Central Asia is a subregion of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the southwest and Eastern Europe in the northwest to Western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Central Asian nations are colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as the countries all have names ending with the Persian suffix "-stan", meaning "land of".
Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. It has an area of 142,326 km2 (54,952 sq mi) and an estimated population of 9,750,065 people. Dushanbe is the country's capital and largest city. It is bordered by Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east. It is separated narrowly from Pakistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor. Tajiks form the ethnic majority in the country and their national language is Tajik; a Persian language that is closely related to the mutually intelligible dialects of Farsi and Dari of Iran and Afghanistan.
Tajikistan harkens to the Samanid Empire (819–999). The Tajik people came under Russian rule in the 1860s. The Basmachi revolt broke out in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and was quelled in the early 1920s during the Russian Civil War. In 1924, Tajikistan became an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union, the Tajik ASSR, within Uzbekistan. In 1929, Tajikistan was made one of the component republics of the Soviet Union – Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic – and it kept that status until gaining independence 1991 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Tajiks are a Persian-speaking Iranian ethnic group native to Central Asia, living primarily in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Tajiks are the largest ethnicity in Tajikistan, and the second-largest in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. They speak varieties of Persian, a Western Iranian language. In Tajikistan, since the 1939 Soviet census, its small Pamiri and Yaghnobi ethnic groups are included as Tajiks. In China, the term is used to refer to its Pamiri ethnic groups, the Tajiks of Xinjiang, who speak the Eastern Iranian Pamiri languages. In Afghanistan, the Pamiris are counted as a separate ethnic group.
Samarqand or Samarkand is a city in southeastern Uzbekistan and among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Central Asia. Samarqand is the capital of Samarqand Region and a district-level city, that includes the urban-type settlements Kimyogarlar, Farhod and Khishrav. With 551,700 inhabitants (2021), it is the second-largest city of Uzbekistan. Most of the inhabitants of the city are native speakers of the Tajik dialect of the Persian language, although Uzbek is spoken as a second language.
Dushanbe is the capital and largest city of Tajikistan. As of January 2022, Dushanbe had a population of 1,201,800 and that population was largely Tajik. Until 1929, the city was known in Russian as Dyushambe, and from 1929 to 1961 as Stalinabad, after Joseph Stalin. Dushanbe is located in the Gissar Valley, bounded by the Gissar Range in the north and east and the Babatag, Aktau, Rangontau and Karatau mountains in the south, and has an elevation of 750–930 m. The city is divided into four districts, all named after Persian historical figures: Ismail Samani, Avicenna, Ferdowsi, and Shah Mansur.
The Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, also commonly known as Soviet Tajikistan, the Tajik SSR, or simply Tajikistan, was one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union which existed from 1929 to 1991 located in Central Asia.
Khujand, sometimes spelled Khodjent and known as Leninabad from 1936 to 1991, is the second-largest city of Tajikistan and the capital of Tajikistan's northernmost Sughd province.
Russian Turkestan was the western part of Turkestan within the Russian Empire’s Central Asian territories, and was administered as a Krai or Governor-Generalship. It comprised the oasis region to the south of the Kazakh Steppe, but not the protectorates of the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva.
The Emirate of Bukhara was a Muslim polity in Central Asia that existed from 1785 to 1920 in what is now Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. It occupied the land between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, known formerly as Transoxiana. Its core territory was the fertile land along the lower Zarafshon river, and its urban centres were the ancient cities of Samarqand and the emirate's capital, Bukhara. It was contemporaneous with the Khanate of Khiva to the west, in Khwarazm, and the Khanate of Kokand to the east, in Fergana. In 1920, it ceased to exist with the establishment of the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic.
Uzbekisation or Uzbekization is the process of something or someone culturally non-Uzbek becoming, or being forced to become, Uzbek. The term is often used to describe the process by which the autonomous republic Tajik ASSR was incorporated within the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic between 1924 and 1929, and the attendant assimilation of Tajiks.
Architecture of Central Asia refers to the architectural styles of the numerous societies that have occupied Central Asia throughout history. These styles include a regional tradition of Islamic and Iranian architecture, including Timurid architecture of the 14th and 15th centuries, as well as 20th-century Soviet Modernism. Central Asia is an area that encompasses land from the Xinjiang Province of China in the East to the Caspian Sea in the West. The region is made up of the countries of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. The influence of Timurid architecture can be recognised in numerous sites in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, whilst the influence of Persian architecture is seen frequently in Uzbekistan and in some examples in Turkmenistan. Examples of Soviet architecture can be found in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Russian-Tajik Slavonic University (RTSU), also known as Russian-Tajik University, is a university in Tajikistan located in Dushanbe. University was result of cooperation of Russian and Tajik governments. The majority of the students come from Russian families living in Tajikistan and the others are from Tajik and Uzbek families. The university is a member of the Euroasian Universities Association (EUA). Besides being Russian-Tajik the university has students in many nationalities including Armenian, Georgian, Ukrainian and others from Post-Soviet states.
Larisa Nazarovna Dodkhudoeva is a Tajikistani art historian.
Sorojon Mikhailovna Yusufova was a Tajik geologist and academic of the Soviet era.
The Tajikistan–Uzbekistan border is an international border between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It is 1,312 kilometres (815 mi) in length and runs from the tripoint with Kyrgyzstan to the tripoint with Afghanistan.
Mikhail Stepanovich Andreyev was a Russian-Uzbek and Soviet orientalist, cultural researcher of Central Asia, ethnographer, linguist, and archaeologist. He was initially supervised by Vladimir Nalivkin, and was the teacher of Olga Alexandrovna Sukhareva. He was a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Haydar bin Shahmurad was the Uzbek Emir of Bukhara from 1799 to 1826. His father was Emir Shahmurad. (1785–1799). After the death of Shah Murad in December 1799, Haydar bin Shahmurad came to power.
Shah Murad, also known as Beg-i Jan, alternatively titled Amir al-Mu'minin, Amir Ma'sum Ghazi or padishah ghazi in Bukharan historiography, was the first Amir of the Emirate of Bukhara from 1785 to his death in 1799. His father was Ataliq Daniyal Biy (1758–1785). After Daniyal Biy's death, Shah Murad came to power.
Mir Hussein bin Haydar (1797–1826) was the Uzbek Emir of Bukharan Emirate from October to December 1826. His father was emir Haydar bin Shahmurad (1800–1826). Emir Haydar died in October 1826 and was succeeded by his son Mir Hussein bin Haydar.
