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Tajiks

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This article is about the Central Asian Persians known as Tajiks. Refer also to Persian people. For other uses, see Tajiks (disambiguation).
Tajik people
Тоҷик
Total population
ca. 16 to 22 million (estimates vary)
Regions with significant populations
 Afghanistan8,595,000 (2013)[1]
 Tajikistan6,410,000 (2013)[2]
 Uzbekistan
    		1,420,000 (2012, official)
other, non-official, scholarly estimates are 8 - 11 million[3][4][5]
 Pakistan220,000[6]
 Russia201,000[7]
 United States52,000[8]
 Kyrgyzstan47,500[9]
 China41,028[10]
 Canada15,870[11]
 Ukraine4,255[12]
Languages
Persian
varieties of Dari and Tajiki
Religion
Predominantly Islam
Historically Zoroastrianism

Tajik (Template:Lang-fa: Tājīk , Template:Lang-tg) or Tajiks is a general designation for a wide range of Persian-speaking people of Iranian origin,[13] with traditional homelands in present-day Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. Those falling under the ethno-linguistic label of being a Tajik today were historically known as Arians, Khwarezmians, Parthians, Sogdians and Bactrians.[14]

As a self-designation, the term Tajik, which earlier on had been more or less pejorative, has become acceptable only during the last several decades, particularly as a result of Soviet administration in Central Asia.[13] Alternative names for the Tajiks are Fārsī (Persian), Fārsīwān (Persian-speaker), and Dīhgān (cf. Template:Lang-tg, literally "farmer or settled villager", in a wider sense "settled" in contrast to "nomadic" and also described as a class of land-owning magnates during the Sassanid and early Islamic period).[15] The term Tajik itself is a synonym to Persian and is used as a means of describing central asian Persians of which do not hail from modern day Iran.

Not all Tajiks speak a variety of modern Persian. They may speak any one of the extant Iranian languages. For example, the Tajiks of China speak Eastern Iranian languages and are distinct from more western Tajiks.[16][17]

History

Further information: Samanid Empire
File:Ismaili somoni dushanbe.jpg
Monument of Amir Ismail Samani. Under his reign it saw the emergence of the Samanids as a powerful force and being the one who propagated Sunni Islam deep into Central Asia.

The Tajiks are an Iranian people, speaking a variety of Persian, concentrated in the Oxus Basin, the Farḡāna valley (Tajikistan and parts of Uzbekistan) and on both banks of the upper Oxus, i.e., the Pamir Mountains (Mountain Badaḵšān, in Tajikistan) and northeastern Afghanistan (Badaḵšān).[18]

According to Richard Nelson Frye, a leading historian of Iranian and Central Asian history, the Persian migration to Central Asia may be considered the beginning of the modern Tajik nation, and ethnic Persians, along with some elements of East-Iranian Bactrians and Sogdians, as the main ancestors of modern Tajiks.[19] In later works, Frye expands on the complexity of the historical origins of the Tajiks. In a 1996 publication, Frye explains that many "factors must be taken into account in explaining the evolution of the peoples whose remnants are the Tajiks in Central Asia" and that "the peoples of Central Asia, whether Iranian or Turkic speaking, have one culture, one religion, one set of social values and traditions with only language separating them."[20]

The geographical division between the eastern and western Iranians is often considered historically and currently to be the desert Dasht-e Kavir, situated in the center of the Iranian plateau.[citation needed]

Name

The Samanid Empire is considered as the first Tajik state[21]

According to Encyclopaedia Iranica:[18]

