This article is about the present-day Tajik people. For the historical term for Iranian peoples, seeTajik (word). For other uses, seeTajiks (disambiguation).
As a self-designation, the literaryNew Persian termTajik, which originally had some previous pejorative usage as a label for easternPersians orIranians,[23][24] has become acceptable during the last several decades, particularly as a result ofSoviet administration in Central Asia.[16] Alternative names for the Tajiks areFārsīwān (Persian-speaker), andDīhgān (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 toArabs,Turks andRomans during theSassanid and earlyIslamic period.[25][23]
The Tajiks have a mixed origin, and are primarily descended fromBactrians,Sogdians,Scythians, but alsoPersians,Greeks, and variousTurkic peoples of Central Asia,[26][27] all of whom are known to have inhabited the region at various times. Tajiks are therefore mainlyEastern Iranian in their ethnic makeup but speak a Persian dialect, which is aWestern Iranian language, likely adopting the language in the 7th century AD following theIslamic conquest of Persia, when the prestigious Persian language consequently spread further east leading to the gradual extinction of theBactrian andSogdian 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 predominantlyPersianate but with strong elements from other cultures of Central Asia, such as Turkic and heavily infused with Islamic traditions.
The Tajiks are an Iranian people, speaking a variety of Persian, concentrated in theOxus basin, theFergana valley (Tajikistan and parts of Uzbekistan) and on both banks of the upper Oxus, i.e., thePamir Mountains in Tajikistan, and northeastern Afghanistan (Badakhshan).[23] Historically, the ancient Tajiks were chiefly agriculturalists before theArab Conquest of Iran.[31] While agriculture remained a stronghold, theIslamization of Iran also resulted in the rapid urbanization of historicalKhorasan andTransoxiana that lasted until the devastating Mongolian invasion.[32] Several surviving ancient urban centers of the Tajik people includeSamarkand,Bukhara,Khujand, andTermez.
Contemporary Tajiks are the descendants of ancient Eastern Iranian inhabitants of Central Asia, in particular, theSogdians and theBactrians.[26] They are also possible descendants of other groups, with an admixture of Western Iranian Persians and non-Iranian peoples.[26][33] The latter group includes Greeks who are known to have settled in the Tajikistan and Uzbekistan region before and after the conquests ofAlexander the Great, and some of them were referred to asDayuan by ancient Chinese chronicles.[34] According toRichard Nelson Frye, a leading historian of Iranian and Central Asian history, the Persian migration to Central Asia may be considered the beginning of the modern Tajik nation, and ethnic Persians, along with some elements of East-Iranian Bactrians and Sogdians, as the main ancestors of modern Tajiks.[35] In later works, Frye expands on the complexity of the historical origins of the Tajiks. In a 1996 publication, Frye explains that many "factors must be taken into account in explaining the evolution of the peoples whose remnants are the Tajiks in Central Asia" and that "the peoples of Central Asia, whetherIranian orTurkic speaking, have one culture, one religion, one set of social values and traditions with only language separating them."[36]
The Tajiks are the direct descendants of the Iranian peoples whose continuous presence in Central Asia and northern Afghanistan is attested from the middle of the 1st millennium BC. The ancestors of the Tajiks constituted the core of the ancient population of Khwārezm (Khorezm) and Bactria, which formed part of Transoxania (Sogdiana). Over the course of time, the eastern Iranian dialect that was used by the ancient Tajiks eventually gave way toFarsi, a western dialect spoken in Iran and Afghanistan.[37]
The geographical division between the eastern and western Iranians is often considered historically and currently to be the desertDasht-e Kavir, situated in the center of the Iranian plateau.[38]
