Tajikistan

Tajikistan is almost all mountain. In the east the Pamirs rise to Ismoil Somoni Peak, and the Fedchenko Glacier creeps for dozens of kilometres between their ridges. An earthquake in 1911 brought down a mountainside that dammed a river and created Lake Sarez. The Panj and the Vakhsh join in the south-west to form the Amu Darya, and the north holds a slice of the Fergana Valley around Khujand.

Panjakent, in the Zeravshan valley, was a town of Sogdian merchants who traded between China and Persia, and its houses were painted with epic scenes. Alexander the Great founded a city near Khujand in 329 BC. Tajiks look back to the Samanid dynasty, at whose court in Bukhara Rudaki became the first great poet of New Persian. Russia took control in the nineteenth century; a Soviet republic followed in 1929, and after independence in 1991 a civil war raged until a peace agreement in 1997.

Tajiks share the poetry of Rudaki, Ferdowsi and Hafez with Iran and Afghanistan, and recite it at Navruz, the spring new year. In the Pamirs most people are Ismaili Muslims, and houses are built around a skylight resting on five pillars. Qurutob, flatbread soaked in a sauce of dried yoghurt, is shared from a wooden platter. The Nurek dam on the Vakhsh powers an aluminium smelter at Tursunzoda, the south-western valleys grow cotton, and wages earned in Russia support many households.