GBAO population. Mountain badakhshan
Mountain Badakhshan is an amazing mountain country. All over the world there are only two such places: Tibetan and Bolivian highlands.
The Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region borders on the north with, in the east with, in the south and west with Afghanistan. Geographically, the Gorno-Badakhshan zone coincides with the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region and occupies the eastern part (45% of the republic).
The territory of the region includes the most diverse landscapes: alpine meadows, alpine deserts, deep and narrow river gorges, compressed by rocky ridges, picturesque valleys lying at an altitude of 2000 - 3000 meters, beautiful alpine lakes and rapid rivers, the unusual architecture of mountain settlements. Here are also the highest ridges, the most powerful glaciers, the highest located settlements of the country (up to 4000 m). The glaciers of this zone give rise to almost all the rivers of Central Asia.
Most of the region is occupied by the highlands of the Pamirs, the highest point of which is (now Ismail Samani peak), due to which the highlands are often called the “Roof of the World”.
The administrative, industrial and cultural center of the region is located in a deep canyon at an altitude of 2200 meters above sea level, on the banks of the Gunt River, at the place of its confluence with the Panj.
History of Mountain Badakhshan
The first inhabitants of the Pamirs, or rather Mountain Badakhshan, were the primitive people of the Stone Age. At the end of the Bronze Age, the Pamirs began to be populated first by the Proto-Indian tribes, and then by the ancient Iranians. At the same time, the languages \u200b\u200band culture of the aliens began to assimilate with local traditions and dialects. Thus, a group of East Iranian languages \u200b\u200bwas formed.
Vanj district with a center in the village of Vanj.
Shugnansky district with a center in the city of Khorog.
Ishkashim district with a center in the village of Ishkashim.
Darvaz region.
Rushansky with the center in the village of Rushan.
Darvaz region.
Roshtkala district.
The city of Khorog.
Population
Since ancient times, mountainous Badakhshan was inhabited by sedentary tribes of farmers, who still call themselves "Pamiri". At one time, branches of the Great Silk Road passed along the Panj, many conquerors visited here, therefore, the formation of the local nationality was influenced by Persian, Arab and Chinese cultures. Ethnically and culturally, Badakhshans are descendants of ancient Iranian tribes; it is widely believed that it was from them that the Aryan nationalities descended, which later settled in Europe, India, and Iran. Until now, the Pamirians communicate in ancient East Iranian languages \u200b\u200b- Wahan, Shugnan, Ishkashim. To this day, these unique people keep their centuries-old traditions, observe customs that are interesting for every traveler who have reached these protected places.
Tourism
In Gorno-Badakhshan, tourists have the opportunity to enjoy the picturesque mountain landscapes of numerous ranges (Vonchsky, Rushansky, Shokhdaryinsky, Zulumart, Zaalaysky), as well as the Afghan Hindu Kush and Chinese Kun-Lun with peaks Pathor peak (6093 m), Mayakovsky peak (6095 m), K. Marks peak (6723 m), Soviet officers peak (6233 m), peak and many other picturesque peaks, various alpine lakes (Bulunkul, Zoroshkul, Turumtykul, Yashilkul, Zorkul, Rongkul and hundreds of other smaller lakes), intermountain valleys (Alichurskaya, Vakhanskaya, Shokhdaryinskaya, Vonchskaya) with many mountain villages where you can watch real life Pamiris and their traditions, the remains of ancient fortresses (Kaahka, Yamchun, Ratm), as well as numerous tombs and sanctuaries.
This region is of greatest interest to foreign tourists, which is reliably confirmed by the annual influx of travelers from Europe, Asia and America, as well as the CIS countries.
Most of the historical Badakhshan is located within the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajikistan, located in the south-eastern part of the country. The music of Badakhshan is an important part of the cultural heritage of the region. The dialing code for this region is 35220.
Etymology
The name comes from the Sasanian official name bēdaxš or badaxš, which may come from the earlier * pati-axša; the suffix -ān indicates that the country belonged or was designated as land allotment to a person with a reputation and status as a notorious intruder. This act alludes to the grim history of the region.
Population
In Gorno-Badakhshan there is a diverse ethnolinguistic and religious community. Tajiks and Pamiris make up the majority, and a tiny minority of Kyrgyz and Uzbeks are also found in their own villages. There are also communities of speakers of several Pamir languages \u200b\u200bof the East Iranian language group.
