Fast Facts:
- Named for: Persian: تاجیک, romanized: tājīk, the Tayy tribe, whose first member may have been named “he who plastered the well”
- Capital: Dushanbe
- Long/Lat: 38.30 N/68.5 E , 7100 miles or 13 hours east of Castro Valley
- Population: 10.8 million or 164 CVs
- Size: 55,300 sq mi,or 3100 CVs
- Avg temp in April: 68 F/ 20 F
- Median income: $1,100 annually
- Ethnicity: 86% Tajiks, 11% Uzbeks
- Main industries: Aluminum, cotton, immigrant remittances (workers in other countries sending $$ home)
Like many of you, I have always been confused with the “-stans,” the seven Central Asian countries whose suffix means “land.” Everyone jokes about being unable to tell them apart–well, “everyone” who doesn’t live anywhere near there. I am sure that Tajikistanis would look at the USA and laugh at us creating Colorado and Wyoming. Squares? Americans have no imaginations! Why does Florida look like a man’s–
In the ongoing A-Z spirit of educating ourselves, I decided to make “T” Tajikistan, even though it’s not an especially small country. It’s 94th in size, which is in the middle of the list; it’s in the middle of the -stans, and the middle of Asia, the middle of what was once Persia, the middle of the Silk Road. It is in the middle.
There are two things that I think will help me remember Tajikistan. First it’s right above Afghanistan. Americans should know where that is, since we were at war there for over a decade. Secondly, it has a distinctive shape: the letter M, the symbol pi, or maybe the Arc de Triumphe as if it were created by an amoeba going “ole“! Hmm, perhaps Letter M might be simpler.
I don’t know if we can remember all the “stans.” However, sometimes it’s easier to learn them all in context, rather than-one off. Let’s try:
- Kazakhstan on top covers the rest like an umbrella, protecting them from Russia.
- Pakistan on “bottom” is directly NW (upper left) of India.
- Afghanistan is NW left of Pakistan.
- Turkmenistan is NW left of Afghanistan, and bordering the Caspian (where Turks are on the other side). Turkmenistan holds the left tendril of Kazakhstan like a dance partner.
- Uzbekistan is squeezed between Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
- Kyrgyzstan (Wow, so many consonants!) looks like a fish with an elongated lower jaw, snapping at Uzbekistan.
- Tajikistan sits under the “fish of Kyrgyzstan and is squeezing its letter M pincers over the NE corner of Afghanistan. And it says “OLE!”
That’s the shape of Tajikistan…see the Ole? Quick now, go back to that top map and see how many you can name!
But what about Tajikistani culture? For one thing, it’s very curious that the Tajikistanis have not derived from a nomadic culture. Much of the history of central Asia is about cultures that criss-crossed the Silk Road (remember my A-Z from 2023? About the Oxus ? ) Everyone was cameling back and forth between China, with its silks and jades, and Persia or Arabia, with its carpets and perfumes, etc. According to several sources, the Tajik culture was one which originated in its own deep mountains and let everyone pass over them.
Many cultures did pass over and “conquer” them. Wikipedia lists them: “… Oxus civilisation in west, with the Indo-Iranians arriving during the Andronovo culture. Parts of country were part of the Sogdian and Bactrian civilisations, and was ruled by those including the Achaemenids, Alexander the Great, the Greco-Bactrians, the Kushans, the Kidarites and Hephthalites, the First Turkic Khaganate, the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, the Samanid Empire, the Kara-Khanids, Seljuks, Khwarazmians, the Mongols, Timurids and Khanate of Bukhara. The region was later conquered by the Russian Empire, before becoming part of the Soviet Union. ..”
That’s a lot of underlines! Tajikistan was in the middle of all that. Both the Soviets and the Americans became familiar with the difficult mountain terrain of Afghanistan–did you see the first Iron Man movie? Tajikistan is even more mountainous. It’s right next to Afghanistan because it was one of the places the Soviets placed troops to invade from north to south in the late ’70s. You can see those pincers in the graphic below, labeled as Tajik SSR.
All seven of the Stans are in Central Asia, were Soviet Republics, and touch one another. But Tajikistan has a few unique qualities. As I noted, it’s the most mountainous of the Stans: 93% mountain, and was not populated by nomadic conquerors.
More than that, though it’s uniquely Persian. That is, of all the -stans, even though several of them touch Iran/Iraq and the area once called Persia, Tajikistan’s language is the only one with roots that are Persian, not Turkish or Pashtun. Tajik is a dialect of Farsi (Iran’s language).
However, after Imperial Russia took the country, and during the conversion to communism, the Sovies changed the lettering script from a Persian form to Cyrllic. Hence, they have a language that sounds Persian but is written like Russian. Talk about messing with your head!
The last Big unique cultural specialty of Tajikistan is sport. (How did I get so many blogs in before I started mentioning sports?) And it’s one of my favorites–a form of wrestling.
The sport is named Gushtingiri, and the official website claims it has been practiced for 5000 years, which means it was handed down through cultures before they had formalized writing. Gushtingiri is categorized as a style of folk wrestling, although it appears to be quite similar to judo.
Gush or “kusht” is a Sanskrit word meaning belt. The key to the sport is to throw the opponent on to their back, potentially by grabbing their belt, though it could be various parts of their clothing. Traditional gushtingiri required the full throw, but there appear to be modern versions where, like judo, there is scoring for lesser moves. Like many versions of wrestling worldwide, gushtingiri includes women as well as men wrestlers.
The true fans of gushtingiri are pressing for it to become an Olympic sport, but the biggest tournaments are performed on the Tajik New Year–Navruz, like the Persian Nowruz–out on a community park, on the grass, with goats and children wandering around. Just like it was 5000 years ago.