Tajikistan speaks Persian and lives in the valleys

Dushanbe is a capital in a valley. Around it, Tajikistan is above all mountain, and the habitable country is the river valleys, not the peaks. The language of this state is Tajik, a form of Persian, in a region whose nearest neighbours mostly speak Turkic languages.

The republic became independent on 9 September 1991, when the Soviet Union came apart. What remained was a landlocked state between Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, China and Afghanistan. In the north, Sughd province, with Khujand, pushes into the Fergana basin, almost cut off from the rest of the country by the mountains. In the south the Panj forms the long border with Afghanistan and becomes the Amu Darya. In the east lies Gorno-Badakhshan, the autonomous region of the Pamir. On 143,100 square kilometres live 10,786,734 people, pressed into the valleys where Dushanbe, Khujand and the smaller towns find room.

The state fits into the valleys

A map of the peaks does not explain Tajikistan. It is explained by the places where grain, a road and a town are possible. Dushanbe lies in the Hissar valley. Khujand lies on the Syr Darya, in another basin, and the link between north and south crosses passes. Gorno-Badakhshan is vast in area and thinly settled. Whoever wants to govern it from the capital governs across distance and height, not across a continuous plain. The Pamir is state territory. The daily life of the state is the valley.

In the first years of independence this cut-up space became a civil war. Regional blocs stood against each other, one valley against another, the capital against parts of the south and the east. The General Agreement of 27 June 1997 ended the open war. It did not cancel the geography. The roads over the mountains remain the political anatomy of the country: whoever controls them connects the valleys. Whoever loses them has several countries inside one state.

Persian, in Cyrillic letters

Tajik is the state language, a southwestern Iranian language, close to the Persian of Iran and to Dari in Afghanistan. It is written in Cyrillic, a legacy of the Soviet period, while Iran and Afghanistan use Arabic script. The same language family, another alphabet: the border is political, not only a difference of sound. Under Article 2 of the constitution, Russian remains the language of communication between ethnic groups. In the offices of the capital that is not a footnote.

To the north and west, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan speak Turkic languages. To the south, beyond the Panj, Afghanistan is the Persian-speaking kin, politically another state with another writing tradition. Tajikistan hangs linguistically on the south and, for transport, on the axes northward, toward Uzbekistan and on toward Russia, where some families send relatives to work. The thesis is not folklore. It is the position of a Persian valley between Turkic neighbours and a high east.

The mountains fill the map. The state fits in the valleys.

— TerraTally · Countries desk

Dushanbe, the somoni, the short eastern border

Dushanbe was built up as a Soviet capital in a valley, not as an old royal seat like Bukhara or Samarkand, which lie in Uzbekistan today. The name recalls Monday, the market day. The city is the place where the valleys of the west receive an administration. The somoni, named after the Samanid dynasty, is the currency of the national bank. A currency of one's own after the Soviet period means: this valley issues its own money, even while many households remain tied as well to wages from outside.

The border with China is short and high. It lies in the Pamir, not at the gates of Dushanbe. The long neighbour is Afghanistan on the Panj; the difficult north is the narrows of Fergana with Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. China touches the state where hardly anyone lives. That does not change the thesis. It sharpens it: Tajikistan is large on the map of the east and narrow in the valley where the capital stands.

Tajikistan is a Persian-speaking network of valleys with a capital, a high east and neighbours who speak other languages. See only the mountains and you see the backdrop. The state stands below them, on the rivers.