During the 20th century, in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region in Tajikistan, native speakers of the Pamir languages \u200b\u200bformed their own ethnic identity. The people of the Pamirs were not officially recognized as a separate ethnic group in Tajikistan, but there were created movements and associations of representatives of this ethnic language group. The main religions of Badakhshan are Ismaili and Sunni Islam. The people of this province have a rich cultural heritage, and they have preserved unique ancient forms of music, poetry and dance. Nasir Khusra spread Islamism. As you can understand, the population of Gorno-Badakhshan is very diverse. This is due to the fact that in this region there has never been a dominant ethnic community.
History
Badakhshan Mountain was an important trading center in antiquity. Lapis lazuli was imported exclusively from there already in the second half of the fourth millennium BC. Badakhshan was an important region through which the famous Silk Road passed. Of great importance was its geo-economic role in the trade of silk and ancient commodity transactions between East and West.
According to Marco Polo, Badashan / Badakshan was a province where the Balas creek could be found under Mount Sighinan (Shignan).
The region was ruled by the emirs of Badakhshan. The capital of the region for some time was considered the city of Khorog. Sultan Muhammad was the last of the kind of kings who traced their genealogy from Alexander the Great. He was subsequently hit by a batyr of the Mirza clan, the illustrious ruler of the Imperium Timurids, who, as a result, took possession of solar Badakhshan.
After the death of Lord Timurid, the region safely passed to one of the aristocratic clans - Mirza. The subordinate status of the region was assigned to it for a long time. When Babur took dominion over the emirate of Kandahar in 1506 A.D. from Shah Agun, he sent Khan Mirza as governor to Gorny Badakhshan (Pamir). The son of Khan Mirza was safely born under the name Mirza Suleiman in 1514.
The region has long existed under the rule of this illustrious dynasty, which before accession to the Badakhshan throne was not particularly known. Throughout their great history, Mirza secured the glory of great kings, commanders, leaders and warriors. Their dominion lasted quite a long time.
Continuation of the legend
After the sudden death of Khan-Mirza, Badakhshan was under the leadership of the great Baburom, Prince Khumayun, Sultan Weiss Khan (father-in-law of Mirza Suleiman), and also the warrior-prince Hindal, and, finally, the legendary Mirza Suleiman, who firmly held Badakhshan’s throne until October 8 of the year. His son was killed in battle. Actually, the whole history of this region is continuous wars, palace coups and bloodshed, and the history of the region was forged in fire and blood, in war and violence. The character of the population of this mountainous picturesque region also became relevant.
Mirza Suleiman's wife was the famous intriguer Hurram Begum. According to her pedigree, she came from a warlike and aggressive Kipchak tribe. She was smart and had such a strong influence on her husband that he could not do anything without her advice. As soon as the heir to the throne grew, his mother and some nobles provoked him to rebellion. Then Khurram Begum died, the Badakhshan throne was left without its main behind-the-scenes puppeteer, and everything returned to square one.
Almost 100 years after that, the region passed from hand to hand, becoming the property of one local king or another. And there was no end in sight to the endless and boundless war that swept the brave Pamiri and Badakhshans, turning them into a people of ruthless warriors.
In fact, this country, like many other Asian countries, was doomed to become a colony of noble Europeans. But it will be another 100 years or so before the Badakhshans submit to the valiant Russian colonialists who dishonored the Pamiri men and took Pamiri women as concubines.
18th century
In 1750, the ruler of Badakhshan, the Sultan Shah, rebelled against Khizri-Beg, the governor of Balkh. After consulting with Ahmad Shah Durrani, Khizri Beg opposed Sultan Shah, and Wazir Shah Wali helped the invasion army. People from Badakhshan turned away from their ruler because of his addiction to Kalmak and Kashgar foreign recruits, who were waiting for him and greeted as a liberator.
The Sultan Shah, who found hopeless resistance, fled to Ail-Basit in the hills between Ciab and Pasako. Wazir Shah Wali returned with force to Kabul, leaving his country led by an Afghan governor. Sultan Shah returned, killed the governor and rebuilt his country. He was attacked by another rival of Turra Baz Khan, who supported Khizri Beck, advanced to Fayzabad and besieged him. Sultan Shah was captured. The head of Kunduz did not want to lose the opportunity to capture Turr Baz Khan, sent both captives to Kunduz and annexed Badakhshan.
