In southwest Tajikistan the Amudar'ya(2) river is formed where the Pyandzh, which marks most of the nation's southern border, joins the Vakksh, which flows from the northeast. The new river continues to fill the role of the Pyandzh, following the southern border of Uzbekistan(3).
North of these valleys are the Pamirs which rise to nearly 7,500 meters at Peak Imeni Ismail Samani(4). To their north, the Surkhob River, one of the two sources of the Vakksh, forms a deep, narrow valley that separates the Pamirs from the Alays. The Alays peak at more than 5,500 meters at Peak Piramidal'ny on the Kyrgyzstan border.
Tajikistan extends an irregular piece beyond the Pamirs and into the Ferghana Valley of the Syrdar'ya.(5) The northwest of this part of the nation is bounded by an extension of the Tien(6) Mountains, the Kurominskij(7) Range, which approach 4,000 meters.
The largest lake, Karakul, is in the northeast, but a reservoir on the Vakksh, formed by a 300 plus meter dam, is more accessible to the capital. Another reservoir is on the Syrdar'ya in the Ferghana.
About seven in ten speak dialects of Persian, almost all of them Tajiki. Only one linguistic minority accounts for as many as one in twenty: speakers of Northern Uzbek, who amount to almost one in five. More than one in ten are left, speaking a variety of languages.
Eighty-five percent of the almost seven million residents are Moslems; 80 percent Sunni Moslems. Most of the rest are non-religious.
The largest city is the capital, Dushanbe, with more than 800,000 metropolitan residents, most of them in the city proper. The city has a short history, growing from a market village in the 19th century to local pre-eminence in the 20th.
Iranian peoples moved into the area from the west in its pre-history. The Bactrians lived in what is now southern Tajikistan and parts of what are now its neighbors.(8) Further north the Sogdians(9), also Iranian, lived in the Ferghana and beyond this area westward. Both the Bactrians and the Sogdians were conquered by the Tocharians, also known as the Yueh-Chih(10), who entered from the north and ruled from the Ferghana. These changes also displaced the Scythians(11), another Iranian group, who crossed this area when some of them moved southwestward. These changes took place more than 2,000 years ago.
The religion of these peoples was probably originally like that of other Iranian groups, and they probably adopted Zoroastrianism to the same extent as other Iranians. However, under the Yueh-Chih, they soon adopted influences from the south, primarily Buddhism, but also Shivaism. And the Sogdians, while most famous as Manichean proselytizers, included Nestorian Christians and Buddhists.
The Yueh-Chih were conquered by the Hephthalites, a group of unknown language affiliation and diverse or syncretic religion.(12)
Turks conquered the area next, in the sixth century C.E., and Arabs, called "Tazi" locally, invaded, introducing Islam. The ethnonym, Tajik, comes from the word Tazi, but now refers to insiders instead of outsiders.
The Turks were in turn conquered by Moslem Persians in the eighth century, but their empire soon disintegrated. The local fragment(13) was conquered by the Kara-Khitai Turks in 999.
Next came Mongol rule in the 13th century. When their empire fractured, Moslem Turkic groups came to the fore again. Chief among them were the Uzbeks(14), starting in the 15th century. They displaced Tajik speakers from the western Ferghana.
In the 19th century Russians conquered the Uzbeks, and introduced their language and the Christian Orthodox religion. There are still some of each today. When the Russian empire became communist aetheist, many Moslems became non-relgious, and some remain so in the post-Russian era.
west, north of the northwest, and east of Tajikistan's portion of the Ferghana
south of Tajikistan's portion of the Freghana, and north of the bulk of the nation
east
south
(1) More formally, Tajikiston. I do not include the Vorukh Enclave here.
(2) Classically, the Oxus.
(3) More formally, Uzbekiston.
(4) Formerly, Communism Peak.
(5) Asia's ninth longest river.
(6) 'Heavenly' in Chinese.
(7) Also transliterated from Russian as Kurominskiy.
(8) The Bactrians used the script of their conquerors, the Greeks.
(9) Their linguistic descendents are the Yaghnobi of northeast Tajikistan.
(10) They called themselves Arshi-kantu. They, like the Iranians, are an Indo-European group. The Kushanas are a dynasty of Tocharians.
(11) Also called Shakas or Sakas.
(12) Nestorian Christianity was common, and they practiced Christian burials, but they were also said to worship heaven and fire, which sounds like Zoroastrianism.
(13) These Samanid rulers are considered Tajiks by today's nationalists. They were centered in Bukhara, in today's Uzbekistan.
(14) Timur the Lame, or Timurlane, was their first emperor.