Back Tadjiks (volk) Afrikaans Tachicos AN طاجيك Arabic طاجيك ARZ Etnia taxiquistanina AST Тажикал AV Taciklər Azerbaijani تاجیک‌لر AZB Тажиктар Bashkir Таджыкі Byelorussian

Tajiks

This article is about the present-day Tajik people. For the historical term for Iranian peoples, see Tajik (word). For other uses, see Tajiks (disambiguation).

Tajiks
Тоҷикон
تاجيکان
A Tajik Nowruz festival in Tajikistan, 2018
Total population
c. 20–23 million
Regions with significant populations
 Afghanistanc. 9–12 million (2025)[1][2][3][4]
 Tajikistanc. 9 million (2025)[5][6]
 Uzbekistan
    		1,657,336 (2021)[7][8]
 Russia350,236 (2021)[9]
 Kyrgyzstan59,900 (2022)[10]
 Kazakhstan58,712 (2025)[11]
 China50,896 (2020)[12]
Languages
Persian (Dari and Tajik)
Secondary: Pashto, Russian, Uzbek
Religion
Predominantly Sunni Islam,[13]
Minority: Shia Islam[14]
Related ethnic groups
Other Iranian peoples

Tajiks (Persian: تاجيک، تاجک, romanized: Tājīk, Tājek; Tajik: Тоҷик, romanized: Tojik; also spelled Tadzhiks or Tadjiks)[15] is the name of various Persian-speaking[16] Eastern Iranian groups of people native to Central Asia, living primarily in Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Even though the term Tajik does not refer to a cohesive cross-national ethnic group,[17][18] Tajiks are the largest ethnicity in Tajikistan, and the second-largest in both Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. They speak variations of Persian, a west Iranian language. In Tajikistan, since the 1939 Soviet census, its small Pamiri and Yaghnobi ethnic groups are included as Tajiks.[19] In China, the term is used to refer to its Pamiri ethnic groups, the Tajiks of Xinjiang, who speak the Eastern Iranian Pamiri languages.[20][21] In Afghanistan, the Pamiris are considered a separate ethnic group.[22]

As a self-designation, the literary New Persian term Tajik, which originally had some previous pejorative usage as a label for eastern Persians or Iranians,[23][24] has become acceptable during the last several decades, particularly as a result of Soviet administration in Central Asia.[16] Alternative names for the Tajiks are Fārsīwān (Persian-speaker), and Dīhgān (cf. Tajik: Деҳқон) which translates to "farmer or settled villager", in a wider sense "settled" in contrast to "nomadic" and was later used to describe a class of land-owning magnates as "Persian of noble blood" in contrast to Arabs, Turks and Romans during the Sassanid and early Islamic period.[25][23]

The Tajiks are of mixed origin, and are primarily descendants of Bactrians, Sogdians, Scythians, but also Persians, Greeks, and various Turkic peoples of Central Asia,[26][27] all of whom are known to have inhabited the region at various times. Tajiks are therefore mainly Eastern Iranian in their ethnic makeup but speak a Persian dialect, which is a Western Iranian language, likely adopting the language in the 7th century AD following the Islamic conquest of Persia. This was when the Persian language consequently spread further east leading to the gradual extinction of the Bactrian and Sogdian languages.[28][29] The Tajiks and their ancestors have inhabited Northern Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and other parts of Central Asia continuously for many millennia.[30] The culture of the Tajiks is predominantly Persianate but with strong elements from other cultures of Central Asia, such as Turkic and heavily infused with Islamic traditions.

