49 Fun Facts About Tajikistan

What is the capital and largest city of Tajikistan?

Dushanbe, in the west of the country, was a small market village when it became the Tajik capital in 1924; it bore the name Stalinabad until 1961.

The name of Tajikistan's capital means what in Persian?

The capital's name is the Persian word for Monday: du (two) plus shanbe (Saturday), the second day after Saturday, because the village's weekly bazaar was held on Mondays.

Tajikistan's mountain meltwater feeds the Amu Darya, which Soviet irrigation diverted from what sea?

The Aral Sea shrank and split into separate lakes after canals drew off the Amu Darya from the 1960s, and in 2014 its eastern basin dried up completely.

Which country lies along Tajikistan's southern border, marked by the Amu Darya and Panj rivers?

Afghanistan lies across the Panj and Amu Darya rivers along Tajikistan's entire southern border, a frontier that Moscow's border troops patrolled until they handed it over in 2005.

Tajikistan's independence followed a failed 1991 coup against which Soviet leader?

Mikhail Gorbachev survived the August 1991 coup, but Tajikistan's party chief, who had backed the plotters, was forced to resign, and the republic declared independence on 9 September.

Who won Tajikistan's November 1994 presidential election?

Emomali Rahmon, who had led the country since late 1992 as chairman of the Supreme Soviet, won the November 1994 vote and received the title 'Leader of the Nation', with lifelong immunity, in 2015.

Unlike other varieties of Persian, Tajik has been written since the late 1930s in which alphabet?

Cyrillic replaced a Latin script that Soviet planners had brought in only about a decade earlier in place of the Perso-Arabic one, which distanced Tajiks from the Persian written elsewhere in Arabic letters.

Under the constitution, which language is Tajikistan's official 'language of inter-ethnic communication'?

Russian is named in the 1994 constitution as the language of inter-ethnic communication, alongside Tajik as the state language; ethnic Russians fell from 7.6% of the population in 1989 to about 0.5% by 2010.

What is Tajikistan's currency, introduced in 2000 to replace the Tajik rouble?

The Somoni replaced the Tajik rouble in October 2000 at one to 1,000 and is divided into 100 dirams; it honours a medieval emir whose statue stands in the centre of the capital.

Tajikistan's highest mountain, at 7,495 metres, was known by what name from 1962 to 1998?

Communism Peak was the name from 1962 to 1998 of the 7,495-metre summit, the highest point in the Soviet Union; it had been Stalin Peak from 1933 and was renamed again in 1998.

Which 9th-10th century Transoxiana dynasty revived Persian culture and is claimed as the first Tajik state?

The Samanids ruled Transoxiana and Khorasan and made Persian a language of court and literature again, until the Kara-Khanids seized their capital in 999 and ended the dynasty.

Which 10th-century poet, the first great voice of New Persian, is a Tajik national icon?

Rudaki (c. 858-941) is regarded as the father of New Persian poetry; only fragments of his verse survive, and the capital's main avenue and a central park bear his name.

Northern Tajikistan, including Khujand and Panjakent, belonged to which ancient Silk Road civilisation?

Sogdiana, centred on the Zeravshan valley, was home to the merchants who dominated Silk Road trade between China and Persia from the 4th to the 8th centuries; Panjakent's ruins preserve their murals.

Which historic Tajik cities were left in Uzbekistan when the Soviets drew Tajikistan in 1924?

Bukhara and Samarkand, the great Persian-speaking cities of Transoxiana, went to the Uzbek SSR when the borders were drawn, a decision the two republics' leaders argued over bitterly before Tajikistan became a full republic in 1929.

Which crop, nicknamed 'white gold', made Tajikistan the Soviet Union's third-largest producer by the 1960s?

Cotton was the crop Soviet planners pushed across Central Asia; Tajikistan became the USSR's third-largest grower by the 1960s, and its economy still leans on cotton exports.

Until its 2015 ban, Tajikistan's leading opposition party was Central Asia's only legal party of which kind?

Islamist: the Islamic Renaissance Party, the core of the opposition that signed the 1997 peace accord, stayed legal until 2015, when the government banned it and branded it a terrorist organisation.

Tajikistan's flag has red, white and green stripes with what emblem in the centre?

