Historically, after
the breakup of the Indo-European family, the Aryan branch
subdivided so that the Medes and the Pars migrated to the
Iranian plateau where they created the Median and Persian
Empires respectively; the Sughd and the Hind migrated to
the Aral Sea region. Subsequently, the Hind migrated southeast
and occupied the northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent.
Early History
Much,
if not all, of what is today Tajikistan was part of ancient
Persia's Achaemenid Empire (sixth to fourth centuries B.C.),
which was subdued by Alexander the Great in the fourth century
B.C. and then became part of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom,
one of the successor states to Alexander's empire.
The northern part of what is now Tajikistan was part of
Soghdiana, a distinct region that intermittently existed
as a combination of separate oasis states and sometimes
was subject to other states. Sughdiana, settled between
1,000 and 500 BC by Iranian TRIBES, passed into the hands
of the Achaemenians who lost it to Alexander the Great in
the 4th century BC.Two important cities in what is now northern
Tajikistan, Khujand (formerly Leninobod; Russian spelling
Leninabad) and Panjakent, as well as Bukhoro (Bukhara) and
Samarqand (Samarkand) in contemporary Uzbekistan, were Soghdian
in antiquity. As intermediaries on the Silk Route between
China and markets to the west and south, the Soghdians imparted
religions such as Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, Zoroastrianism,
and Manichaeism, as well as their own alphabet and other
knowledge, to peoples along the trade routes.
The Arabs conquered Sughdiana in the early 600s. Under Muslim
rule, especially with Samanid support, Sughdiana grew to
encompass Maymurgh, Qabodian, Kushaniyya, Bukhara, Kish,
Nasaf, Samarqand, and Panjekent, each a virtual kingdom.
Persian Culture in Central Asia
The Persian influence on Central Asia, already prominent
before the Islamic conquest, grew even stronger afterward.
Under Iran's last pre-Islamic empire, the Sassanian, the
Persian language and culture as well as the Zoroastrian
religion spread among the peoples of Central Asia, including
the ancestors of the modern Tajiks. In the wake of the Islamic
conquest, Persian-speakers settled in Central Asia, where
they played an active role in public affairs and furthered
the spread of the Persian language and culture, their language
displacing Eastern Iranian ones. By the twelfth century,
Persian had also supplanted Arabic as the written language
for most subjects.
The Samanids
In
the development of a modern Tajik national identity, the
most important state in Central Asia after the Islamic conquest
was the Persian-speaking Samanid principality (875-999),
which came to rule most of what is now Tajikistan, as well
as territory to the south and west. During their reign,
the Samanids supported the revival of the written Persian
language.
Early in the Samanid period, Bukhoro(Buchara) became well-known
as a center of learning and culture throughout the eastern
part of the Persian-speaking world. Samanid literary patronage
played an important role in preserving the culture of pre-Islamic
Iran.
The Tajiks came into prominence as a people
under the rule of the Samanids (875-999) who undermined
and, to a great degree CENTRALized the government. They
also revived the ancient urban centers as Bukhara, Samarqand,
Merv, Nishapur, Hirat, Balkh, Khujand, Panjekent, and
Holbuq which, in turn, elevated the socio-political, economic
and, necessarily, cultural dynamics of the new and progressive
Samanid state. Additionally, the Samanids introduced a
major program of urbanization, a new civic administration,
and a revival of traditional local customs. Furtheremore,
the Samanids allocated resources for public education
and encouraged innovation and enterprise. In short, they
created a civilization that, in many respects, was unique
for its time.
Samanid revival benefited the sciences,
especially mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Geography,
historiography, and philosophy, alongside literature,
cultivated the social aspects while mining, zoology, and
agriculture contributed to the economy and the well-being
of the State. There is hardly anyone in the history of
medieval mathematics and the theory of numbers who could
rival the fame of al-Khwarazmi, the author of Kitab al-Mukhtasar
fi Hisab al-Jabr wa al-Muqabilah. Just a mention of the
word "algebra" is sufficient to conjure up the
milieu to which al-Biruni, Ibn-i Sina, Sijzi, and Buzjani
contributed. Both al-Biruni and Ibn-i Sina were involved
in the field of physics as well. The former excelled in
the practical aspects of physics while the latter contributed
to the theoretical dimensions of the same. The physicist
par excellence of the era, however, was Muhammad Zakariyyah
al-Razi, the founder of practical physics and the inventor
of the special or net weight of matter. Other contributors
to physics were Ibn-i Sina (accoustics), Ibn-i Haitham
(optics), and al-Biruni (the completion of the efforts
of al-Razi in determining special weights).
Medicine was the first of the Greek sciences
to attract the attention of Muslim scientists. The history
of medicine in the region, however, dates back to pre-Islamic
times when, in AD 529, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian
closed the Plato Academy that had been working under the
direction of Precleus. Seven Roman scientists, who did
not have an academy in which to work, were invited by
Khusrau I Anushiravan to Iran to carry out their research
in the newly founded University of Gundishapur. The forte
of the researchers of the University of Gundishapur, which
continued into Islamic times‹until the middle of the ninth
century‹was medicine.