The most plausible and generally accepted origin of the word is Middle Persian tāzīk 'Arab' (cf. New Persian tāzi), or an Iranian (Sogdian or Parthian) cognate word. The Muslim armies thatinvaded Transoxiana early in the eighth century, conquering the Sogdian principalities and clashing with theQarluq Turks (see Bregel, Atlas, Maps 8–10) consisted not only of Arabs, but also of Persian converts from Fārs and the centralZagros region (Bartol'd [Barthold], "Tadžiki," pp. 455–57). Hence the Turks of Central Asia adopted a variant of the Iranian word, täžik, to designate their Muslim adversaries in general. For example, the rulers of the south IndianChalukya dynasty andRashtrakuta dynasty also referred to the Arabs as "Tajika" in the 8th and 9th century.[39][40] By the eleventh century (Yusof Ḵāṣṣ-ḥājeb,Qutadḡu bilig, lines 280, 282, 3265), theQarakhanid Turks applied this term more specifically to the Persian Muslims in the Oxus basin and Khorasan, who were variously the Turks' rivals, models, overlords (under theSamanid Dynasty), and subjects (fromGhaznavid times on). Persian writers of the Ghaznavid,Seljuq andAtābak periods (ca. 1000–1260) adopted the term and extended its use to cover Persians in the rest ofGreater Iran, now under Turkish rule, as early as the poet ʿOnṣori, ca. 1025 (Dabirsiāqi, pp. 3377, 3408). Iranians soon accepted it as an ethnonym, as is shown by a Persian court official's referring to mā tāzikān "we Tajiks" (Bayhaqi, ed. Fayyāz, p. 594). The distinction between Turk and Tajik became stereotyped to express the symbiosis and rivalry of the (ideally) nomadic military executive and the urban civil bureaucracy (Niẓām al-Molk: tāzik, pp. 146, 178–79; Fragner, "Tādjīk. 2" in EI2 10, p. 63).
Young Tajik women in the 21st century.
The word also occurs in the 8th-centuryTonyukuk inscriptions astözik, used for a local Arab tribe in theTashkent area.[41] These Arabs were said to be from the Taz tribe, which is still found inYemen. In the 7th-century, the Taz began to Islamize the region of Transoxiana in Central Asia.[42]
According to theEncyclopaedia of Islam, however, the oldest known usage of the wordTajik as a reference to Persians in Persian literature can be found in the writings of the famous Persian poet and Islamic scholarJalal ad-Din Rumi.[43] The 15th-century Turkic-speaking poetMīr Alī Šer Navā'ī who lived in theTimurid empire also usedTajik as a reference to Persians.[44]
Location
The Tajiks are the principal ethnic group in most ofTajikistan, as well as in northern and westernAfghanistan, though there are more Tajiks in Afghanistan than in Tajikistan. Tajiks are a substantial minority inUzbekistan, as well as in overseas communities. Historically, the ancestors of the Tajiks lived in a larger territory in Central Asia than now.
Tajiks make up around 84.3% of the population of Tajikistan.[45] This number includes speakers of thePamiri languages, includingWakhi andShughni, and theYaghnobi people who in the past were considered by the government of the Soviet Union nationalities separate from the Tajiks. In the 1926 and 1937 Soviet censuses, the Yaghnobis and Pamiri language speakers were counted as separate nationalities. After 1937, these groups were required to register as Tajiks.[19]
Despite sharing the same name, Tajiks do not refer to the same group of people in Afghanistan and Tajikistan.[18][17] In Afghanistan, a "Tajik" is typically defined as any primarilyDari-speakingSunni Muslim who refer to themselves by the region, province, city, town, or village that they are from,[46][47] such asBadakhshi,Baghlani,Mazari,Panjsheri,Kabuli,Herati,Kohistani, etc.[47][48][49] Although in the past, some non-Pashto speaking tribes were identified as Tajik, for example, the Furmuli.[50][51] By this definition, according to theWorld Factbook, Tajiks make up about 25–27% ofAfghanistan's population,[52][53] but according to other sources, they form 37–39% of the population.