A crown under seven stars sits on the white central stripe of the flag adopted in November 1992, which kept the red, white and green of the Soviet-era Tajik flag; seven stands for perfection in Persian tradition.

The flagpole outside the capital's Palace of Nations held what record from 2011 to 2014?

World's tallest flagpole was the record the 165-metre pole in the capital held from 2011 until the 171-metre Jeddah Flagpole beat it by six metres in 2014; its flag measures 30 by 60 metres.

The Nurek Dam on the Vakhsh River held what world record when it was completed in 1980?

Tallest dam in the world was Nurek's title from its completion in 1980 until China's Jinping-I topped its roughly 300 metres in 2013; the Rogun Dam upstream is designed to rise to 335 metres.

Tajikistan's economy is among the most dependent in the world on which source of income?

Remittances from migrant workers, most of them working abroad, have been worth between a quarter and a half of Tajikistan's GDP every year since the late 2000s, one of the highest shares in the world.

Which metal, smelted at the giant TALCO plant in Tursunzoda, is one of Tajikistan's main exports?

Aluminium is smelted by TALCO, once known as TadAZ, at the largest plant of its kind in Central Asia; the raw material is not local, so the smelter runs on alumina imported from abroad.

Which kind of dish is Tajikistan's UNESCO-listed national dish, known locally as osh?

A rice pilaf: oshi palav joined UNESCO's heritage list in 2016, and a Tajik saying has it that if you have eaten someone's osh you owe them respect for 40 years.

Qurutob, a traditional Tajik dish, is made from pieces of flatbread soaked in what?

Yoghurt or dried-curd sauce: the name comes from qurut, balls of dried salted curd that are dissolved in water to soak pieces of fatir flatbread, then topped with onions, herbs and oil and eaten by hand.

In the traditional horseback game of buzkashi, played at spring festivals, riders compete to carry what?

A dead goat is the 'ball' in buzkashi: riders fight for the headless carcass, then must ride clear of the pack and drop it in a scoring circle, playing solo or in teams.

Gushtigiri, Tajikistan's national sport, is a form of what?

Wrestling: gushtigiri is fought in robes, each man gripping the other's belt, and by tradition children open a tournament, then teenagers, with the champions going last.

Tajik athletes won Olympic gold in 1992 and 2016 in which athletics event?

Hammer throw: Andrey Abduvaliyev won for the Unified Team in Barcelona in 1992 and Dilshod Nazarov won for Tajikistan in Rio in 2016, the country's first Olympic gold as an independent nation.

At the 2023 AFC Asian Cup, Tajikistan's footballers made their debut and reached which stage?

The quarter-finals: the tournament's only newcomers came through their group and a knockout tie before going out 1-0 to eventual runners-up Jordan, beaten by an own goal.

Which spring festival, marking the equinox on 21 March, is Tajikistan's most important holiday?

Nowruz, the Persian new year at the spring equinox, is marked in Tajikistan with several days of public holidays from 21 March; Mehrgon is the autumn harvest festival and Sada falls fifty days before the new year.

In the late 1980s Tajik artisans built an ornate tea house as a gift to which American sister city?

Boulder, Colorado, has been the Tajik capital's sister city since 1987; forty artisans carved the teahouse and shipped it in about 200 crates, which sat in storage for nearly a decade before it opened in 1998.

By what abbreviation is the autonomous region covering the mountainous eastern half of Tajikistan known?

GBAO stands for Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, the thinly populated eastern region whose capital is Khorugh; it covers about 45% of Tajikistan's territory but holds only around 2% of its people.

Which hereditary spiritual leader do the Ismaili Muslims of Tajikistan's eastern highlands follow?

The Aga Khan is the hereditary imam of the Nizari Ismailis, the Shia branch most people in Tajikistan's eastern mountains follow; his development network says it committed over $1 billion to the country between 1995 and 2018.

In 2016 Tajik police reported making nearly 13,000 men give up what?

Beards: police in Khatlon reported the figure in January 2016, along with about 160 shops closed for selling hijabs, in a country where almost everyone is Muslim.

What is the 1,200-km mountain road across eastern Tajikistan, once a branch of the Silk Road, known as?

The Pamir Highway, officially the M41, crosses the 4,655-metre Ak-Baital pass and is the only continuous road through the range, which makes it the supply line for Tajikistan's remote east.

