Uyghur languageThe Uyghur or Uighur language (ˈwiːɡʊər,_-gər; ئۇيغۇر تىلى, Уйғур тили, Uyghur tili, Uyƣur tili, ujɣur tili or ئۇيغۇرچە, Уйғурчә, Uyghurche, Uyƣurqə, ujɣurˈtʃɛ, CTA: Uyğurçä; formerly known as Eastern Turki) is a Turkic language written in a Uyghur Perso-Arabic script with 8–13 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Apart from East Turkestan, significant communities of Uyghur speakers are also located in Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and various other countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities.
TajikistanTajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. It has an area of and an estimated population of 9,750,065 people. Dushanbe is the country's capital and largest city. It is bordered by Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, China to the east and is separated narrowly from Pakistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor. Tajiks form the ethnic majority in the country and the historical Tajik homeland lies in present-day Tajikistan as well as parts of Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.
Arabic scriptThe Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin alphabet), the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the third-most by number of users (after the Latin and Chinese scripts). The script was first used to write texts in Arabic, most notably the Quran, the holy book of Islam.
Middle PersianMiddle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg (𐭯𐭠𐭫𐭮𐭩𐭪) in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Persian continued to function as a prestige language. It descended from Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenid Empire and is the linguistic ancestor of Modern Persian, an official language of Iran, Afghanistan (Dari) and Tajikistan (Tajik).
SamarkandSamarkand or Samarqand (ˈsæmərkænd ; Uzbek and Самарқанд, sæmærqænd, -ænt; سمرقند) is a city in southeastern Uzbekistan and among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Central Asia. Samarkand is the capital of Samarqand Region and a district-level city, that includes the urban-type settlements Kimyogarlar, Farxod and Xishrav. With 551,700 inhabitants (2021), it is the second-largest city of Uzbekistan. Most of the inhabitants of the city are native speakers of the Tajik dialect of the Persian language.
KhujandKhujand (Khujand; Uzbek: Хўжанд, romanized: Хo'jand; Khojand), sometimes spelled Khodjent and known as Leninabad (Leninabad; Leninobod; Leninâbâd) from 1936 to 1991, is the second-largest city of Tajikistan and the capital of Tajikistan's northernmost Sughd province. Khujand is one of the oldest cities in Central Asia, dating back about 2,500 years to the Persian Empire. Situated on the Syr Darya river at the mouth of the Fergana Valley, Khujand was a major city along the ancient Silk Road.
FerdowsiAbul-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi (; 940 – 1019/1025), also Firdawsi or Ferdowsi (), was a Persian poet and the author of Shahnameh ("Book of Kings"), which is one of the world's longest epic poems created by a single poet, and the greatest epic of Persian-speaking countries. Ferdowsi is celebrated as one of the most influential figures of Persian literature and one of the greatest in the history of literature. Except for his kunya ( – Abo'l-Qâsem) and his laqab ( – Ferdowsī, meaning 'paradisic'), nothing is known with any certainty about his full name.
Pamir MountainsThe Pamir Mountains are a mountain range between Central Asia and Pakistan. It is located at a junction with other notable mountains, namely the Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun, Hindu Kush and the Himalaya mountain ranges. They are among the world's highest mountains. Much of the Pamir Mountains lie in the Gorno-Badakhshan Province of Tajikistan. To the south, they border the Hindu Kush mountains along Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor in Badakhshan Province, Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan regions of Pakistan.
Persian alphabetThe Persian alphabet (Alefbâye Fârsi), also known as the Perso-Arabic script, is the right-to-left alphabet used for the Persian language. It is a variation of the Arabic alphabet with four additional letters added: پ چ ژ گ. It was the basis of many Arabic-based scripts used in Central and South Asia. It is used for the Iranian and Dari standard varieties of Persian; and is one of two official writing systems for the Persian language, alongside the Cyrillic-based Tajik alphabet.
Tajik alphabetThe Tajik language has been written in three alphabets over the course of its history: an adaptation of the Perso-Arabic script, an adaptation of the Latin script and an adaptation of the Cyrillic script. Any script used specifically for Tajik may be referred to as the Tajik alphabet, which is written as алифбои тоҷикӣ in Cyrillic characters, الفبای تاجیکی with Perso-Arabic script and alifboji toçikī in Latin script.