[54] Other sources however, for example theEncyclopædia Britannica, state that they constitute about 12–20% of the population,[55][56] which is mostly excludingPersianized ethnic groups like somePashtuns,Uzbeks,Qizilbash,Aimaqs etc. who, especially in large urban areas likeKabul orHerat, assimiliated into the respective local culture.[57][58][59] Tajiks (or Farsiwans respectively) are predominant in four of the largest cities in Afghanistan (Kabul,Mazar-e Sharif,Herat, andGhazni) and make up thequalified majority in the northern and western provinces ofBadakhshan,Panjshir andBalkh, while making up significant portions of the population inTakhar,Kabul,Parwan,Kapisa,Baghlan,Badghis andHerat. Despite not being Tajik, the westernmostIndo-AryanPashayi people of northeastern Afghanistan have deliberately been listed as Tajik by census takers and government agents. However, this is probably because Pashayi-speakingNizari Isma’ilis refer to themselves as Tajik.[60]
InUzbekistan, the Tajiks are the largest part of the population of the ancient cities ofBukhara andSamarkand, and are found in large numbers in theSurxondaryo Region in the south and along Uzbekistan's eastern border with Tajikistan. According to official statistics (2000), Surxondaryo Region accounts for 20.4% of all Tajiks in Uzbekistan, with another 34.3% inSamarqand andBukhara regions.[61]Official statistics in Uzbekistan state that the Tajik community accounts for 5% of the nation's population.[62] However, these numbers do not include ethnic Tajiks who, for a variety of reasons, choose to identify themselves as Uzbeks in population census forms.[63] During the Soviet "Uzbekization" supervised bySharof Rashidov, the head of the Uzbek Communist Party, Tajiks had to choose either stay in Uzbekistan and get registered as Uzbek in their passports or leave the republic for Tajikistan, which is mountainous and less agricultural.[64] It is only in the last population census (1989) that the nationality could be reported not according to the passport, but freely declared based on the respondent's ethnic self-identification.[65] This had the effect of increasing the Tajik population in Uzbekistan from 3.9% in 1979 to 4.7% in 1989. Some scholars estimate that Tajiks may make up 35% of Uzbekistan's population, and believe that just like Afghanistan, there are more Tajiks in Uzbekistan than in Tajikistan.[66]
View of the Registan inSamarkand – although the second largest city ofUzbekistan, it is predominantly a Tajik populated city, along withBukhara.
According to the1999 population census, there were 26,000 Tajiks in Kazakhstan (0.17% of the total population), about the same number as in the 1989 census.
According toofficial statistics, there were about 47,500 Tajiks in Kyrgyzstan in 2007 (0.9% of the total population), up from 42,600 in the 1999 census and 33,500 in the 1989 census.
According to the last Soviet census in 1989,[67] there were 3,149 Tajiks in Turkmenistan, or less than 0.1% of the total population of 3.5 million at that time. The first population census of independent Turkmenistan conducted in 1995 showed 3,103 Tajiks in a population of 4.4 million (0.07%), most of them (1,922) concentrated in the eastern provinces ofLebap andMary adjoining the borders with Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.[68]
Russia
The population of Tajiks in Russia was about 350,236 according to the 2021 census,[69] up from 38,000 in the lastSoviet census of 1989.[70] Most Tajiks came to Russia after thedissolution of the Soviet Union, often asguest workers in places likeMoscow andSaint Petersburg or federal subjects near the Kazakhstan border.[71] There are currently estimated to be over one million Tajik guest workers living in Russia, with their remittances accounting for as much as half of Tajikistan's economy.[72]