The most plausible and generally accepted origin of the word is Middle Persian tāzīk ‘Arab’ (cf. New Persian tāzi), or an Iranian (Sogdian or Parthian) cognate word. The Muslim armies that invaded Transoxiana early in the eighth century, conquering the Sogdian principalities and clashing with the Qarluq Turks (see Bregel, Atlas, Maps 8–10) consisted not only of Arabs, but also of Persian converts from Fārs and the central Zagros region (Bartol’d [Barthold], “Tadžiki,” pp. 455–57). Hence the Turks of Central Asia adopted a variant of the Iranian word, täžik, to designate their Muslim adversaries in general. By the eleventh century (Yusof Ḵāṣṣ-ḥājeb, Qutadḡu bilig, lines 280, 282, 3265), the Qarakhanid Turks applied this term more specifically to the Persian Muslims in the Oxus basin and Khorasan, who were variously the Turks’ rivals, models, overlords (under the Samanid Dynasty), and subjects (from Ghaznavid times on). Persian writers of the Ghaznavid, Seljuq and Atābak periods (ca. 1000–1260) adopted the term and extended its use to cover Persians in the rest of Greater Iran, now under Turkish rule, as early as the poet ʿOnṣori, ca. 1025 (Dabirsiāqi, pp. 3377, 3408). Iranians soon accepted it as an ethnonym, as is shown by a Persian court official’s referring to mā tāzikān “we Tajiks” (Bayhaqi, ed. Fayyāz, p. 594). The distinction between Turk and Tajik became stereotyped to express the symbiosis and rivalry of the (ideally) nomadic military executive and the urban civil bureaucracy (Niẓām al-Molk: tāzik, pp. 146, 178–79; Fragner, “Tādjīk. 2” in EI2 10, p. 63).

According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, however, the oldest known usage of the word Tajik as a reference to Persians in Persian literature can be found in the writings of the Persian poet Jalal ad-Din Rumi.[22] The 15th century Turkic-speaking poet Mīr Alī Šer Navā'ī also used Tajik as a reference to Persians.[23]

An example for the usage of the word Tajik in Persian literature is, for example, the writing of Sa'adi:

شایَد کِه بَه پادشاه بگویند
ترک تو بریخت خون تاجیک

Šāyad ki ba pādšāh bigōyand
Turk-i tu birēxt xūn-i Tāǰīk

It's appropriate to tell the King,
Your Turk shed the blood of Tajik

Location

Afghan Parliamentarian Dr. Nilofar Ibrahimi
File:Tajik girls on holiday Navruz.jpg
Tajik girls on holiday Navruz. Dushanbe,Tajikistan
Tajiks Celebrate Nawrooz in Afghanistan. This picture shows what Hafseen constitutes of.

The Tajiks are the principal ethnic group in most of Tajikistan, as well as in northern and western Afghanistan, though there are more Tajiks in Afghanistan than in Tajikistan. Tajiks are a substantial minority in Uzbekistan, as well as in overseas communities. Historically, the ancestors of the Tajiks lived in a larger territory in Central Asia than now.

Afghanistan

Main article: Demography of Afghanistan

According to the World Factbook, Tajiks make up about 27% of the population in Afghanistan,[1] but the Encyclopædia Britannica explains that they constitute about one-fifth of the population.[24] They are predominant in four of the largest cities in Afghanistan (Kabul, Mazar-e Sharif, Herat, and Ghazni) and make up the largest ethnic group in the northern and western provinces of Balkh, Takhar, Badakhshan, Samangan, Parwan, Panjshir, Kapisa, Baghlan, Ghor, Badghis and Herat.

In Afghanistan, the Tajiks do not organize themselves by tribes and refer to themselves by the region, province, city, town, or village that they are from; such as Badakhshi, Baghlani, Mazari, Panjsheri, Kabuli, Herati, Kohistani etc.[25] Although in the past, some non-Pashto speaking tribes were identified as Tajik, for example the Furmuli.[26][27]

Tajikistan

Main article: Demographics of Tajikistan

Tajiks comprise around 79.9% of the population of Tajikistan.[2] This number includes speakers of the Pamiri languages, including Wakhi and Shughni, and the Yaghnobi people who in the past were considered by the government of the Soviet Union nationalities separate from the Tajiks. In the 1926 and 1937 Soviet censuses, the Yaghnobis and Pamiri language speakers were counted as separate nationalities. After 1937, these groups were required to register as Tajiks.[28]

