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The culture of Tajikistan has developed over several thousand years. Tajik culture can be divided into two areas, Metropolitan and Kuhiston (Highland). Modern city centres include Dushanbe (the capital), Khudjand, Kulob, and Panjikent.
Zoroastrianism had been adopted by Persian emperors as a state religion, and was practiced in Central Asia as well. It eventually declined after the Arab conquests. The largest celebration in Tajikistan to come from the pre-Islamic period is Navruz, which means "New Day". It is held on March 21 or 22, when the cultivation of the land starts. During Navruz, many families visit relatives, throw out old belongings, clean the house, and play field games. Special dishes are also served. Other pre-Islamic Tajik traditions like fire jumping, dancing around the fire, and fighting 'devils' with fire, still occur in the more remote regions.
Tajikistan's government has shown intolerance of some religious faiths, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, and has demolished religious buildings. [1]
Tajik cuisine has much in common with Uzbek, Afghan, Russian, and Iranian. It is known for dishes such as kabuli pulao , qabili palau , and samanu . The national food and drink are plov and green tea, respectively.
Traditional Tajikistani meals begin with small dishes of dried fruit, nuts, and halva, followed by soup and meat, and finished with plov. Tea accompanies every meal, and is often served between meals as a gesture of hospitality. It is often drunk unsweetened. Tajik cuisine offers a large variety of fruit, meat, and soup dishes.
Tajikistan's mountains provide many opportunities for outdoor sports, such as hill climbing, mountain biking, rock climbing, skiing, snowboarding, hiking, and mountain climbing. The facilities are limited, however. Mountain climbing and hiking tours to the Fann and Pamir Mountains, including the 7,000 m peaks in the region, are seasonally organized by local and international alpine agencies.
Football is the most popular sport in Tajikistan. The Tajikistan national football team competes in FIFA and AFC competitions. The top clubs in Tajikistan compete in the Tajik League.
Four Tajikistani athletes have won Olympic medals for their country since independence. They are: wrestler Yusup Abdusalomov (silver in Belijing 2008), judoka Rasul Boqiev (bronze in Beijing 2008), boxer Mavzuna Chorieva (bronze in London 2012) and Dilshod Nazarov (gold in hammer throw in Rio 2016) .
Tajikistan's film industry dates from 1929. The first official movie studio, called Tajikkino (later renamed to Tajikfilm), began operation in 1930. In 1935, Tajikkino started producing movies with voice-over. [2] Some experts believe 1970–80 to be the golden age for Tajikfilm. Subsidized by the government, the studio was able to produce about six feature films each year. [3]
Examples of Tajikfilm's success during the Soviet times are such movies as The Legend of Rustam, The Legend of Rustam and Siavoush, and The Legend of the Smith Kova, based on stories from Ferdowsi's Shahnameh ; First Morning of Adolescence (Юнности Первое Утро), which tells the life story of people living in Badakhshan in the beginning of the Soviet Empire, when its army was still struggling with the Basmachi movement; a trilogy New tales from Shaherizada, based on Arabic tales One Thousand and One Nights .
Among prominent Tajik producers are Valeriy Ahadov and Davlat Khudoynazarov.
After the breakdown of Soviet Union and the civil war in Tajikistan (1992–1997), Tajik cinema went downwards. The studio mainly survived by taking small foreign orders, [2] and produced only a few of its own movies. Mohsen Makhmalbaf's film Sex & Philosophy from 2005 was set and produced in Tajikistan, as was the film Angel on the Right by Jamshed Usmonov from 2002. Other Tajik movies produced in the past two decades include: Kosh ba Kosh (1993), Business trip (1998, documentary), and Luna Papa (1999, a joint project of Tajikfilm with some counterparts from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Japan, and Russia). [4]
Chakan embroidery is the practice of sewing symbolic images on cotton or silk with brightly colored thread. [5] These depict mythological images, nature, or the cosmos. The embroidery is done on clothing and on common household items such as curtains, bedspreads, and pillows. Chakan items are an important part of marriage ceremonies, with a bride wearing a Chakan shirt and the groom wearing an embroidered skullcap called a "tāqi". Tajik women and girls will commonly wear Chakan clothing during national festivals and holidays.
Women create this art form, either individually or in communal settings. [5] When working individually the craftswomen will get help from their daughters and other family members. In a communal setting the craftswomen gather in one home, taking direction from the most experienced one and being assigned an individual task for the process. These tasks can include image design, fabric cutting, embroidering, sewing garments, and taking orders for the sale of the products. The products created by these craftswomen are sold in bazaars or dress shops, providing an important source of income.
The practice of Chakan embroidery is passed down from one generation of women to the next, to ensure the practice continues to thrive. [5] A craftswoman will pass down her knowledge to her daughter, granddaughter, and daughter-in-law. Chakan embroidery can also be learned in group settings from an expert craftswoman, referred to as the "ustod-shogird" or "master-student" method.
In 2018, Chakan embroidery was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. [5]
Traditional Tajik music is closely related to other Central Asian music forms. Shashmaqam is the predominant style of Tajik folk music, though falak is popular in southern Tajikistan. The Pamiris of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province have their own distinct style of music as well.
