Tajikistan

Tajikistan is a country in Asia.

It has no sea. Almost all of it is mountains. Snow and ice cover the highest peaks. The capital city is Dushanbe.

Tajikistan is a landlocked country in the heart of Central Asia. Of the five Central Asian countries it has the least land, but it has the most and highest mountains. More than nine-tenths of the country is mountains, and about half of it is more than 3,000 meters above the sea.

People live mostly in the valleys, which make up less than one-tenth of the land. Tajikistan was part of the Soviet Union from 1929 until 1991. Its capital is Dushanbe, and about 10.7 million people lived in the country at the start of 2026.

Tajikistan is a landlocked state in the heart of Central Asia. Britannica notes that it has the smallest territory of the five Central Asian states but surpasses them all in elevation: more than nine-tenths of the land is mountainous and about half lies above 3,000 m, while the valleys that hold most people cover less than one-tenth. It includes the Gorno-Badakhshan autonomous region, with its capital at Khorugh.

Tajikistan was a union republic of the Soviet Union from 1929 until independence in 1991. Its Agency on Statistics counted 10.721 million people on January 1, 2026. The population is young: more than one-third is under 15 and almost two-thirds under 30, and fewer than one-third of Tajiks live in towns.

Dushanbe is the capital city.

It has a giant library shaped like an open book. Khujand is a city with a busy market. Very old ruins show where people lived long, long ago.

Dushanbe, the capital, has the Tajik National Library, built to look like an open book. It holds about six million items and is the biggest library in Central Asia. Across a park stands the National Museum of Tajikistan.

Khujand, in the north, is the other big city. Near the western border is Sarazm, one of the oldest settlements in Central Asia, where people lived from about 6,000 to 4,000 years ago. Its name means where the land begins, and it became a World Heritage Site in 2010.

Dushanbe and Khujand are the two largest cities; older towns include Kŭlob and Ŭroteppa. In Dushanbe the Tajik National Library, built to resemble an open book, holds about six million items in 45,000 m² and is the largest library in Central Asia; it overlooks Rūdakī Park, at the far end of which is the National Museum.

UNESCO inscribed the Proto-urban Site of Sarazm in 2010. Occupied from the 4th millennium BCE to the end of the 3rd millennium BCE, it shows early proto-urbanization between mountain pastures and an irrigable valley, and trade reaching the steppes, the Iranian plateau, the Indus valley and the Indian Ocean. Tajik National Park (Mountains of the Pamirs), inscribed in 2013, covers more than 2.6 million hectares.

The Pamir Mountains are very tall and icy.

One glacier there is very, very long. A big lake was made when an earthquake shook down a mountainside. Winters in the mountains are freezing.

In the east rise the Pamir Mountains. Ismoil Somoni Peak, the highest, is 7,495 meters tall. The Pamirs hold more than 1,000 glaciers, including the Fedchenko Glacier, the longest valley glacier outside the polar regions.

In 1911 an earthquake caused a giant landslide that blocked a river and made Lake Sarez. Earthquakes are common here. In summer the valleys are hot and dry, but in the high Pamirs January averages about −20 °C. Melting snow and glaciers feed fast rivers such as the Panj and the Vakhsh.

The Trans-Alay range of the Tien Shan reaches into the north; the Turkestan, Zeravshan and Gissar ranges cross the center; the glaciated Pamirs fill the southeast, with Ismoil Somoni Peak (7,495 m) and Ibn Sina Peak (7,134 m). UNESCO places the Pamirs at the center of the Pamir Knot, where the Himalaya, Karakoram, Hindu Kush, Kunlun and Tien Shan radiate, thrown up by the collision of the Indian-Australian and Eurasian plates. Tajik National Park counts 1,085 glaciers, 170 rivers and more than 400 lakes, including the Fedchenko Glacier, Lake Sarez, dammed by the 1911 earthquake-triggered landslide that formed the Usoi Dam, the highest natural dam in the world, and Karakul.

The Panj and Vakhsh join to form the Amu Darya; the rivers peak twice a year, with spring snowmelt and summer glacier melt, which feeds irrigation. The climate is sharply continental: July means are 27 °C in Khujand and 30 °C in Kŭlob, while Murghob in the Pamirs averages −20 °C in January and can fall to −46 °C. Bare rock, scree, snow and ice cover about two-thirds of the surface.

Snow leopards live high in the mountains.

Wild sheep and wild goats live there too. Brown bears live lower down. Golden eagles soar over the peaks.

Tajikistan's mountains and valleys are home to many animals. In the deserts there are great gray lizards and jerboas, small rodents that hop. Deer, jackals and wildcats live in woods and reed beds, brown bears on the lower mountain slopes, and wild goats and golden eagles higher up.

The Pamirs shelter rare animals such as the snow leopard, the Siberian ibex and the Marco Polo argali, a kind of wild sheep. More than 5,000 kinds of flowers grow in the country.

Tajikistan's range of landscapes and climates gives it extremely varied plant life, with more than 5,000 kinds of flowers alone, mostly grasses, bushes and shrubs. Britannica lists the great gray lizard, jerboa and gopher in the deserts; deer, jackal and wildcat in woods and reedy thickets; brown bears at lower mountain levels; and goats and golden eagles higher up.

UNESCO notes that Tajik National Park, a stark treeless landscape of high plateaus and glaciated peaks, shelters nationally rare and threatened birds and mammals, including the Marco Polo argali, the snow leopard and the Siberian ibex. The park is sparsely inhabited and almost untouched by farming or permanent settlement.

About 10.7 million people live in Tajikistan.

Most people speak Tajik. Families share bread, rice and green tea. In spring, people celebrate the new year, called Navruz.

More than four out of five people in Tajikistan are Tajiks, and Tajik, a form of Persian written in Cyrillic letters, is the official language. Many people speak Uzbek, and Russian is used in business. In the Pamirs, people speak several other old Iranian languages.

Most families live in villages called qishlaqs, with orchards of apples, apricots and mulberries. Meals start with green tea, fruit and nuts. A favorite dish is osh, rice with meat and carrots, and bread called non is treated with great respect. The new year, Navruz, begins on March 21.

More than four-fifths of the population is ethnically Tajik; more than a million Uzbeks also live in Tajikistan, and Russians, Tatars, Kyrgyz and others form smaller groups. Tajik, a southwestern Iranian language closely related to Farsi and Dari but written in Cyrillic, is official; Uzbek is second, and Russian is widely used in administration and business. The Pamir peoples speak eastern Iranian languages such as Wakhī and Shughnī, and the Yaghnābīs of the Zeravshan basin descend from the ancient Sogdians. Most people are Sunni Muslims; a small Ismaʿīlī community lives mainly in the Pamirs.

Most Tajiks live in qishlaqs of 200 to 700 houses along canals or rivers, or 15 to 20 households in narrow mountain valleys, where one flat roof may serve as the yard of the house above. Irrigated oases grow cotton, gardens and vineyards. Meals begin with green tea, fruit, nuts and sweets; osh and qurutob are traditional dishes, and non bread must never be dropped or turned upside down. National sports include gushtingiri wrestling and chavgonbozi, a form of polo.