Tajiks

ETHNONYMS: Tadjiks, Tadzhiks

Orientation

Identification and Location. Tajiks are a Central Asian people who live in Afghanistan, some of the republics of the former Soviet Union, and China. The Republic of Tajikistan, which emerged after the breakup of the Soviet Union, contains the majority of the Tajik population. Tojikistoni shuravi (Soviet Tadzhikistan), a sovereign Soviet republic, was formed in 1929 from a portion of the former czarist Russian empire in Central Asia.

The distinguishing features of Tajiks are their language, sedentary lifestyle, and Islamic-Iranian culture. The widespread employment of Tajik as an ethnopolitical term emerged during the Soviet usage era; before that time regional rather than linguistic affiliation was the basis of selfidentification. In Soviet usage, the term also includes speakers of non-Persian Iranian languages who inhabit mountain valleys in the Pamir mountains area, such as Sarikolis, Wakhis, and Shugnis.

Tajik-inhabited areas fall roughly between 65 and 75° W. and 35 and 42° N. Tajikistan was the southeastern most republic of the former Soviet Union and is bordered by Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to the west and north, the Xinjiang Uigur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China to the east, and Afghanistan to the south. The land area of Tajikistan is 55,236 square miles (143,100 square kilometers) . The entire Tajik-inhabited region is very mountainous with narrow valleys; crops are nourished by mineral silt and irrigation from rapidly flowing rivers fed by melting snow. The rivers form tributaries of the Panj, which flows into the Amu Darya (Oxus River). Northern Tajikistan includes parts of the Ferghana Valley, where the waters eventually meet to flow into the Syr Darya (Jaxartes River).

Geographically, the Tajik Republic is trifurcated by mountains that are impassable by road in the winter. The northern portion is dominated by the town of Khojent, formerly Leninabad; the capital, Dushanbe, known from 1930 to 1931 as Stalinabad, is in the south. To the east but still part of the Tajik Republic is the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, a sparsely populated area inhabited mainly by small, valley-dwelling ethnic groups, including the Kyrgyz. The major urban center in this area is Khorog.

The climate falls within the temporal continental high-altitude range, with about 320 days of sunshine. Precipitation occurs as rain and snow, mainly between November and April. Summers are hot and dry.

Demography. The world Tajik population is more difficult to analyze than that within the republics of the former Soviet Union, although that statistic also has been subject to manipulation, especially outside Tajikstan. The 1989 census placed the number of Tajiks within the Soviet Union at 4,217,000, 3,168,000 of whom lived within their own republic and 932,000 of whom resided in Uzbekistan; thus, about 99 percent of Tajiks resided in those two republics. Together with the estimated 4 million Dari speakers in Afghanistan, who may also be identified broadly as Tajik, and smaller numbers in the People's Republic of China, the world Tajik population can be estimated at about 9 million. Since the 1959 Soviet census, Tajiks have more than doubled in number, making them the fastest-growing major ethnic group of the former Soviet Union. They constitute 62.3 percent of the population of Tajikistan and 4.7 percent of that of Uzbekistan (Uzbeks constitute 23.5 percent of the population of Tajikistan). The number of Russians in Tajikistan has been declining (7 percent in 1989) and had fallen to about 4 percent at the end of the twentieth century. In 2000 the population of Tajikistan was 6,440,732, showing a growth rate of just over 2 percent. Among the total population, 42 percent was under fourteen years of age. Tajiks who fled to Afghanistan during the civil war and were aided by the United Nations have largely returned to their homes or have emigrated.

Linguistic Affiliation. The standard Tajik dialect is mutually intelligible with the Persian of Iran and the Dari of Afghanistan and is increasingly being called either Farsi-Tojiki or Farsi (Persian); these languages form the major living branch of the Iranian language family, a branch of the Indo-European language group. In addition to standard Tajik, there are nineteen dialects that differ from one another morphologically and phonetically. Rural mountain valley people cannot be readily understood by urban Tajiks, who generally use the standard dialect. Tajik intellectuals are monolingual (Russian), bilingual (Tajik and Russian), or trilingual (Tajik, Russian, and Uzbek). The Tajiks on the whole are one of the least Russified Muslim communities of the former Soviet Union; in 1979, only 22,666 claimed Russian as their "first native language."