Sarazm, a UNESCO World Heritage Site near Panjakent, is a settlement founded roughly how long ago?

About 5,500 years: Sarazm dates to the 4th millennium BC, and finds there show that its people traded as far away as the Indus valley.

What were the Central Asian guerrillas who fought Bolshevik rule in the 1920s called?

Basmachi, from an Uzbek word usually glossed as 'bandit', was the Soviets' own scornful name for the Muslim guerrillas who fought Bolshevik rule across Turkestan; the revolt faded in the 1920s, then flared again during collectivisation.

In May 2015 the commander of Tajikistan's police special forces made headlines by doing what?

Defecting to Islamic State was the act of Gulmurod Khalimov, the US-trained commander of the OMON special police, who announced it in a May 2015 video; he was reported killed in an air strike in Syria in 2017, a death long disputed.

In September 2022 Tajikistan fought deadly border clashes, involving artillery, with which neighbour?

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan share a tangled Soviet-drawn frontier in the Fergana Valley, with enclaves such as Vorukh and disputed water supplies; the September 2022 fighting killed more than a hundred people.

Which country's air force helped run a Soviet-era base near Tajikistan's capital from 2002 to 2022, after rebuilding it?

India spent nearly US$70 million between 2002 and 2010 lengthening the runway and re-equipping the base west of the capital, its second on Tajik soil, and left when the lease ran out in 2022.

Tajikistan is a major transit route for narcotics from its southern neighbour heading to which markets?

Russia and Europe are the main markets for the opiates that cross Tajikistan's long southern border; one estimate for 2012 put the heroin trade at 30 to 50% of the country's GDP.

Which 14th-century conqueror, born near Kesh in Transoxiana, ruled Central Asia and Persia?

Tamerlane, or Timur, was born near Kesh in Transoxiana and built an empire spanning Persia and Central Asia; he died in 1405 just as he set out to invade Ming China.

Which traveller gives his name to the giant-horned wild sheep that is one of Tajikistan's national symbols?

Marco Polo described the huge wild sheep in the account of his 13th-century journey across Central Asia, and in 1841 the zoologist Edward Blyth named the subspecies after him.

Which Tajik lake was created by a 1911 earthquake landslide that formed the Usoi Dam?

Sarez Lake formed in February 1911 when an earthquake sent a landslide across the Murghab River; the natural Usoi Dam it left stands some 567 metres high, and scientists fear a future quake could breach it.

Roughly how many people live in Tajikistan?

About 10 million: the total passed that mark in 2022 and is still climbing by some 200,000 a year, in a country where more than a third of the people are under 15.

During the civil war, President Rahmon Nabiyev was forced to resign in September 1992 in what manner?

At gunpoint: opposition supporters seized Nabiyev at the capital's airport on 7 September 1992 and forced him to resign on the spot; parliament formally accepted the resignation that November.

Iskanderkul and the Seven Lakes lie in which range in north-western Tajikistan?

The Fann Mountains hold Iskanderkul, a glacial lake at 2,195 metres, and the Seven Lakes near Panjakent, a chain that draws trekkers for waters that change colour from one lake to the next.

CASA-1000, begun in 2016, is designed to carry Tajik hydropower to which country?

Pakistan sits at the far end of CASA-1000, a line designed to carry 1,300 megawatts of Central Asia's summer surplus hydropower southward; the four countries on its route broke ground in May 2016.

Tajikistan and which country jointly nominated the Sada festival to UNESCO in 2023?

Iran and Tajikistan, which share the Persian language and calendar traditions, jointly nominated Sada, a midwinter fire festival held fifty days before the spring new year, which UNESCO inscribed as intangible heritage in December 2023.

Which buffer, drawn in the 1890s to keep the tsarist and British empires apart, runs along Tajikistan's south-eastern edge?

The Wakhan Corridor, a thin panhandle of high valley, was fixed by boundary agreements in 1893 and 1895 so that the tsar's Central Asian lands and Britain's empire to the south would never touch.

Which writer, author of the novel Slaves, is considered the founder of modern Tajik literature?

Sadriddin Ayni, orphaned at 12, worked as a janitor and cook to get through a madrasa; he went on to write the first novel in Tajik and became the first president of the republic's Academy of Sciences.