Tajiks
Tajiks (Persian: تاجيک، تاجک, Tājīk, Tājek; Tajik: Тоҷик) are a Persian-speaking[17] Iranian ethnic group native to Central Asia, living primarily in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Tajiks are the largest ethnicity in Tajikistan, and the second-largest in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. They speak varieties of Persian, a Western Iranian language. In Tajikistan, since the 1939 Soviet census, its small Pamiri and Yaghnobi ethnic groups are included as Tajiks.[18] In China, the term is used to refer to its Pamiri ethnic groups, the Tajiks of Xinjiang, who speak the Eastern Iranian Pamiri languages.[19][20] In Afghanistan, the Pamiris are counted as a separate ethnic group.[21]
 Tajiks | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 18–25 million[1] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Afghanistan | 9,450,000–11,550,000 (2014) 25%[2] |
 Tajikistan | 6,787,000 (2014)[3] |
 Uzbekistan | 1,420,000 (2012, official) other, non-official, scholarly estimates are 8 – 11 million[4][5][6] |
 Pakistan | 221,725 (2005)[7] |
 Russia | 201,000[8] |
 Kyrgyzstan | 58,913[9] |
 United States | 52,000[10] |
 Kazakhstan | 50,121[11] |
 China | 39,642[12] |
 Canada | 15,870[13] |
 Ukraine | 4,255[14] |
| Languages | |
| Persian (Dari and Tajik) Secondary: Pashto, Russian, Uzbek | |
| Religion | |
| Vast majority Sunni Islam[15] minority Shia Islam and Sufism[16] | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| other Iranian peoples | |
As a self-designation, the literary New Persian term Tajik, which originally had some previous pejorative usage as a label for eastern Persians or Iranians,[22] has become acceptable during the last several decades, particularly as a result of Soviet administration in Central Asia.[17] Alternative names for the Tajiks are Eastern Persian,[22][23] Fārsīwān (Persian-speaker), and Dīhgān (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 to Arabs, Turks and Romans during the Sassanid and early Islamic period.[24][22]