History and Cultural Relations

Tajik historical development is intertwined with that of the other sedentary people of Central Asia, especially the Uzbeks. Before the coming of the Turks to the area and their eventual sedentarization, Iranian groups dominated the urban oases. Islam eventually became universally accepted, and Turkic conquerors adjusted their religious and literary culture to that of the local inhabitants they ruled. Local (Tajik) administrators continued to dominate public life under Turkic tribally affiliated rulers. This hybrid Turko-Iranian culture dominated the important oasis towns, especially Bukhara and Samarkand. Bilingualism—Tajik and (Turkic) Chagatay or Uzbek—was widespread on the literate and nonliterate levels through the early twentieth century. Most Tajik areas fell under the Bukharan and Khokand khanates until the Khokand khanates were destroyed by czarist forces in 1876 and incorporated into the Turkestan governor-generalship. Resistance to czarist and then Bolshevik rule gained strength in Tajik areas, where Basmachi bands of Uzbeks and Tajiks were not defeated until 1932. With the division of Soviet Central Asia along ethnolinguistic lines in 1924, a Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) was set aside within the Uzbek SSR and in 1929 became a full-fledged Tajik SSR.

Most educated and elite Tajiks lived in Bukhara and Samarkand and made the transition to Dushanbe and other Tajik territory reluctantly. Both the status and the size of the Tajik population in those two cities are sources of controversy; many Tajiks feel that those cities, together with Khiva, as traditional Tajik centers of culture, should be part of Tajikistan.

Disentangling a distinct Tajik culture from the Uzbek culture around it and from non-Soviet Persian culture became the focus of cultural activity during the Stalinist period. Separate Tajik institutions, organized on the All-Union model, attempted to use valley dialects, history, and especially archaeology to create a Tajik history disassociated from Islam and distinct from other Central Asian cultures. The thawing of Soviet-Iranianrelations led to ever-closer Iranian-Tajik cultural relations; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 saw increasing Tajik tutelage of Afghans in Kabul as well as in Dushanbe. Important in this international cultural linking have been Russians and Russianized Tajiks. The Uzbek-Tajik bilingual pattern has been replaced by a Tajik-Russian one. Tension has been growing between Tajiks and Uzbeks owing in part to attempts by Uzbeks to increase their power in Tajikistan.

On the eve of the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Tajikistan became independent but was still under the control of functionaries from the Soviet period. By late 1992 democratic opposition had forced the displacement of leading former communists, but the challenge to stability came with the rise of regionally-based Islamic parties. Into this mix entered Iran and Russia, with Iran expressing a wish to aid a fellow Persianate entity and Russia worried about vulnerability to the spread of Islamic extremism and concern in the region that Tajikistan would become an area of conflict like the neighboring Afghanistan. As the poorest country of the former Soviet Union, Tajik's economy fell victim to a lack of energy resources and an inability to export and import caused by the war in Afghanistan and fear among its neighbors that the civil war would spread into other parts of Central Asia. At the end of the civil war (1992-1997) reconstruction efforts spearheaded by the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund and administered through bilateral arrangements with other countries have encouraged the creation of a flexible infrastructure for economic development. Despite the introduction of a Tajik currency, the Osomoni, reliance on foreign currency is widespread.

After 1994, as pressure on Tajiks in Afghanistan began to mount to give way before the Pushtun forces of the Taliban, Afghanistan's Tajiks sought shelter in the relatively less violent areas of Tajikistan. Ostensible consultation trips by President Burhannudin Rabbani to Dushanbe extended over months, especially when the Taliban drove the Tajik and allied ethnic forces out of Kabul in 1996. The close working relationship developed by the Northern Alliance to include the former communist Uzbek leader of Afghanistan, who was supported by Tashkent, brought about a confluence of interests among leaders in Tashkent, Moscow, Dushanbe, and Iran. In early 2002 it was not certain whether, with the removal of the Taliban from Kabul, that working relationship would continue.