Uzbekistan

Main article: Demographics of Uzbekistan
View of the Registan in Samarkand- Although the second largest city of Uzbekistan, it is predominantly a Tajik populated city, along with Bukhara

In Uzbekistan, the Tajiks are the largest part of the population of the ancient cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, and are found in large numbers in the Surxondaryo Province in the south and along Uzbekistan's eastern border with Tajikistan. According to official statistics (2000), Surxondaryo Province accounts for 24.4% of all Tajiks in Uzbekistan, with another 34.3% in Samarqand and Bukhara provinces.[29]

Official statistics in Uzbekistan state that the Tajik community comprises 5% of the nation's total population.[30] However, these numbers do not include ethnic Tajiks who, for a variety of reasons, choose to identify themselves as Uzbeks in population census forms.[31] During the Soviet "Uzbekization" supervised by Sharof Rashidov, the head of the Uzbek Communist Party, Tajiks had to choose either stay in Uzbekistan and get registered as Uzbek in their passports or leave the republic for Tajikistan, which is mountainous and less agricultural.[32] It is only in the last population census (1989) that the nationality could be reported not according to the passport, but freely declared on the basis of the respondent's ethnic self-identification.[33] This had the effect of increasing the Tajik population in Uzbekistan from 3.9% in 1979 to 4.7% in 1989. Expert estimates suggest that Tajiks may make up 35% of Uzbekistan's population.[3][34]

Kazakhstan

Main article: Demographics of Kazakhstan

According to the 1999 population census, there were 26,000 Tajiks in Kazakhstan (0.17% of the total population), about the same number as in the 1989 census.

Kyrgyzstan

Main article: Demographics of Kyrgyzstan

According to official statistics, there were about 47,500 Tajiks in Kyrgyzstan in 2007 (0.9% of the total population), up from 42,600 in the 1999 census and 33,500 in the 1989 census.

Turkmenistan

Main article: Demographics of Turkmenistan

According to the last Soviet census in 1989, there were 3,149 Tajiks in Turkmenistan, or less than 0.1% of the total population of 3.5 million at that time. The first population census of independent Turkmenistan conducted in 1995 showed 3,103 Tajiks in a population of 4.4 million (0.07%), most of them (1,922) concentrated in the eastern provinces of Lebap and Mary adjoining the borders with Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.[35]

Russia

The population of Tajiks in Russia is about 200,303 according to the 2010 census, up from 38,000 in the last Soviet census of 1989.[36] Most Tajiks came to Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Pakistan

Main article: Tajiks in Pakistan

There are an estimated 220,000 Tajiks in Pakistan, mainly refugees from Afghanistan and Tajikistan.[37] Their number was higher in the 1990s, but in the last decade many have left Pakistan and returned to their native countries.[6] Some Tajiks are also living in Hunza, Ishkoman and along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan called "Broghil".

Physical characteristics

File:Tajik Pamiri children.jpg
Pamiri children in Tajikistan
A group of boys from Tajikistan.
File:Multilocus genetic landscape of Central Asia.jpg
Genetic origins of Tajiks from various parts of Tajikistan. Central/South Asian (e.g. Iranian) and European ancestry is prominent throughout most of the country with little Mideast and East Asian admixture, while a roughly even mix of East, Central Asian, Mideast, and European in the far northern and western projections.

On the whole, Tajiks are a genetically diverse population, displaying a wide range of phenotypes. Around 10% of Tajiks are said to have blond hair, more prevalent in the Zarafshan and Pamir region, where they are known as Pamiri people.[38] Some ethnic Tajiks, particularly those from Tajikistan, show clear Mongoloid admixture possibly originating from their Kyrgyz and Uzbek neighbors.