In 1751, the Sultan Shah was released and returned to his country. He punished the looters of the Saka tribe, which devastated Kiava, Takhta, Halpan and Dushanbe-Khorog. He killed most looters and took 700 horses. The place was marked by 200 heads of raiders on Kotal Khoja Dzhargatu, and Saki no longer worried about the life of Sultan Shah. This boss built a fortress in Mashad, in which he settled 600 families of his people. He created a home for travelers in Daryun. In 1756, he forced the Chinese to recognize Akskal from Badakhshan to Alti in Xinjiang and levied taxes on Badakhshan families in the city.
New invasion
In 1759, another enemy appeared - the Katagans, led by Kabad Khan, who attacked Fayzabad, captured and killed Sultan Shah and Turra Baz Khan. Mir Muhammad Shah, the son of Sultan Shah, fled and resigned in Tan Nau, from where he later attacked Fayzabad, killed his younger brother Nasarullah Khan, the head of this place under the government of Kabul, and took the Kingdom. The old enemy of his father, Kabad Khan, who was patronized by Timur Shah Durrani (the successor to Ahmad Shah Durrani), seized power in Kunduz and sent an army against Muhammad Shah near Kubadcha. After a successful battle, she turned against Kabad Khan.
Discarding his loyalty to Kabul when Timur Shah Durrani went against Sindh and Kashmir, the grandson of Mizrab Bi Muhammad Bi (the old head of Kunduz), united with the head of Kubab, attacked Kabad Khan, seized him and gave him into the hands of Muhammad Shah, who beat him to death to avenge his father.
Mir Muhammad Shah returned to Badakhshan to regain the throne occupied by the son of Bahadur Shah, the former leader who took Faizabad during the capture of Mir Muhammad Shah in Kunduz. Bahadur Shah was overthrown, and the rightful owner restored the throne of Fortune, again frowned on the World of Muhammad Shah. Bahadur Shah received the help of Mir Shignan and took Fayzabad, Badakhshan. Mir Muhammad Shah fled to Chiab.
After 2 years, Bahadur Shah was put to death by an agent of the Shignan chief named Bahadur, who captured the throne. Muhammad Shah repeatedly tried to expel him. But help was rejected by his superior Shignan and Barrow Tappa. He regained the throne thanks to the killing of Bahadur by his servant. The ministers of the last usurper were killed.
Immediately, Mir Muhammad Shah participated in the hostilities with Jalal-ud-din, the chief Shignan, who rebelled and held out in the fortress until Mir Muhammad Shah deposed him, and the rebel fell. By pardon of the winner, he was reinstated by the head of Fayzabad, Badakhshan. In the same year, Shah Abul Fayz, the son of Shah Shuhi from Raga, rebelled against Mir Muhammad Shah and was defeated.
The territory of Mir Muhammad Shah was divided as follows: Iskashim was given to Mir Khan; Rushan in Shah Vali and Varduy Mahmoud Khan, brother of Mir Ahmad Beg Kataghan. Mir Muhammad Shah also built a new fort - Saray Bahadur.
Go Nazar Beg Kataghan, brother of Daraba Bi, expelled his 5 nephews from Kunduz and Alivardi Bek, the head of Kurgan-Tippa, under the pretext of avenging his grievances, attacked Khodai Nazar Bega and drove him out of Kunduz. His greed forced him to occupy the country. The sons of Daraba Bi came to Badakhshan, and Balkh Alivardi Beg did not enjoy the fruits of betrayal for a long time. In 1795, Emir Khaidar from the emirate of Bukhara invaded Balkh, and Kunduz annexed him and took Alivardi Bek to Bukhara as a prisoner.
New time
In 1902, the Bukhara (western) Pamir was part of the Russian military administration. In November 1918, the last tsarist Russian troops recognized Bolshevik rule, but in December 1919 the region was captured by the anti-Bolshevik Russian "peasant army" from Ferghana. From April 1920, the power vacuum was filled by an attempt to establish the power of Bukharan until June 1920, when the Bukhara people were expelled by local forces, the Bolshevik rule was restored: the Soviet Union captured the Bukhara part of the Gorno-Badakhshan part.
The Bukhara part was merged with the Russian (since 1895) part in 1924, which will be organized as the GBAO of Tajikistan in 1929. In April 1992-in 1993, the autonomous republic of Pamir-Badakshoni was declared an independent post-Soviet Tajikistan 6 November 1994, becoming the Kokhistan-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, or the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region.