Settlements

Most of Tajikistan is rural; 85 percent of the population lives in valleys and mountain areas up to 5,250 feet (1,600 meters) in elevation. Most of these settlements are organized in the kolkhoz/sovkhoz pattern superimposed on former villages (deh kishlaq) that are sometimes equivalent to loosely extended families practicing endogamy. There are pockets of industrialization in rural areas where non-Tajiks as well as Tajiks work. In the north and south the population density ranges from 19 to 58 per square mile (50 to 150 per square kilometer), whereas in the mountains it is as low as 1 to 1.5 per square mile (2 to 4 per square kilometer). New urban settlements have expanded from former villages. Urban administrative centers, especially Dushanbe, have grown along Western patterns, with roads for motorized vehicles, apartment blocks, parks, and industries. Old villages retain extended family homes that often are situated within orchards and vineyards. Walled compounds ensure household privacy.

Economy

Subsistence. Despite the small amount of land suitable for agriculture, most Tajiks support themselves by producing and processing agricultural products for sale or trade. The silk and cotton industry has not been reorganized to function in world markets since it had essentially been a subsidized domestic industry. The chemical and aluminum industries, relying heavily on the presence of now departing Russian or Slavic experts, also have been slow to adapt to the new economic environment. Suffering most from a lack of outside subsidies have been education, the arts, and cultural organizations, which were major employment sources. Substituting in part for some of the employment in those fields has been the large presence of nongovernmental organizations, whose need for educated office staff has attracted former university professors and other academics.

Commercial Activities. Under the Soviet system, Tajikistan was organized along Soviet Marxist economic lines. Cotton, a commercial product developed during the czarist period, has dominated Tajik agriculture; Tajikistan ranks second among former republics of the Soviet Union in cotton production. Other agricultural products, geared to the western, urban Soviet centers, include grapes and orchard fruits and nuts, vegetables, grain, and flowers. Greenhouse production, especially in the Surkhan Darya region, is flown to colder parts of the former Soviet Union. Stockbreeding, chiefly by Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, also contributes to the economy in mountainous regions. A black-market economy in produce, later expanded to manufactured goods smuggled from Afghanistan, also thrives. The privatization of industry has led to the idling of one in five factories, the sale of government tourist industry sites, and the breakdown of educational systems, especially higher education. Political stability has led to redevelopment of the economy along market lines, leading to a higher degree of production diversity in agriculture and the slow restoration of industry, especially the aluminum industrial complex.

Industrial Arts. Hydroelectric power and mining and processing are the main heavy industries. Large dams (Qairoqqum, Nurek, Sarband, Boighazi, Markazi, and Sharshara) supply power to Soviet Central Asia and Afghanistan. Industrial manufacturing is dominated by cotton-related machinery. Together with light industry in textiles, furniture, and food processing, the industrial sector employs most non-Tajiks, especially Russians.

Trade. Under the Soviet system, trade within the nation was conducted on a nonmonetary basis. Thus, Tajik cotton, hydroelectric power, and other products were traded by Moscow on the world market for hard currency or as barter items. In return Tajikistan received needed commodities and services. On a lower level, trade in fresh agricultural produce on private plots had flourished under the Soviet system and continues in urban areas where the Soviet government constructed new bazaars, which are still maintained, to facilitate private trade. The transition to an independent state, the concomitant civil war, an end to Russian aid, and the necessity for cash payments for energy and food have crippled trade. The reestablishment of regional trade depends on stability. Tajikistan exports to Russia, Ukraine, Belorus, and Switzerland. The inflation rate is 22 percent.

Division of Labor. Labor patterns changed under the Soviet system in two important ways: the importation of labor (Slavs, Koreans) and the mobilization of women into the formal labor force. This imposed system of labor resulted in nominal universal employment. Most women, however, do agricultural work. The fast-growing Tajik rural population shows signs of having outpaced the nation's capacity for agricultural employment. Entry into light or heavy industry appears to be prevented by lack of training and aptitude. Women, who are visible in high positions, continue to be the only ones who perform domestic labor.