There are an estimated 220,000Tajiks in Pakistan as of 2012, mainly refugees from Afghanistan.[73] During the 1990s, as a result of theTajikistan Civil War, between 700 and 1,200 Tajiks arrived in Pakistan, mainly as students, the children of Tajik refugees in Afghanistan. In 2002, around 300 requested to return home and were repatriated back to Tajikistan with the help of theIOM,UNHCR and the two countries' authorities.[74]
A 2014 study of thematernal haplogroups of Tajiks from Tajikistan revealed substantial admixture of West Eurasian and East Eurasian lineages, and also the presence of minor South Asian and North African lineages, as well.[76] Another study reports that "the TajikmtDNA pool gene pool harbors nearly equal proportions ofeastern Eurasian andwestern Eurasian haplotypes."[77]
West Eurasian maternal lineages included haplogroups H, J, K, T, I, W and U.[78] East Eurasian lineages included haplogroups M, C, Z, D, G, A, Y and B.[79] South Asian lineages detected in this study included haplogroups M and R.[80] One lineage in the Tajik sample was assigned to the North African maternal haplogroup X2j.[81]
The dominantpaternal haplogroup among modern Tajiks is the HaplogroupR1a Y-DNA. ~45% of Tajik men share R1a (M17), ~18% J (M172), ~8% R2 (M124), and ~8% C (M130 & M48). Tajiks of Panjikent score 68% R1a, Tajiks of Khojant score 64% R1a.[82] According to another genetic test, 63% of Tajik male samples from Tajikistan carry R1a.[83] This high frequency combined with low diversity of Tajik R1a reflects a strongfounder effect.[84]
Schematic map showing the possible admixture model for Tajik populations. The time in parentheses represent a range. Arrows in different colors indicate ancestral sources and directions of the gene flows.
An autosomal DNA study by Guarino-Vignon et al. (2022), suggested that modern Tajiks show genetic continuity with ancient samples fromTajikistan andTurkmenistan. The genetic ancestry of Tajiks consists largely of a West-Eurasian component (~74%), an East Asian-related component (~18%), and a South Asian component (~8%). According to the authors, the South Asian affinity of Tajiks was previously unreported, although evidence for the presence of a deep South Asian ancestry was already found previously in other Central Asian samples (e.g. among modern Turkmens and historicalBactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex samples). Both historical and more recent geneflow (~1500 years ago) shaped the genetic makeup of Southern Central Asian populations, such as the Tajiks.[85] A follow-up study by Dai et al. (2022) estimated that the Tajiks derive between 11.6 and 18.6% ancestry from admixture with from an East-Eurasian steppe source represented by theXiongnu, with the remainder of their ancestry being derived fromWestern Steppe Herders andBMAC components, as well as a small contribution from the early population associated with theTarim mummies. The authors concluded that Tajiks "present patterns of genetic continuity of Central Asians since the Bronze Age".[86]
The language of the Tajiks is an eastern dialect ofPersian, calledDari (derived fromDarbārī, "[of/from the] royal courts", in the sense of "courtly language"), or also Parsi-e Darbari. In Tajikistan, whereCyrillic script is used, it is called theTajiki language. InAfghanistan, unlike inTajikistan, Tajiks continue to use thePerso-Arabic script, as well as in Iran. When theSoviet Union introduced the Latin script in 1928, and later the Cyrillic script, the Persian dialect of Tajikistan came to be disassociated from the Tajik language. Many Tajik authors have lamented this artificial separation of the Tajik language from its Iranian heritage.[87] One Tajik poem relates:
Once you said 'you are Iranian', then you said, 'you are Tajik'May he die separated from his roots, he who separated us.[88][87]
Since the 19th century, Tajiki has been strongly influenced by the Russian language and has incorporated many Russian languageloan words.[89] It has also adopted fewerArabic loan words than Iranian Persian while retaining vocabulary that has fallen out of use in the latter language.