Culture

Part of a series on
Tajiks
History and culture
Population

Language

Main articles: Tajik language, Persian language, and Dari (Persian)
Tajik Republic coat of Arms with Persian language: جمهوری اجتماعی شوروى مختار تاجيكستان

The language of the Tajiks is an eastern dialect of Persian, called Dari (derived from Darbārī, "[of/from the] royal courts", in the sense of "courtly language"), or also Parsi-e Darbari. In Tajikistan, where Cyrillic script is used, it is called the Tajiki language. Historically, it was considered the local dialect of Persian spoken by the Tajik/Persian ethnic group in Central Asia, from where it spread westward only to drive the Arabic language out as the mother tongue of ethnic Persians. In

  1. ^ a b "Population of Afghanistan". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Retrieved 2012-08-09.
  2. ^ a b "Tajikistan". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. May 5, 2010. Retrieved 2010-05-26.
  3. ^ a b Richard Foltz (1996). "The Tajiks of Uzbekistan". Central Asian Survey. 15 (2): 213–216. doi:10.1080/02634939608400946.
  4. ^ Karl Cordell, "Ethnicity and Democratisation in the New Europe", Routledge, 1998. p. 201: "Consequently, the number of citizens who regard themselves as Tajiks is difficult to determine. Tajikis within and outside of the republic, Samarkand State University (SamGU) academic and international commentators suggest that there may be between six and seven million Tajiks in Uzbekistan, constituting 30% of the republic's 22 million population, rather than the official figure of 4.7%(Foltz 1996;213; Carlisle 1995:88).
  5. ^ Lena Jonson (1976) "Tajikistan in the New Central Asia", I.B.Tauris, p. 108: "According to official Uzbek statistics there are slightly over 1 million Tajiks in Uzbekistan or about 3% of the population. The unofficial figure is over 6 million Tajiks. They are concentrated in the Sukhandarya, Samarqand and Bukhara regions."
  6. ^ a b United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2002-10-01). "Long-time Tajik refugees return home from Pakistan". UNHCR. Retrieved 2012-06-11.
  7. ^ Russian 2010 Census results; see also Ethnic groups in Russia
  8. ^ This figure only includes Tajiks from Afghanistan. The population of people from Afghanistan the United States is estimated as 80,414 (2005). United States Census Bureau. "US demographic census". Retrieved 2008-01-23. Of this number, approximately 65% are Tajiks according to a group of American researchers (Barbara Robson, Juliene Lipson, Farid Younos, Mariam Mehdi). Robson, Barbara and Lipson, Juliene (2002) "Chapter 5(B)- The People: The Tajiks and Other Dari-Speaking Groups" The Afghans – their history and culture Cultural Orientation Resource Center, Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, D.C., OCLC 56081073.
  9. ^ "Ethnic composition of the population in Kyrgyzstan 1999–2007" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-06-11.
  10. ^ "The Tajik ethnic minority 塔吉克族-56个民族-东岜艺术". Artwork-cn.com. Retrieved 2012-06-11.
  11. ^ This figure only includes Tajiks from Afghanistan. The population of people with descent from Afghanistan in Canada is 48,090 according to Canada's 2006 Census. Tajiks make up an estimated 27% of the population of Afghanistan. The Tajik population in Canada is estimated from these two figures. Ethnic origins, 2006 counts, for Canada.
  12. ^ State statistics committee of Ukraine – National composition of population, 2001 census (Ukrainian)
  13. ^ a b C.E. Bosworth, B.G. Fragner (1999). "TĀDJĪK". Encyclopaedia of Islam (CD-ROM Edition v. 1.0 ed.). Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV.
  14. ^ "Tajik". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2012-11-27.
  15. ^ M. Longworth Dames, G. Morgenstierne, and R. Ghirshman (1999). "AFGHĀNISTĀN". Encyclopaedia of Islam (CD-ROM Edition v. 1.0 ed.). Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. ^ Arlund, Pamela S. (2006). An Acoustic, Historical, And Developmental Analysis Of Sarikol Tajik Diphthongs. PhD Dissertation. The University of Texas at Arlington. p. 191.