Finally, the promotion of the arts and sciences led to
the institution of new centers of learning such as madrasahs
built on the model of the University of Gundishapur. It
also led to the creation of centers for storing and retrieving
information such as the Sivan al-Hikmat in Bukhara. These
were libraries full of manuscripts spanning translations
from Greek and Syriac languages on aspects of philosophy
to innovative theories of contemporary scholars such as
Ibn-i Sina and al-Biruni.
Two major factors contributed to the demise of the rule
of the Tajiks. The rising power of the Turks, originally
slaves and later commanders in the army of the Samanids;
and the rise of the Mongols who, in 1220 overrun Central Asia and devastated the region. Whether the Tajiks would
have been able to whether the tide of Turkish ascendancy
and recaptured the glory of the Samanid days remains a
matter of speculation.
During Mongol rule (1219-1370), agricultural
development and urban expansion were halted, local traditions
of kingship were dismissed, and the Shari'a was replaced
by the Yasa. Indeed, the Yasa was used to enforce anti-Muslim
policies, discouraging the Central Asian elite from rebellion
against the Chaghatai khans. Tajiks who could not tolerate
the intensity of Mongol rule either migrated abroad or
lived in isolation in the highlands.
The fortunes of the Tajiks declined when the Golden Horde
was dissolved and its constituent TRIBES joined the Oguz
Turks who had settled transoxiana in the 10th century.
Rather than settling on the fringes of the urban areas
as they had on the Qipchak plain, the new invaders wrested
the Tajiks' farms and became farmers. Leaving their cultural
centers of Samarqand and Bukhara, the Tajiks continued
to take refuge in the highlands. Thus, during the Shaibanid,
Astarkhanid, and Manghit rule, Tajik cultural domination
declined so that in 1920 the Tajiki language was discontinued
as the official language of the Emirate of Bukhara.
The Uzbeks, however, were not the only intruders.
Russians, after Muzaffar's defeat in 1868, dominated both
the Turks and the Tajiks. Indeed, the Uzbek-Turks served
as governors and tax collectors for the Russians.
Short after Russian revolution (1917) the
Tajik basmachi guerrillas began a campaign to free the
region from Bolshovik rules. It took four years for Bolshoviks
to crush this resistance and in the process entire villages
were razed, mosques destroyed and great tracts of land
waste.
In 1924, the Soviets divided the Tajik population between
the Autonomous Republic of Turkistan and the People's
Republic of Bukhara. The Tajiks, however, continued their
struggle; to gain independence.
But Soviet rule, and the creation of the Uzbek Soviet
Socialist Republic in October 1924, ultimately created
and solidified a new kind of Uzbek identity. At the same
time, the Soviet policy of cutting across existing ethnic
and linguistic lines in the region to create Uzbekistan
and the other new republics also sowed tension and strife
among the Central Asian groups that inhabited the region.
In particular, the territory of Uzbekistan was drawn to
include the two main Tajik cultural centers, Bukhara and
Samarqand, as well as parts of the Fergana Valley to which
other ethnic groups could lay claim.
But the republic borders inherited from
Soviet territorial adminstration are as problematic as
the ethnic distinctions inherited from Soviet nationality
policy.Republic borders were drawn in Central Asia to
divide the population into supposed national homelands
according to the Soviet-certified nationalities. No political
entity with the current borders of Uzbekistan ever existed
before the Soviet period, but the newly written histories
of Uzbekistan implicitly project the idea of the present
day territory as a coherent whole indefinitely backwards
in time, thereby giving it a timeless legitimacy.
Between 1929 when Tajikistan SSR centered
on Dushanbe came into existence and 1970, Tajikistan underwent
intensive Sovietization which, by necessity, accompanied
the type of education compatible with carrying out collectivization
and industrialization. As was the case in the other republics
of the Soviet union, those with nationalistic tendencies
were purged.
The building of the new socialist republic
began in earnest in the early 1930s. In the early stages,
a casual observer would not perceive the change immediately.
Much of ancient Bukhara continued to resist change. Besides,
many peasants preferred the plow to the tractor and many
others advocated a return to the old ways. Their numbers,
however, were decreasing as were the numbers of their
donkeys, mules, and carts that carried the fruits of their
labor to the town and city markets.
By the early 1930's, there was no question
in anyone's mind that Tajikistan was on the way to becoming
a modern republic with a growing industrial base in the
north and a burgeoning agricultural enterprise in the
south. The record of production of devoted Tajik workers,
driven by ideology, confirms this view.
The Bolshoviks never fully trusted this troublesome republic
and during the 1930s almost all Tajiks in positions of
influence within the government wrer replaced by stooges
from Moscow.