Many Tajiks can read, speak or write in Russian, while the prestige and importance of Russian has declined since the fall of theSoviet Union and the exodus of Russians from Central Asia. Nevertheless, Russian fluency is still considered a vital skill for business and education.[90]
The dialects of modernPersian spoken throughoutGreater Iran have a common origin. This is due to the fact that one ofGreater Iran's historical cultural capitals, calledGreater Khorasan, which included parts of modern Central Asia and much of Afghanistan and constitutes as the Tajik's ancestral homeland, played a key role in the development and propagation of Persian language and culture throughout much ofGreater Iran after the Muslim conquest. Furthermore, early manuscripts of the historical Persian spoken inMashhad during the development of Middle to New Persian show that their origins came fromSistan, in present-day Afghanistan.[23]
Various scholars have recorded theZoroastrian, andBuddhist pre-Islamic heritage of the Tajik people. Early temples for fire worship have been found inBalkh andBactria and excavations in present-day Tajikistan and Uzbekistan show remnants of Zoroastrian fire temples.[91]
According to a 2009U.S. State Department release, the population of Tajikistan is 98% Muslim, (approximately 85%Sunni and 5%Shia).[92] InAfghanistan, the great number of Tajiks adhere toSunni Islam. A small number of Tajiks may followTwelverShia Islam; theFarsiwan are one such group.[93] The community ofBukharian Jews in Central Asia speak a dialect of Persian. TheBukharian Jewish community in Uzbekistan is the largest remaining community of Central Asian Jews and resides primarily in Bukhara and Samarkand, while theBukharaian Jews of Tajikistan live in Dushanbe and number only a few hundred.[94] From the 1970s to the 1990s the majority of these Tajik-speaking Jews emigrated to the United States and toIsrael in accordance withAliyah. Recently, the Protestant community of Tajiks descent has experienced significant growth, a 2015 study estimates some 2,600 Muslim Tajik converted to Christianity.[95]
Tajikistan marked 2009 as the year to commemorate the Tajik Sunni Muslim juristAbu Hanifa, whose ancestry hailed fromParwan Province of Afghanistan, as the nation hosted an international symposium that drew scientific and religious leaders.[96] The construction of one of the largest mosques in the world, funded byQatar, was announced in October 2009. The mosque is planned to be built in Dushanbe and construction is said to be completed by 2014.[97]
The collapse of theSoviet Union and theCivil War in Afghanistan both gave rise to a resurgence in Tajik nationalism across the region, including a trial to revert to thePerso-Arabic script in Tajikistan.[98][23][99] Furthermore, Tajikistan in particular has been a focal point for this movement, and the government there has made a conscious effort to revive the legacy of theSamanid empire, the first Tajik-dominated state in the region after theArab advance. For instance, thePresident of Tajikistan,Emomalii Rahmon, dropped the Russian suffix "-ov" from his surname and directed others to adopt Tajik names when registering births.[100] According to a government announcement in October 2009, approximately 4,000 Tajik nationals have dropped "ov" and "ev" from their surnames since the start of the year.[101]
In September 2009, theIslamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan proposed a draft law to have the nation's language referred to as "Tajiki-Farsi" rather than "Tajik." The proposal drew criticism from Russian media since the bill sought to remove theRussian language as Tajikistan's inter-ethniclingua franca.[102] In 1989, the original name of the language (Farsi) had been added to its official name in brackets, though Rahmon's government renamed the language to simply "Tajiki" in 1994.[102] On 6 October 2009, Tajikistan adopted the law that removes Russian as thelingua franca and mandated Tajik as the language to be used in official documents and education, with an exception for members Tajikistan's ethnic minority groups, who would be permitted to receive an education in the language of their choosing.[103]
^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."
^abC.E. Bosworth; B.G. Fragner (1999). "TĀDJĪK".Encyclopaedia of Islam (CD-ROM Edition v. 1.0 ed.). Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV.
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^abBrasher, Ryan. “Ethnic Brother or Artificial Namesake? The Construction of Tajik Identity in Afghanistan and Tajikistan.” Berkeley Journal of Sociology, vol. 55, 2011, pp. 97–120. JSTOR, Link:[2]. Accessed 15 January 2025.
^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.ISBN9789231032110.
^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.
