TAJIKS OF JIZZAKH OASIS: TRADITIONAL WAY OF LIFE, CUSTOMS AND TRADITIONS AND RITUALS

Abstract

In this article, the Tajiks are an Iranian people, speaking a variety of Persian, concentrated in the Oxus Basin, the Farḡāna valley (Tajikistan and parts of Uzbekistan) and on both banks of the upper Oxus, i.e., the Pamir mountains (Mountain Badaḵšān, in Tajikistan) and northeastern Afghanistan (Badaḵšān). Most Tajiks in the Pamirs (including about 34,000 in the Tašqorḡān district of the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region in southwestern China) are native speakers of several Eastern Iranian languages of the Pamir group (those in Tajikistan use Persian as an administrative and contact language, while those in China (speakers mainly of Sarikoli and Wakhi) generally do not know Persian, and use Uighur and Chinese in dealings with their neighbors. Emigrés from Tajikistan are to be found in Russia, Israel, Western Europe, and North America. The total population of Tajiks is estimated at about five million.