History of Tajikistan. Ancient history to present days

The territory of Tajikistan has been continuously inhabited since the early Stone Age. The first Central Asian states of Sogdia and Bactria in the first millennium BC, included portions of Tajikistan. The territory was Persian-controlled from the 6th century BC, until conquered by Alexander the Great in 329 BC. Much of Tajikistan was included in the Greco-Bactrian kingdom in 3rd century BC, and after displaced by the Tochari tribes who invaded Sogdia a century later. The Kushana kingdom was established in the first centuries of the Christian era, when a number of cities were established, and agriculture and commerce grew. In the 5th and 6th centuries, parts of Tajikistan were conquered by nomadic tribes, the Chionites and, later, the Ephthalites.

At the end of the 6th century the large Ephthalite empire was displaced by the Eastern Turkic Kaganate. Arabs conquered the area in the 8th century, introducing Islam. Later in the 9th century they were displaced by the Samanides, who encouraged the development of trade and of material culture. From the 10th to the 13th centuries a number of kingdoms succeeded one another in Central Asia; among the ones which included parts of Tajikistan were the Ghaznavids, the Karakhanids, the Ghorids, the Karakitai, and the Khwarazmites.

In 1219–1221 Genghiz Khan`s troops conquered the entire area, destroying many cities. Tajikistan became part of the lands given to Genghiz Khan`s son, Chagatai. In the 14th century Timur (Tamerlane) created a large empire, with its capital in Samarkand. In the 16th century Tajikistan was conquered by the Sheibanids, who had their capital in Bukhara. Portions of territory were included later in the Ashtarkhanid state and then in the Kokand Khanate, which emerged in the Fergana Valley in the mid-18th century. Present-day Tajikistan was split between the Khanates of Bukhara and Kokand in the 18th and 19th centuries.

In 1863, Russia asserted a right to exercise dominance in Central Asia, and began the military conquest of the khanates. Bukhara and Samarkand were incorporated into Russia in 1868. Kokand was eliminated in 1876, and the border with Afghanistan was set by accord with England in 1895. At that point, part of Tajikistan was in the Emirate of Bukhara, part was in Turkestan. When the Tsar`s draft call-up of 1916 was announced, rebellions broke out all over Central Asia, including in Tajikistan. These were suppressed, at great loss of life.

Northern Tajikistan was conquered by the Bolsheviks in 1918, who extended control to the rest of the country when Bukhara was captured, in 1920. Muslim guerrilla warfare termed the Basmachi Rebellion was finally suppressed in 1924. Tajikistan was established as an autonomous republic within the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic in 1924. The republic became a full Soviet Socialist Republic in 1929.

Border delineations in Central Asia were very arbitrary. For several hundred years educated Central Asians had used Persian and Turkic languages essentially equally, so that separation into Turkic-speaking Uzbeks and Persian-speaking Tajiks, as if to create separate nationalities, was primarily administrative. Bukhara and Samarkand, the major Tajik cities, were included in Uzbekistan, while Tajikistan was left only with smaller cities, and little arable land. People were forced to assume one nationality or another.

In the late Soviet period Tajikistan was the poorest and least developed of the republics. It comprised four separate areas, the elites of which competed for power. Traditionally power was held by people from Khojent, which is geographically and culturally closest to Uzbekistan`s Fergana valley. They were contested by families and clans from Kulyab, south of Dushanbe. Poorest were people from the Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Province, most of which is in the Pamir Mountains.

The final area was Kurgan-Tyube, in the extreme south, where the influence of Islam was strong; public calls for establishing an Islamic state were heard there as early as 1976.In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev replaced longtime republic leader Rakhmon Nabiyev with Kakhar Makhkamov, whose control never penetrated to the most local levels. Riots in February 1990 exposed his weaknesses, and encouraged a proliferation of political parties and groups. When the August 1991 Soviet coup attempt came, Makhkamov was the only republic leader to welcome it. When the coup failed, Makhkamov was forced to resign, and Nabiyev returned to power.