^Watson, Burton(1993).Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian. Translated by Burton Watson. Han Dynasty II (Revised Edition), pp. 244–245. Columbia University Press.ISBN0-231-08166-9;ISBN0-231-08167-7 (pbk)
^Richard Nelson Frye,"Persien: bis zum Einbruch des Islam" (original English title:"The Heritage of Persia"), German version, tr. by Paul Baudisch, Kindler Verlag AG,Zürich 1964, pp. 485–498
^Soper, J.D.; Bodrogligeti, A.J.E. (1996).Loan Syntax in Turkic and Iranian. Eurasian language archives. Eurolingua. p. 48.ISBN978-0-931922-58-9. Retrieved1 November 2023. "Western languages were located in the western portion of the Iranian plateau, separated by the Dasht - e Kavir and Dasht - e Lūt deserts from the Eastern Iranian dialects."
^Political History of the Chālukyas of Badami by Durga Prasad Dikshit p.192
^The First Spring: The Golden Age of India by Abraham Eraly p.91
^Lawrence Krader (1971).Peoples of Central Asia. Indiana University. p. 54.
^Jean-Charles Blanc (1976).L'Afghanistan et ses populations (in French). Éditions Complexe. p. 80.
^C.E. Bosworth/B.G. Fragner, "Tādjīk", inEncyclopaedia of Islam, Online Edition:"... In Islamic usage, [Tādjīk] eventually came to designate the Persians, as opposed to Turks [...] the oldest citation for it which Schraeder could find was in verses ofDjalāl al-Dīn Rūmī ..."
^Ali Shir Nava'iMuhakamat al-lughatain tr. & ed. Robert Devereaux (Leiden: Brill) 1966 p6
^Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress (1997)."Afghanistan: Tajik".Country Studies Series. Library of Congress.Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved19 December 2007.
^Bellew, Henry Walter (1891)An inquiry into the ethnography of Afghanistan The Oriental Institute, Woking, Butler & Tanner, Frome, United Kingdom,page 126,OCLC182913077
^Markham, C. R. (January 1879) "The Mountain Passes on the Afghan Frontier of British India"Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography (New Monthly Series) 1(1): pp. 38–62, p.48
^Country Factfiles. — Afghanistan, page 153. // Atlas. Fourth Edition. Editors: Ben Hoare, Margaret Parrish. Publisher: Jonathan Metcalf. First published in Great Britain in 2001 by Dorling Kindersley Limited. London:Dorling Kindersley, 2010, 432 pages.ISBN9781405350396 "Population: 28.1 million Religions: Sunni Muslim 84%, Shi'a Muslim 15%, other 1% Ethnic Mix: Pashtun 38%, Tajik25%, Hazara 19%, Uzbek, Turkmen, other 18%"
^Maley, William, ed.Fundamentalism reborn?: Afghanistan and the Taliban, p. 170. NYU Press, 1998.
^"Tajik".Encyclopædia Britannica.Archived from the original on 25 November 2011. Retrieved6 November 2011.There were about 5,000,000 in Afghanistan, where they constituted about one-fifth of the population.
^Fazel, S. M. (2017).Ethnohistory of the Qizilbash in Kabul: Migration, State, and a Shi'a Minority (Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University), p. 153.
^Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (23 February 2000)."Uzbekistan".Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – 1999. U.S. Department of State. Archived fromthe original on 12 February 2021. Retrieved19 December 2007.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^The ethnic composition of the 1.7 million registered Afghan refugees living in Pakistan are believed to be 85% Pashtun and 15% Tajik, Uzbek and others."2012 UNHCR country operations profile – Pakistan".Archived from the original on 24 July 2020. Retrieved8 August 2012.
^Ovchinnikov, Igor V.; Malek, Mathew J.; Drees, Kenneth; Kholina, Olga I. (2014)."Mitochondrial DNA variation in Tajiks living in Tajikistan".Legal Medicine.16 (6):390–395.doi:10.1016/j.legalmed.2014.07.009.ISSN1344-6223.PMID25155918.Archived from the original on 17 January 2023. Retrieved17 January 2023. "The Tajik mtDNA pool was characterized by substantial admixture of western and eastern Eurasian haplogroups, 62.6% and 26.4% sequences, respectively. It also contained 9.9% of South Asian and 1.1% of African haplotypes."