In 1963, Badakhshan included the districts of Baghlan, Pul-i-Khumri, Souls, Dahan-i-Gori, Kanabad, Andarab, Kunduz, Hazrat-i-Imam and Talokan. In 1963, the Katahan-Badakhshan province was abolished, and since then the territory has been divided into four separate provinces: Badakhshan, Baghlan, Kunduz and Tahar.
Territorial conflicts
Until 1895, the area of \u200b\u200bmodern Gorno-Badakhshan consisted of several semi-official government bodies, including Darvaz, Shunnun-Rushan and Wahan, which ruled the territories that are now part of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in Tajikistan and the province of Badakhshan in Afghanistan. The territory was demanded by the Chinese and Russian empires and the Emirate of Afghanistan. The Qing rulers of China claimed to control all the Pamir mountains, but the military units of Qing controlled the passages only east of the city of Tashkent.
In the 1890s, the governments of China, Russia and Afghanistan signed a series of agreements that divided Badakhshan, but the Chinese continued to challenge these borders until they signed a 2002 agreement with the government of Tajikistan.
Autonomous region and its leadership
Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Okrug was established in January 1925. It was attached to after the creation of the republic in 1929. In the 1950s, the indigenous inhabitants of Gorno Badakhshan, including many ethnic Pamiris, were forcibly resettled in southwestern Tajikistan. Gorno-Badakhshan received part of the territory of the Primorsky region when this territory was dissolved in 1955.
When a civil war broke out in Tajikistan in 1992, local self-government in Gorny Badakhshan declared independence from the Tajik state. During civil war many Pamiris aimed at killing rival groups, and Badakhshan became a stronghold of the opposition. Later, the Gorno-Badakhshan government abandoned its calls for independence. Gorno-Badakhshan region remains an autonomous region of Tajikistan. In 2011, Tajikistan ratified the 1999 deal to cede 1,000 km2 (390 sq. Miles) of land in the Pamir Mountains to the People’s Republic of China, ending a 130-year dispute and abandoning China’s claims for more than 28,000 km2 (11,000 sq. Miles) territory of Tajikistan.
In 2012, a series of clashes took place in the region between the Tajik military and fighters loyal to former military commander Tolib Ayombekov, after the latter was accused of killing a Tajik general. Today, this region is ruled by Shodikhon Jamshedov.
The region is isolated. This is a real tabernacle world in the very center of planet Earth. GBAO-Khorog covers the entire eastern part of the country and borders on the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China in the east, the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan in the south and the Osh region of Kyrgyzstan in the north.
Within Tajikistan, the western border of the region is adjacent to the republican subordination areas (DRP), and the tip of its southwestern region (Darvoz district) borders on Khatlon region. The highest mountains are in the Eastern Pamirs (ancient Mount Imonon), which is known as the roof of the world, and there are three of the five seven-meter peaks in the former Soviet Central Asia, including Ismoil Somoni Peak (previously the peak of communism and before that - Stalin Peak, 7,495 m), Ibn Sina peak (previously Lenin peak and still known by this name on its Kyrgyz flank, 7.134 m), on the border with Kyrgyzstan and Korzhenevsky Peak (7105 m).
Only two easy-running roads connect this region with the outside world, Khorog-Osh and Khorog-Dushanbe, both of which are segments of the Pamir Highway. The third way from Khorog to Tashkurgan in China through the Kulma pass is very rough. Badakhshan is separated from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan by the narrow, but almost impassable, corridor of Wahan. Another road leads from the city of Khorog to Wahan and across the Afghan border. Khorog Airport is operated by Tajik Air. And in 2014, regular flights were established in Dushanbe.
Khorog is a place of maximum height. They often play field hockey. His phone code is 35220.
Conclusion
Badakhshan is a picturesque region with an interesting and complex history. With its isolation, antiquity and authenticity, it attracts many travelers from all over the world. Beautiful mountains, picturesque landscapes, crystal clear lakes are just a few of what this mysterious region can offer to any tourist.
I think that I was not alone, looking at the map, wondering why the region in the Pamirs is not called the Pamir, but the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region. In fact, both words - both the Pamir and Badakhshan - are in use here, but they do not mean exactly the same thing. In I showed Darvaz, the Pamir Gate, and then for a short time we get off the track - in the next two posts we will talk about Badakhshan as a whole.
