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International Conference
«Conflicts in the Caucasus: History, the Present and Prospects for Resolution»
Baku (Azerbaijan) 22-23 October, 2012 and Tbilisi (Georgia) 25-26 October, 2012
ETHNIC PROCESSES IN GORNY BADAKHSHANValentin BUSHKOV
Lydia MONOGAROVA
Valentin Bushkov, Ph.D. (Hist.), department head, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, RAS.
Lydia Monogarova, D.Sc. (Hist.), leading researcher, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, RAS.
The PastThe valleys high up in the mountains of the Western Pamirs are the home of indigenous ethnic groups (Iazgulems, Rushans and a group of the Khuftsy among them, Bartangtsy and Roshorvtsy, Shugnantsy and Badjuvtsy, Ishkashimtsy and Vakhantsy. All of them have languages of their own that belong to the Pamir linguistic group within the larger East Iranian group of the Indo-European linguistic family. They are Ismailites (Shi‘ite Islam).
There are ethnic groups living in the neighboring countries: Rushans, Shugnantsy, Ishkashimtsy, Vakhantsy, Sanglichi, Zebaktsy, and Mundjantsy in Afghan Badakhshan. In Pakistan there are Vakhantsy in the upper reaches of the Iarkhun river and the Khunza valley in Kashmir, the Mundjantsy and Yidga in Chitral. China (Xinjiang) is home of the Sarykoltsy and Vakhantsy.
The Western Pamirs belongs to the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of the Republic of Tajikistan (GBAR). There are also Darwaz Tajiks in the GBAR western part (Kalai-Khumb district in the Panj river valley), Vanchas in the Vanj river valley, Gorontsy in Ishkashim district and Badakhshan Tajiks who arrived there from Afghan Badakhshan some 200 or 300 years ago. They speak their native tongues: the Vanchas—the Vanj dialects of the Tajik language; the Darwaz Tajiks, the Darwaz dialects of the Tajik language; the Gorontsy, the Badakhshan dialects. The Tajik language belongs to the West Iranian group of the Indo-European linguistic family. The Gorontsy are Ismailites while the Darwaz Tajiks, Vanchas and Iazgulems are mainly Sunni Muslims.
The region was mentioned in the late 6th-early 5th centuries B.C. when the Western Pamirs was part of the 15th administrative unit of the Achaemenid Empire under Darius I and was populated by the Sacae. In any case this was what Claudius Ptolemy wrote in the 2nd century A.D. Chinese sources of the 2nd to 8th centuries mention the territories of Vakhan, Shugnan, and Rushan. In the latter half of the 8th century Arabic influence predominated there; in the 9th and 10th centuries Arabian authors wrote a lot about the Pamiri principalities; in the 10th century the Western Pamiri principalities formed the eastern frontier of the Samanid possessions and the Arabian caliphate as a whole. The Arabs had a checkpoint and…………..
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