  17. ^ Felmy, Sabine (1996). The voice of the nightingale: a personal account of the Wakhi culture in Hunza. Karachi: Oxford University Press. p. 4. ISBN 0-19-577599-6.
  18. ^ a b John Perry, "TAJIK i. THE ETHNONYM: ORIGINS AND APPLICATION", http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/tajik-i-the-ethnonym-origins-and-application
  19. ^ Richard Nelson Frye, "Persien: bis zum Einbruch des Islam" (original English title: "The Heritage Of Persia"), German version, tr. by Paul Baudisch, Kindler Verlag AG, Zürich 1964, pp. 485–498
  20. ^ Frye, Richard Nelson (1996). The heritage of Central Asia from antiquity to the Turkish expansion. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers. p. 4. ISBN 1-55876-110-1.
  21. ^ Lena Jonson, Tajikistan in the new Central Asia, (I.B.Tauris, 2006), 18.
  22. ^ C.E. Bosworth/B.G. Fragner, "Tādjīk", in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Online Edition: "... In Islamic usage, [Tādjīk] eventually came to designate the Persians, as opposed to Turks [...] the oldest citation for it which Schraeder could find was in verses of Djalāl al-Dīn Rūmī ..."
  23. ^ Ali Shir Nava'i Muhakamat al-lughatain tr. & ed. Robert Devereaux (Leiden: Brill) 1966 p6
  24. ^ "Tajik". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved November 6, 2011. There were about 5,000,000 in Afghanistan, where they constituted about one-fifth of the population.
  25. ^ Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress (1997). "Afghanistan: Tajik". Country Studies Series. Library of Congress. Retrieved 2007-12-19.
  26. ^ Bellew, Henry Walter (1891) An inquiry into the ethnography of Afghanistan The Oriental Institute, Woking, Butler & Tanner, Frome, United Kingdom, page 126, OCLC 182913077
  27. ^ Markham, C. R. (January 1879) "The Mountain Passes on the Afghan Frontier of British India" Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography (New Monthly Series) 1(1): pp. 38–62, p.48
  28. ^ Suny, Ronald Grigor (2006). "History and Foreign Policy: From Constructed Identities to "Ancient Hatreds" East of the Caspian". In Shaffer, Brenda (ed.). The Limits of Culture: Islam and Foreign Policy. MIT Press. pp. 100–110. ISBN 0-262-69321-6.
  29. ^ Ethnic Atlas of Uzbekistan, Part 1: Ethnic minorities, Open Society Institute, table with number of Tajiks by province Template:Ru icon.
  30. ^ "Uzbekistan". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. May 6, 2010. Retrieved 2010-05-26.
  31. ^ Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (February 23, 2000). "Uzbekistan". Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – 1999. U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 2007-12-19.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  32. ^ Rahim Masov, The History of the Clumsy Delimitation, Irfon Publ. House, Dushanbe, 1991 Template:Ru icon. English translation: The History of a National Catastrophe, transl. Iraj Bashiri, 1996.
  33. ^ Ethnic Atlas of Uzbekistan, Part 1: Ethnic minorities, Open Society Institute, p. 195 Template:Ru icon.
  34. ^ Svante E. Cornell, "Uzbekistan: A Regional Player in Eurasian Geopolitics?", European Security, vol. 20, no. 2, Summer 2000.
  35. ^ Population census of Turkmenistan 1995, Vol. 1, State Statistical Committee of Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, 1996, pp. 75–100.
  36. ^ "2002 Russian census". Perepis2002.ru. Retrieved 2012-06-11.
  37. ^ The ethnic composition of the 1.7 million registered Afghan refugees living in Pakistan are believed to be 85% Pashtun and 15% Tajik, Uzbek and others. "2012 UNHCR country operations profile – Pakistan". Retrieved 2012-08-08.
  38. ^ Around the Roof of the World. Nicholas Shoumatoff, Nina Shoumatoff (2000). University of Michigan Press. p.9. ISBN 0-472-08669-3
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