The roof of the World is not a poetic image, but either a translation or a tracing-paper from Persian. In fact, the Pamir is nothing but the northern tip of the Himalayas, the center of the great mountain junction, where Kunlun, Karakorum, Hindu Kush, Gissaro-Alai and Tien Shan diverge. Even at the time of Brockhaus and Efron, when the exact heights of inaccessible ridges were not measured, it was the Pamirs that were considered the highest mountains of the planet. In fact, it is second only to its closest neighbors - the Himalayas, Karakoram and the Hindu Kush. In the Pamirs there are 6 seven-thousanders: the peaks of Korzhenevskaya (7104m), Avicenna (7134m, from the side of Kyrgyzstan there is still Lenin peak) and Samani (7495m, previously the highest point of the USSR, the peak of Communism inaccessible and hidden by the neighboring ridges) and three more in China on the Kongurmuztag massif (7649m), which is attributed either to the Pamirs, then to Kunlun, or even completely isolated in a separate highland. The Pamir does not have “facades” to the endless plain, like the Tien Shan or the Caucasus; its ridges are gaining height gradually, passing to the Hindu Kush behind the Panj. Pamir, frankly speaking, is not very beautiful, but takes its absolute, refined grandeur.
It is divided into two completely different halves. In the northeast - the High Pamir, a desert plateau, a plain at an altitude of 4 kilometers, where 5-km ridges rise in small hills. This is the High Top, where it is cold and windy as in the High North, but in addition there is little water and a lot of salt. Kirghiz and their shaggy yaks live here, but we will get here only after a dozen posts:
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Badakhshan is completely different - the southwest of the Pamirs and the northern Hindu Kush ridges, a bizarre labyrinth of narrow deep valleys at an altitude of 1.5-2.5 kilometers, over which the ridges almost meet. When piercing cold is in the High Pamirs, there is still heat, and the villages are buried in verdure.
Badakhshan is similar to the World Tree, where the Panj is a trunk, its tributaries are branches, and the villages are foliage. The Panj, actually the upper Amu Darya, is amazing: it is a mountain river, but the size of the Oka or Don. In places, it forms wide specular streaks with metallic gray sand:
In some places it enters the gorges, and its water does not even splash, but just COSTS mounds:
Panj - the border beyond which Afghanistan. Merging with Vakhsh, it forms the Amu Darya, and the Badakhshan basin occupying it is nothing but the Upper. The Great Silk Road also passed here, Iranians, Greeks, Arabs, nomads succeeded each other, and perhaps in the 16th century this region was briefly out of the history of Central Asia, having remained behind the Timurids in their Indian variation of the Great Mughals - several decades ago Agra and Kabul are closer to the local nations than Bukhara with Samarkand. But in the mountainous part of Badakhshan, the power of any rulers of the plain was conditional, and an ancient network of small principalities, of which the whole Bactria had once consisted, was preserved - but if some Chaganian, Cabodian or Schuman managed to bring to a common denominator even under the Arabs, then the mountain Darvaz, Rushan, Shugnan and Vakhan still hung over the plain with eagle nests of small but proud monarchies. In 1748-1877, they were united as vassals under the rule of the Darvaz Shah, but then Darvaz with the approval of Russia subjugated its new vassal, the Bukhara Emir, and Shugnan, Rushan and Vakhan rushed for help to Kashgar, but in 1883 they were not devastated the Afghans. Behind Afghanistan, however, Britain stood, playing the Great Game with Russia, and finally in 1895 the world powers established a border along the Panj. The right-bank parts of Shugnan, Rushan and Vakhan became the backs of the Bukhara emirate, although since 1905, since the Russian Finn Eduard Kivikes, who had fought with the tyranny of the bureaucrats, fought, Russia has de facto ruled here. All this became part of the Pamir post of the Ferghana region, and under the Soviets in 1923 it became one of the first national autonomies - the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region. And it is significant that if, on the plain, the border of the regions was then redrawn many times, GBAO still lay over Central Asia as an unshakable block. In the years 1933–40, the Pamir Highway passed through it, in Badakhshan running along the Panj and Gunt. On the tract - old rickety pillars:
And as the main transport - roaring and powerful, like all-terrain vehicles, seven-seater jeeps with bales on the roofs. The Extreme Top is similar to the Extreme North during the winter season: there is no asphalt on most of the tract, it can be blocked for many hours or even days by an accident, a collapse or drift, and driving on it is unbearably expensive and long: so, from Khorog to Dushanbe they carry 300 somoni (2100 rubles) per passenger, and the journey can stretch for two days with an overnight stay in Kalai-Khumb; an alternative is a helicopter for 400 somoni, but tickets for it are being bought up quickly. Cars drive west of Murghab on average once an hour and a half, and behind Murghab and at the far ends of the lateral valleys a few times a day. A person on the road here is almost always picked up ....