Land Tenure. Under collectivization, little land remained private, although private homes were frequently retained. As collectivization has been dismantled, the problems of commercial crop production, the small amount of arable land for the large rural population, and the desire for private housing have created problems in the new economic order.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. Extended families sharing adjacent houses or a single compound were the norm in traditional Tajik society. This pattern has been interrupted by the construction of apartment complexes in which units are distributed on the basis of a person's place of employment. Descent is determined through the father, although women retain their own family names.

Kinship Terminology. Relationships are distinguished by gender and, reflecting borrowings from the Uzbeks, age among siblings.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Marriage patterns differ between urban and rural areas and changed in the second half of the twentieth century. In urban settings and among young people, Soviet influence on marriage may be seen in the exercise of choice of marriage partners and the importance of civil ceremonies. The couple may live with the groom's parents until a suitable apartment is found. In rural areas the older pattern of arranged marriages with religious and traditional celebrations continues to be practiced. The couple will live with the man's family until a house is constructed. Divorce is rare in both settings.

Domestic Unit. The size of the rural domestic unit is large: The average rural household has seven or eight children as well as a grandparent or other relatives. In urban areas the domestic unit is far smaller, averaging three to four children and possibly a paternal or maternal grandparent. According to Bennigsen and Wimbush (1986, p. 89), "traditional customs such as the kalym (bride-price), the early marriage of girls, the levirate and sororate, preferences of marriage between cousins, sexual segregation, aksakalism (local rule by 'white beards') and even polygamy are observed by Tajiks more generally than by any other Muslim nationality of Central Asia."

Inheritance. The residence, if privately owned, and its contents are often inherited by the oldest son or the one with whom the parent lived. Inherited property is not often sold.

Socialization. Tajiks rarely send children to institutions for care even if both parents work away from the home. Accommodation is made within the extended family for the care of young children. Children are raised to value family life, religious or ethical standards, their ethnic identity, and their regional ties. Young Tajiks intermarry with Uzbeks and other Muslims at a far higher rate than with Russians despite the extensive Westernization of urban elites.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. Tajik society retains few objects of cohesion except those determined by general Central Asian customs and recent history. Cleavage between urban and rural groups also depends on a person's place of origin and descent. Bukharan immigrants socialize with each other, as do people of various valleys. Soviet institutions and the workplace have brought them together, as has a common language, but without strong economic and political institutions, the social fabric is fragile and susceptible to influence from Islamic, nationalistic, and other forces. The core of social organization remains the extended family and the region.

Political Organization. In the late Soviet era the pattern of political organization had begun to move toward the gradual entrenchment of Tajiks into positions of real power in the Communist Party. Independent parties, both nationalist and religious, have arisen since 1986, and increasingly their challenge to the government through demonstrations and eventually armed conflict has led to a redrawing of the political picture. The introduction of monitored elections and the formation of coalition governments resulting from efforts to restore peace may lead to the acceptance of real political parties.

Social Control. Modes of social behavior ingrained within the family function in society at large. They include loyalty to family members and fellow villagers. Other forms of social control exercised by the state have served to create tight alliances to preserve the welfare and safety of the group. Increasingly difficult socioeconomic conditions arising from population growth, political discord, economic upheaval, and ecological damage have strained public order. The period of civil war has changed the social composition of Dushanbe in particular.

Conflict. Social and political conflict is most apparent between local people and outsiders, in particular Russians. A secondary source is regional friction over access to resources and services. In addition, there is tension among Bukharan Jews, fundamentalist Muslim groups, and secular Muslims, arising from religious customs or convictions. Resolution of some levels of conflict has emerged with the steady emigration of Slavs and Bukharan Jews. The confrontation between zealous Muslims and secular Muslims led to armed conflict throughout much of the 1990s, a conflict that became confounded with regionalism, democratic versus leftover Soviet forces, and a scramble for economic gain after the privatization of public property and factories.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. Most religious Tajiks belong to the Sunni sect and, within it, to the Hanafi juridical school. Small, isolated groups, especially among the Pamir peoples of Iranian but not Tajik language, are devotees of Isma'ili Shiism, and a smaller proportion adheres to the Ithna Ash'ari sect. With the exception of Bukharan Jews, Slavs, other Christian-associated groups, and urban-dwelling Koreans, the people of Tajikistan generally adhere to Islamic belief patterns. Belief in the supernatural, outside of formal Islam, falls into several categories: curative customs, fortune-telling, and ascription of bad fortune to the power of fate or of evil beings called jinn. Once the period of Soviet control ended, among the most successful efforts made in the field of religion was that of the Isma'ilis, who, thanks to the office of the Agha Khan, now are recipients of welfare and educational advances in the Gorno-Babakhshan region.