^Irwin, Jodi A. (6 February 2010). "The mtDNA composition of Uzbekistan: a microcosm of Central Asian patterns".International Journal of Legal Medicine.124 (3). Springer Science and Business Media LLC:195–204.doi:10.1007/s00414-009-0406-z.ISSN0937-9827.PMID20140442.S2CID2759130. "The Tajik mtDNA gene pool harbors nearly equal proportions of eastern Eurasian and western Eurasian haplotypes"...."The genetic features of other ethnic populations likely also reflect their documented demographic histories. For instance, the small mtDNA distance between the Tajik and Uzbek populations suggests a recent shared history. Tajiks and Uzbeks were only formally differentiated in 1929 when the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic was established, and up to 40% of the current Uzbek population is of Tajik ancestry (Library of Congress Federal Research Division Country Profile: Uzbekistan Feb 2007)."
^Ovchinnikov et al. 2014, p. 392: "The western Eurasian component is represented by haplo- groups HV/, HV0, H, J, K, T, and U of the macrohaplogroup R, and haplogroups I and W of the macrohaplogroup N [22]."
^Ovchinnikov et al. 2014, p. 392: "The eastern Eurasian component is represented by haplogroups M8, M10, C, Z, D, G of the macrohaplogroup M, haplogroups A and Y1 of the macrohaplogroup N, and haplogroup B of the macrohaplogroup R [22]."
^Ovchinnikov et al. 2014, p. 392: "The south Asian component is comprised of nine mtDNA sequences (9.9%) belonging to the macrohaplogroups M and R [22]. Two sequences were assigned to main branches of M including M3a1 (1.1%) and M30 (1.1%). Macrohaplogroup R was represented by six mtDNA sequences (6.6%) belonging to R0a (1 sample), R1 (2 samples), R2 (1 sample), and R5a (2 samples). One Tajik mtDNA sequence (1.1%) belonged to aforementioned U2b2, a south Asian autochthonous subhaplogroup of the macrohaplogroup R [25]."
^Ovchinnikov et al. 2014, p. 392: "One Tajik mtDNA sequence (1.1%) was assigned to subhaplogroup X2j. X2j is considered to be of North African origin [23]."
^Dai et al. 2022 (25 August 2022)."The Genetic Echo of the Tarim Mummies in Modern Central Asians".Molecular Biology and Evolution.39 (9).doi:10.1093/molbev/msac179.PMC9469894.PMID36006373.Archived from the original on 17 March 2023. Retrieved18 March 2023.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) "The Historical Era gene flow derived from the Eastern Steppe with the representative of Mongolia_Xiongnu_o1 made a more substantial contribution to Kyrgyz and other Turkic-speaking populations (i.e., Kazakh, Uyghur, Turkmen, and Uzbek; 34.9–55.2%) higher than that to the Tajik populations (11.6–18.6%; fig. 4A), suggesting Tajiks suffer fewer impacts of the recent admixtures (Martínez-Cruz et al. 2011). Consequently, the Tajik populations generally present patterns of genetic continuity of Central Asians since the Bronze Age. Our results are consistent with linguistic and genetic evidence that the spreading of Indo-European speakers into Central Asia was earlier than the expansion of Turkic speakers (Kuz′mina and Mallory 2007; Yunusbayev et al. 2015)."
^Moḥammad Reẓa Shafi‘ī-Kadkanī, ‘Borbad’s Khusravanis – First Iranian Songs’, in Iraj Bashiri (tr and ed), From the Hymns of Zarathustra to the Songs of Borbad, Dushanbe, 2003, p. 135.
^Perry, John."TAJIK ii. TAJIK PERSIAN".TAJIK II. TAJIK PERSIAN. Encyclopaedia Iranica.Archived from the original on 1 February 2020. Retrieved20 July 2009.