Yes, only everyone who has a car on the go has a little buy here. Here it should be noted that the Pamiri people (more on this later) are extremely welcoming, friendly and ingenuous, but that is why you quickly lose your vigilance. Cab drivers are the worst people in the Pamirs, and relaxing, it is very easy here to become their prey. Here are the wiring that I happened to stumble upon:
- Just do not negotiate the price when landing, “Sit down, brother, let's go!”, And at the end present 100 somoni for 20 kilometers - after all, after the fact, they are no longer traded. Typically, such a cabman pretends to be businesslike silence on the road, while the one carrying it for free, that is, out of curiosity, takes payment by talking.
- Throw in at the end of the road an additional, and again inadequate price, under some pretext - for stops and photos, for dust that has flown into the cabin, etc.
- When landing, bargain is cheaper, and upon arrival, as if by accident, forget about it.
However, I can see that I am ready to pay, and maybe the same people drove someone for free. It’s a big success to stop the car with a man in a uniform behind the wheel: the military and rescuers deliver for free, because they have official gasoline.
With fuel in the High Top is not easier than in the High North. The standard Pamir gas station looks something like this, and gasoline is not cheap here - in Ishkakshim valley, for example, 7-8 somoni (50-60 rubles), cheaper at Khorog, in the side valleys it can be even more expensive. And everywhere, of course, of terrible quality.
But on the whole, the Pamir Highway is not so terrible as it is painted, and the times when drivers were awarded simply for the fact of overcoming it are long behind. I easily hitchhiked it, getting stuck only in the most remote area from Murghab to Kyrgyzstan.
But on the tract, like the beads of a necklace, the historical regions of Badakhshan are strung.
The first on the road from the west meets an acquaintance Darvaz, formerly Mahistan - its current name means Gate. In the last part, I called it the semi-Pamir - “mainland” Tajikistan in Badakhshan landscapes. Darvazians are Sunnis, and their language is an archaic dialect of Tajik, which displaced the Old Darvaz language in the 14th and 16th centuries and has not changed much since then. In the 19th century, the same fate befell the neighboring Vanc - Residents of the first and smallest side valley.
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The next branch of the Badakhshan tree is Yazgulyam, or Yuzom. The Yazgulyamites are already “Pamiri with reservations”, differing from other peoples in that they are Sunnis, and very zealous — as one military man told me, 65 people left the entire GBAO to fight for the “organization banned in Russia”, 62 of them were Yazgulyamites and 3 Kyrgyz. The Yazgulyam language is not understood by the Shugnans or Vakhans, and most likely was close to the Old Darvaz and Oldovan. The entire Yazgulyam Valley is 7 villages 7-8 kilometers apart, and almost half of its population is contained in the lowest village of Motrav. But even in it at the time of the trip there was no electricity :.
But although the Yazgulamites in the 19th century left the unifying "real" Pamiri Ismailism, in all other respects there are no more Pamiris than the people of Yazgulyam! They consider themselves the descendants of the soldiers of Alexander of Macedon who remained in the mountains, according to legend, who died here in a duel with the warrior Andar. In the past, they were known as the best warriors of the mountains, who did not submit to either Bukhara or Afghanistan, and now they are the best fighters in Central Asia. Like other Pamirs, they are tall, handsome, very beautiful, and like nowhere else in the Pamirs among them are many white-haired and blue-eyed people of an almost European type. And of all the Pamiri who visited me I visited, the Yazgulyamites were remembered by me as the most friendly, hospitable and curious.
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Panj stretches further Rushan, the edge of steep rocky shores and villages adapted to such a relief, standing as if on balconies by the river. Until recently, one of the main attractions of Rushan was the river, that is, Afghan, ravines - paths on artificial cornices over the abyss.
