rights record has been criticised.
Tajikistan is a presidential republic consisting of four provinces. Tajiks form the ethnic majority in the country, 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 that is 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.
The term 'Tajik' ultimately derives from the Middle Persian Tāzīk, the Turkic rendition of the Arabic ethnonym Ṭayyi’, denoting a Qahtanite Arab tribe that migrated to the Transoxiana region of Central Asia in the 7th century AD. Before 1991, Tajikistan appeared in English as Tadjikistan or Tadzhikistan. This is owing to a transliteration from the Russian: "Таджикистан". In Russian, there is no single letter 'j' to represent the phoneme /d͡ʒ/; instead, дж (transliterated as dzh) is used. Tadzhikistan is an alternative spelling and is found in English‑language literature derived from Russian sources.
Cultures in the region have been dated back to at least the fourth millennium BC, including the Bronze Age Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex, the Andronovo culture and the pro-urban site of Sarazm, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The earliest recorded history of the region dates back to about 500 BC when most, if not all, of Tajikistan was a part of the Achaemenid Empire. Some authors have suggested that in the seventh and sixth centuries BC parts of Tajikistan, including territories in the Zeravshan Valley, formed part of the Kambojas before they became part of the Achaemenid Empire. After the region's conquest by Alexander the Great it became part of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, a successor state of Alexander's empire. Northern Tajikistan (the cities of Khujand and Panjakent) was a part of Sogdiana, a collection of city-states which were overrun by Scytho-Siberians and Yuezhi nomadic tribes around 150 BC. The Silk Road passed through the region and following the expedition of Chinese explorer Zhang Qian during the reign of Wudi (141 BC – 87 BC) commercial relations between Han Empire and Sogdiana flourished. Sogdians played a role in facilitating trade and worked in other capacities, as farmers, carpetweavers, glassmakers, and woodcarvers.
The Kushan Empire, a collection of Yuezhi tribes, took control of the region in the first century AD and ruled until the fourth century AD during which time Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Manichaeism were practised in the region. Later the Hephthalite Empire, a collection of nomadic tribes, moved into the region, and the Arabs propagated Islam in the eighth century.
Four brothers – Nuh, Ahmad, Yahya, and Ilyas – founded the Samanid Empire. Each of them ruled territory under Abbasid suzerainty. In 892, Ismail Samani (892–907) united the Samanid state under a single ruler, thereby putting an end to the feudal system that had previously prevailed. It was under his rule that the Samanids became independent of Abbasid authority. The Samanid Empire (819–999) restored Persian control of the region and expanded the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara, which became the cultural centres of the Iranian world; the region was known as Khorasan. The empire was centred on Khorasan and Transoxiana, and at its greatest extent encompassed Afghanistan, parts of Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, parts of Kazakhstan, and Pakistan.
The Samanids revived Persian culture by patronising Rudaki, Bal'ami, and Daqiqi. The Samanids actively promoted Sunni Islam and suppressed Ismaili Shi'ism, but were more tolerant of Twelver Shi'ism. Islamic architecture and Perso‑Islamic culture were spread deep into the heartlands of Central Asia by the Samanids. Following the first complete translation of the Qur'an into Persian in the 9th century, populations under the Samanid Empire began to accept Islam in significant numbers.
The Karluk Turkic Kara-Khanid Khanate conquered Transoxania (which corresponded approximately to what would later become Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, southern Kyrgyzstan, and south‑west Kazakhstan) and ruled there from 999 to 1211. Their arrival in Transoxania marked a definitive shift from Iranian to Turkic predominance in Central Asia. Over time, the Kara‑Khanids became assimilated into the Perso‑Arab Muslim culture of the region.
The region was later ruled by the Ghurid and Kart dynasties, both of Tajik origin. While the Kart dynasty ruled in present‑day Afghanistan, Muhammad of Ghor, a ruler of the Ghurid dynasty, conquered large parts of India.
In the 13th century, the Mongol Empire swept through Central Asia, invaded the Khwarezmian Empire, and sacked its cities, looting and massacring their inhabitants. The Turco‑Mongol conqueror Tamerlane founded the Timurid Empire, becoming the first ruler of the Timurid dynasty in what later became Tajikistan and Central Asia.
The territory that later became Tajikistan came under the rule of the Khanate of Bukhara during the 16th century. Following the khanate's collapse in the 18th century, the region fell under the control of the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Kokand. The Emirate of Bukhara remained intact until the 20th century.
During the 19th century, the Russian Empire began to conquer parts of the region. Russian Imperialism led to the Russian Empire's conquest of Central Asia during the 19th century's Imperial Era. Between 1864 and 1885, Russia gradually took control of the entire territory of Russian Turkestan, the Tajikistan portion of which had been controlled by the Emirate of Bukhara and Khanate of Kokand. Russia was interested in gaining access to a supply of cotton and in the 1870s attempted to switch cultivation in the region from grain to cotton (a strategy later copied and expanded by the Soviets).
During the 19th century, the Jadidists established themselves as an Islamic social movement throughout the region. While the Jadidists were pro-modernisation and not necessarily anti-Russian, the Russians viewed the movement as a threat because the Russian Empire was predominantly Christian. Russian troops were required to restore order during uprisings against the Khanate of Kokand between 1910 and 1913. Further violence occurred in July 1916 when demonstrators attacked Russian soldiers in Khujand over the threat of forced conscription during World War I. While Russian troops brought Khujand back under control, clashes continued throughout the year in various locations in Tajikistan.