50 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.

Roughly what share of Tajikistan is covered by mountains?

More than 90% of Tajikistan is mountainous (about 93%), with roughly half the country above 3,000 metres; its glaciers feed the Amu Darya and ultimately the Aral Sea.

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.

In which year did Tajikistan declare independence from the Soviet Union?

Tajikistan declared independence on 9 September 1991 as the Soviet Union broke up; within months it slid into a civil war that lasted until the 1997 peace accord.

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.

Which alphabet replaced the Latin script for writing Tajik in 1940?

Cyrillic replaced the Latin alphabet for Tajik by Soviet decree, a dozen years after planners had moved the language off the Perso-Arabic script, cutting Tajiks off from the wider Persian-speaking world.

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, introduced in October 2000 to replace the Tajik rouble, is divided into 100 dirams and is named after the medieval ruler Ismoil Somoni.

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 in the 9th and 10th centuries and made New Persian a language of court and literature; their ruler Ismail Samani, in power from 892, is honoured with a giant statue in the capital.

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.

Khujand, Tajikistan's second city, stands on the site of which city founded by Alexander the Great?

Alexandria Eschate, 'Alexandria the Furthest', was founded by Alexander the Great in 329 BC on the Syr Darya at the northeastern edge of his empire; modern Khujand occupies the site.

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 Tajik autonomous republic was drawn in 1924, a grievance Tajiks have nursed ever since.

Tajikistan went from an autonomous republic within Uzbekistan to a full Soviet republic in what year?

In 1929 the Tajik ASSR was separated from the Uzbek SSR and made a full union republic; the Khujand district was transferred to it the same year, giving it a slice of the Fergana Valley.

Roughly what share of ministerial posts did the 1997 ceasefire ending the 1992-97 civil war reserve for the opposition?

The June 1997 General Agreement reserved 30% of government posts for the United Tajik Opposition; the UN-brokered deal is counted among its successes, though the Islamist opposition was later squeezed out of politics.

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 165-metre 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 by state-owned TadAZ, is one of Tajikistan's main sources of income?

Aluminium from the giant Tursunzoda smelter, run on cheap hydroelectricity from imported alumina since the country mines no bauxite, has long been Tajikistan's largest industrial export.

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

A rice pilaf: oshi palav, cooked with rice, carrots, onions and meat in a qazan cauldron, was inscribed by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage in 2016.

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, headless and gutted, is the 'ball' in buzkashi; riders wrestle to carry the carcass clear of the pack and drop it in a scoring circle, playing solo or in teams.

What is Tajikistan's national sport?

Gushtigiri wrestling, a traditional belt-and-jacket style related to Uzbek kurash, is regarded as the national sport and is a staple of village festivals; it is also spelled gushtingiri.

Tajikistan's best Olympic results have come in which athletics event, with golds in 1992 and 2016?

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: on their Asian Cup debut Tajikistan finished second in their group behind hosts Qatar, beat the United Arab Emirates on penalties in the round of 16, then lost 1-0 to Jordan.

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 1988 Tajik artisans built an ornate tea house as a gift to which American sister city?

Boulder, Colorado, has been the sister city of the Tajik capital since 1987; the hand-carved and painted teahouse was shipped in crates and assembled beside Boulder Creek, opening as a restaurant in 1998.

By what abbreviation is the autonomous region covering Tajikistan's eastern Pamir highlands 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.

Excluding the capital, how many first-level regions does Tajikistan have?

Four: Sughd in the north, Khatlon in the south-west, Gorno-Badakhshan in the east and the Districts of Republican Subordination around the capital, which is administered separately.

About what proportion of Tajikistan's population is Muslim?

98% of Tajiks are Muslim, mostly Sunni of the Hanafi school, with the Ismailis of Badakhshan the main Shia group; the secular state regulates religion tightly and in 2016 police in one region reported shaving about 13,000 beards.

What is the 1,200-km mountain road supplying Gorno-Badakhshan, once part of the Silk Road, known as?

The Pamir Highway, officially the M41, climbs over the 4,655-metre Ak-Baital pass on its way from the Tajik capital through Khorugh and Murghab to Osh, the only continuous road across the range.

The proto-urban site of Sarazm near Panjakent, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, dates back to which era?

The 4th millennium BC is when Sarazm was founded, around 3500 BC; the settlement, Tajikistan's first World Heritage Site (2010), was a centre of early metallurgy with trade links reaching Mesopotamia.

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

Basmachi, from a Turkic word for 'raider', was the Soviet label for the Muslim guerrillas who resisted Bolshevik rule across Turkestan from 1918 into the early 1930s; collectivisation briefly revived the movement.

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

Defecting to Islamic State was the act of Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov, the US-trained OMON commander, who surfaced in a May 2015 video announcing he had joined the group in Syria; he was reported killed there in 2017.

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 contested water supplies; the September 2022 fighting killed about a hundred people on both sides.

Which country rebuilt the Ayni air base near the capital at a cost of US$70 million, completed in 2010?

India spent about US$70 million renovating the Ayni air base, with work finishing in 2010; the base, just west of the capital, is the main home of the Tajik air force.

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

Russia and Europe are the destination markets for opiates moving from across the southern border up the so-called Northern Route through Tajikistan, which has ranked among the world's top countries for heroin and raw opium seizures.

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

Tamerlane, or Timur, was born near Kesh in Transoxiana in 1336 and built an empire spanning Persia and Central Asia before dying in 1405 on a march against Ming China.

In which century did the region that is now Tajikistan first come under the Khanate of Bukhara?

16th century: the Shaybanid Uzbeks took Transoxiana from the Timurids in the early 1500s and ruled it as the Khanate of Bukhara; its successor states fell to the tsarist empire in the 1860s and 1870s.

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 huge landslide into the Murghab valley, creating the Usoi Dam, a natural barrier some 567 metres high; the lake is roughly 60 km long.

Tajikistan's population is closest to which figure?

About 11 million people live in Tajikistan, which is the smallest Central Asian republic by area but outnumbers Turkmenistan by population; the total passed 10 million in the early 2020s.

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

At gunpoint: armed opposition supporters cornered Nabiyev at the capital's airport on 7 September 1992 and made him sign a resignation letter as he tried to fly to his home region of Khujand.

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

The Fann Mountains, part of the Pamir-Alay system between the Zeravshan and Hisor ranges, hold the turquoise lake Iskanderkul at 2,195 metres and the Haft-Kul chain of seven lakes near Panjakent.

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

Pakistan is the final destination of CASA-1000, a transmission project designed to send 1,300 megawatts of Central Asian summer surplus hydropower south, most of it to Pakistan, while Tajikistan itself endures routine winter power cuts.

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.

Tajikistan is separated from Pakistan only by which narrow strip of Afghan territory?

The Wakhan Corridor, a panhandle of Afghan territory as narrow as about 15 km in places, was left between the tsarist and British empires by the 1895 Pamir boundary settlement so that their domains would not touch.

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

Sadriddin Ayni (1878-1954) wrote the novel Slaves (Ghulomon) in 1934 and the memoir Reminiscences (Yoddoshtho), and became the first president of the Tajik Academy of Sciences in 1951.