Traditional centers of Tajik literature were Samarkand and Bukhara, however these cities are now in Uzbekistan. In recent history, Tajik literature has been predominantly social realist. Though Tajiks do not draw a line, between their own literature and general Persian literature, there have been a few notable Tajik writers and poets. The standardization of the Tajik language has shaped Tajik literature in recent decades as well.
One thousand years after the Samanid period, another cultural revival occurred; this time due to the Soviet's modern drama, opera, and ballet. Poets such as Mirzo Tursunzoda, Mirsaid Mirshakar, and Loik Sherali; novelist and historian Sadridin Aini, all figured prominently in this revival, as did professors M Ishoki and Osimi, scholar Sotim Ulughzoda, novelist Jalol Ikromi, and anthropologist and historian Bobojon Ghafurov. In 1969, Malika Sobirova won a gold medal in an international ballet competition.
Since independence, there has been a pre-Soviet cultural revival in an attempt to foster a sense of national identity. Novelist Taimur Zulfikarov, and professors Rahim Masov and Bozor Sobir being prominent.
Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Dushanbe is the capital and most populous city. Tajikistan is bordered by Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east. It is separated from Pakistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor.
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.
Khujand, sometimes spelled Khodjent or Chudzjand, and known as Leninabad from 1936 to 1991, is the second-largest city of Tajikistan and the capital of Tajikistan's northernmost Sughd province.
Gorno-Badakhshan, officially the Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region in eastern Tajikistan, in the Pamir Mountains. It makes up nearly forty-five percent of the country's land area but only two percent of its population.
The Tajikistani Civil War, also known as the Tajik Civil War, began in May 1992 and ended in June 1997. Regional groups from the Garm and Gorno-Badakhshan regions of Tajikistan rose up against the newly-formed government of President Rahmon Nabiyev, which was dominated by people from the Khujand and Kulob regions. The rebel groups were led by a combination of liberal democratic reformers and Islamists, who would later organize under the banner of the United Tajik Opposition. The government was supported by Russian military and border guards.
The Communist Party of Tajikistan is a communist party in Tajikistan, and the oldest political party in the country. The party was founded on 6 January 1924 and was the ruling party of the Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic from 1924 to 1929 and the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic from 1929 to 1990 as part of the Soviet Union as a republican branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It was banned in 1991 following the 1991 coup.
CSKA Pamir Dushanbe is a professional football club based in Dushanbe, Tajikistan that currently plays in the Tajikistan Higher League, the country's top division. Since 1997, the club has been under the patronage of the Tajik Army, like its former rivals CSKA Dushanbe.
The Pamiris are an Eastern Iranian ethnic group, native to Central Asia, living primarily in Tajikistan (Gorno-Badakhshan), Afghanistan (Badakhshan), Pakistan (Gilgit-Baltistan) and China. They speak a variety of different languages, amongst which languages of the Eastern Iranian Pamir language group stand out. The languages of the Shughni-Rushani group, alongside Wakhi, are the most widely spoken Pamiri languages.
Tajik cuisine is a traditional cuisine of Tajikistan, and has much in common with Russian, Afghan, Iranian and Uzbek cuisines. Plov (pilaf), also called osh, is the national dish in Tajikistan, as in other countries in the region. Green tea is the national drink.
In parallel to what happened in other Soviet republics, a cinema of Tajikistan was promoted by the Soviet state, and declined in the first years after the independence, before being revitalized through the efforts of the new government.
Islam is the predominant religion in Tajikistan.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Tajikistan:
The insurgency in the Gorno-Badakhshan region in Tajikistan from 2010 to 2015 was an armed conflict between the Tajik Army and Islamist militants, led by numerous leaders from the Tajikistani Civil War. The conflict evolved in 2010 and climaxed in 2012, with the defeat of main rebel forces. Other incidents took place in September 2015, when former deputy defense minister Abduhalim Nazarzoda led an armed uprising, suspected of ties to the Islamic Renaissance Party.
Mirsaid Mirshakar or Mirsaid Mirshakarov was a Soviet and Tajikistani poet, writer, dramatist and editor. A representative of the Supreme Council of the SSR of Tajikistan, a member of the Central Committee of the Republic of Tajikistan, the chairman of the Republican Committee of Sympathy with Asian and African Countries, a member of the Presidium of the Soviet Committee of Sympathy with Asian and African Countries, a member of the board of the Union of Writers of Tajikistan.
Nigina Raufova was a Tajikistani singer and composer, active beginning in the Soviet era.
Jonon Karimovna Bobokalonova was a Tajikistani writer, literary critic, and academic of the Soviet era. Her name is sometimes given as Jonon Karim.
Nuqra Rahmatova was a Tajikistani folk singer and dancer of the Soviet era.
The Ismaili Centre, Dushanbe, is one of six Ismaili Centres worldwide and an Ismaili jamatkhana. It was the fifth purpose-built Ismaili Centre, and the first in Central Asia.
Komil Yormatov was a prominent actor and director in the cinema of Tajikistan during the Soviet era. He later moved to Uzbekistan and then to Moscow.
Yuri Filimonovich Ponosov was a Tajikistani of Russian descent who was a Soviet politician.
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