  1. ^ "Why Tajikistan Is Taking a Stand Against the Taliban". Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 26 October 2021. Retrieved 5 May 2025. [M]ost researchers' estimates [of ethnic Tajiks] hover around 20 percent.
  2. ^ "Tajiks in Afghanistan". Minority Rights Group. Retrieved 3 May 2025. Though their exact numbers are uncertain and as with other communities are contested, previous estimates have suggested that Tajiks make up around 27 per cent of the population, making them the second largest ethnic group in Afghanistan after the Pashtuns.
  3. ^ Project, Joshua. "Afghan, Tajik in Afghanistan". Joshua Project. Retrieved 3 May 2025.
  4. ^ Mobasher, Mohammad Bashir. "Political Laws and Ethnic Accommodation: Why Cross-Ethnic Coalitions Have Failed to Institutionalize in Afghanistan" (PDF). digital.lib.washington.edu. University of Washington.
  5. ^ "Dissemination of the Republic of Tajikistan Population and Housing Census data 2020" (PDF). unece.org.
  6. ^ "Tajikistan Population 2024 (Live)".
  7. ^ "Permanent population by national and / Or ethnic group, urban / Rural place of residence".
  8. ^ Lena Jonson (1976) "Tajikistan in the New Central Asia", I.B.Tauris, p. 108: "According to official Uzbek statistics there are slightly over 1 million Tajiks in Uzbekistan or about 3% of the population. The unofficial figure is over 6 million Tajiks. They are concentrated in the Sukhandarya, Samarqand and Bukhara regions."
  9. ^ "Оценка численности постоянного населения по субъектам Российской Федерации". Federal State Statistics Service. Retrieved 31 August 2024.
  10. ^ "Total population by nationality (assessment at the beginning of the year, people)". Bureau of Statistics of Kyrgyzstan. 2021. Archived from the original on 28 October 2016. Retrieved 28 February 2022.
  11. ^ "Численность населения Республики Казахстан по отдельным этносам". stat.gov.kz. Archived from the original on 27 May 2020. Retrieved 23 August 2021.
  12. ^ "塔吉克族". www.gov.cn. Archived from the original on 24 February 2021. Retrieved 6 December 2016.
  13. ^ "Все новости". Archived from the original on 25 August 2010. Retrieved 14 February 2015.
  14. ^ "Tajikistan". U.S. Department of State. Archived from the original on 13 May 2021. Retrieved 14 February 2015.
  15. ^ Stevenson, Angus (19 August 2010). Oxford Dictionary of English. OUP Oxford. p. 1809. ISBN 978-0-19-957112-3. variant spelling of Tajik
  16. ^ a b C.E. Bosworth; B.G. Fragner (1999). "TĀDJĪK". Encyclopaedia of Islam (CD-ROM Edition v. 1.0 ed.). Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV.
  17. ^ Nourzhanov, K., & Bleuer, C. (2013). Forging Tajik Identity: Ethnic Origins, National–Territorial Delimitation and Nationalism. In Tajikistan: A Political and Social History (pp. 27–50). ANU Press. Link: [1]
  18. ^ Cite error: The named reference brasher was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  19. ^ Cite error: The named reference suny was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  20. ^ Arlund, Pamela S. (2006). An Acoustic, Historical, And Developmental Analysis of Sarikol Tajik Diphthongs. PhD Dissertation. The University of Texas at Arlington. p. 191. Archived from the original on 10 December 2013. Retrieved 3 May 2010.
  21. ^ Felmy, Sabine (1996). The voice of the nightingale: a personal account of the Wakhi culture in Hunza. Karachi: Oxford University Press. p. 4. ISBN 0-19-577599-6. Archived from the original on 10 April 2023. Retrieved 13 October 2015.
  22. ^ Minahan, James B. (10 February 2014). Ethnic Groups of North, East, and Central Asia: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO.
  23. ^ a b Foundation, Encyclopaedia Iranica. "Welcome to Encyclopaedia Iranica". iranicaonline.org. Archived from the original on 10 April 2010. Retrieved 17 August 2021.
  24. ^ B. A. Litvinsky, Ahmad Hasan Dani (1998). History of Civilizations of Central Asia: Age of Achievement, A.D. 750 to the end of the 15th-century. Excerpt: "...they were the basis for the emergence and gradual consolidation of what became an Eastern Persian-Tajik ethnic identity." pp. 101. UNESCO. ISBN 9789231032110.
  25. ^ M. Longworth Dames; G. Morgenstierne & R. Ghirshman (1999). "AFGHĀNISTĀN". Encyclopaedia of Islam (CD-ROM Edition v. 1.0 ed.). Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV.
  26. ^ Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan : country studies Archived 20 May 2021 at the Wayback Machine Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, page 206
  27. ^ Foltz, Richard (2019). A History of the Tajiks: Iranians of the East. I.B.Tauris. pp. 36–39. ISBN 978-1-7883-1652-1.
  28. ^ Paul Bergne (15 June 2007). The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic. I.B.Tauris. pp. 5–. ISBN 978-1-84511-283-7.
  29. ^ Josef W. Meri; Jere L. Bacharach (2006). Medieval Islamic Civilization: L-Z, index. Taylor & Francis. pp. 829–. ISBN 978-0-415-96692-4. Archived from the original on 6 October 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2024.
  30. ^ [2] Archived 21 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine Britannica Online Encyclopedia

Rich TVX News Network Site

Rich TVX News Network Info

© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search