Religious Practitioners. The level to which religious practice had survived underground during the Soviet period became apparent within the first years of independence. Before that time strong evidence existed for the growth of Islamic practice among rural Tajiks, particularly the educated leadership on collective farms. In the absence of formal religious schools in Tajikistan, individual Tajiks have a surprising familiarity with formal Islamic theological and juridical doctrine, owing in part to unregistered mullahs, Sufi brotherhoods, and a special category of half-Sufi–half-shamans. About a dozen shrines to saints are major religious centers. Fasting during Ramadan, especially the fast-breaking feast of Eid-e Fitr, is popular and more public than it was in earlier years. Family ownership of a copy of the Quran is valued despite the lack of facilities for instruction in its contents. Informal teachers not recognized by the state or the Spiritual Directorate of Central Asia and Kazakhstan in Tashkent function throughout society on a semisecret level.

The politization of Islam under the Islamic Renaissance Party brought with it a higher level of Islamic practice and teaching and a return to pre-Soviet traditions. Despite the return of secular rule and the driving underground of the Islamic movement, there has been more open practice of Islam and widespread availability of religious teaching and materials.

Ceremonies. Rites of passage include the circumcision of male children, marriages, and funerals. Holidays include the Islamic Eid-e Qorban and Eid-e Fitr, as well as Nowruz, the traditional Iranian New Year celebrated at the vernal equinox.

Arts. Literature, especially poetry rooted in the classical culture that Tajiks share with other Iranian peoples, is foremost among the traditional Tajik arts. Architectural decoration (gach kari ), carpet weaving, metal decoration, embroidery, and calligraphy continue to be valued, although under Soviet rule all those arts had acquired some level of Soviet content to conform with political dictates. In music, dance, and theater, innovations have become widespread as Western arts have been introduced. After the formation of an independent republic, the possibilities of independent arts development were limited by war and conflict. Interest in the development of popular folk ensembles has reemerged.

Medicine. Tajik medicine falls into two categories: the Western-oriented practice represented by the Gastrointestinal and Chemistry Institutes of the Tajik Academy of Sciences established in 1955 and the traditions of folk medicine passed within families by word of mouth but also based on the written works of medieval scientists such as Ibn Sina. The two branches have drawn closer together as the herbal cures offered by folk medicine have become the object of study at scientific institutions and the medical properties of cumin and other folk remedies have been recognized.

Death and Afterlife. Formal ideas about death follow either the nonreligious pattern or the Islamic one. It is customary for funeral proceedings for Tajik communists to be conducted according to Muslim customs and for burial to take place in a Muslim cemetery. Among the traditional populace the afterlife is believed to be a time for reward and punishment for conduct in the present life.

For the original article on Uzbeks, see Volume 6, Russia and Eurasia/China.

Bibliography

Akiner, Shirin (2002). Tajikistan: Disintegration or Reconciliation. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution series: Central Asian and Caucasian Prospects.

Atkin, Muriel (1989). The Subtlest Battle: Islam in Soviet Tajikistan. Philadelphia: Foreign Policy Research Institute.

At the Foot of the Blue Mountains: Stories by Tajik Authors (1984). Moscow: Raduga Publishers.

Bennigsen, Alexandre, and S. Enders Wimbush (1986). Muslims of the Soviet Empire: A Guide. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Naby, Eden (1975). 'Transitional Central Asian Literature: Tajik and Uzbek Prose Fiction from 1909 to 1932." Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, New York.

Rakowska-Harmstone, Theresa (1970). Russia and Nationalism in Central Asia: The Case of Tadzhikistan. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

EDEN NABY