Rushan and his "capital" Vamar, I slipped right through, and in general did not make a clear impression of the Rushans. But if the “real” Pamir begins with Yazgulyam, then the Pamir is unconditional with Rushan, therefore they speak one of the Badakhshan languages \u200b\u200band profess Ismailism.
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Up from Rushan leaves Bartang - The longest and most interesting side valley. There are two whole people in it - below the Bartangians, above the Orochors (Roshorovites), and the famous Sarez Lake, which arose in 1911 as a dam from the collapse that covered the village of Usoy, hangs above the valley with a Domocles sword. His breakthrough, which of course will not reach the Aral Sea, as some write, but will wash off the Bartang Valley overnight, is so scared that foreigners have recently been forbidden to go to Sarez. Bartang is perhaps my main omission in Badakhshan, but excellent. And below Bartang, Pyanj also has the villages of Khuf and Pasteuf, where the small Khuft people live, speaking their own separate language.
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Behind Rushan Shugnan, slightly flatter and more fertile, and extending not so much along the Panj as along its tributaries Gunt and Shahdar, in the general mouth of which stands Khorog - the capital of GBAO and its only city. Shugnan is the central part of Badakhshan, “Badakhshan by default,” and out of 300 thousand Pamiris from different countries, one third (110 thousand) are accounted for by Shugnans, and among the Tajik Pamiris more than half (70-80 thousand). The Shugnans, Rushans and small nations between them in their own languages \u200b\u200bunderstand each other, but do not understand the other Pamiri.
Khorog’s passers-by ... although it’s not at all a fact that they are Shugnans, people from all the valleys come to the capital. The word "Shugnan" means "land of the Saks": the Pamirs are not the descendants of Greek warriors, but nomads who climbed up the Pyanj in the 7-8 centuries BC, and remained there. If the Tajik language belongs to the West Iranian, and the language to the North Iranian and is related to the Ossetian, then the Pamiri languages \u200b\u200bare East Iranian, and Pashtun is closest to them, but one Pamiri told me that he served in the Caucasus and could explain without transition to Russian with Ossetians. Be that as it may, the Saks called a huge community of peoples, including the Scythians and Sarmatians we knew, and that the Ossetians, the Pashtuns, and the Pamiri were the fragments that survived in the mountains.
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You can drive from Khorog to Murgab, the capital of Vysk Pamir, in 4 ways: the hardest road through Bartang, the main Pamir highway along the Gunt, the path along Shahdara with its ancient fortresses, and the longest and most beautiful road further along the Panj, which is local above the Gunt mouth called the river Ishkashim. Behind Khorog, you suddenly begin to hear Tajik speech again - south of Shugnan lies Goron, where they speak Tajik, but professes Ismailism, and behave like true Pamiri people. To me, the whole of Badakhshan south of Khorog was remembered as the land of mineral springs (mainly glandular) and mines. Here's an example of the Garm-Chashma "geysers" over the Goron:
But the small gems that the boy who tried to sell me to them gave out as rubies. He knew that the ancient Badakhshan was famous for rubies throughout the Islamic world, and it was in Goron that the center of their mining was located - Mount Kuhi-Lal.
And behind Goron, Panj abruptly turns from the meridian to the parallel, leading to the corner of the Pamir, the most beautiful, exotic and crowded with antiquities, but at the same time the most spoiled by mass tourism - Wahan, the Tajik part of which is also called Ishkakshimohm The Panj is shallow and wide here, it can be wade, and they say that the famous Afghan drug traffic is on these fords. In the valley stretched from east to west, clean air and always fresh wind, and because of the Hindu Kush ("Turkey", as the locals say), Pakistan looks out.
The ancestors of the Vakhans and Ishkashim people (these are different peoples, and Ishkashim people live in only one village of Ryn) are also a fragment of Saks, but they did not come here from the west, but from the east, from present Kashgar, and their languages \u200b\u200bare not mutually intelligible with Shugnan or Yazgulyam. The Vakhans are pretty different in their faces and clothes, and here only a small part of them: half of the Vakhans live in Pakistan, the rest in Tajikistan, Afghanistan and China are almost equally divided.
19. peoples counters - 10
In total, 10 peoples are visible in GBAO: Tajiks (80 thousand), Shugnans (80 thousand), Rushans, Bartangians, Orozhorsky, Khufts (in total - 30 thousand), Vakhans (12 thousand), Kyrgyz (11 thousand) , Yazgulamites (7 thousand), Ishkashim people (1.5 thousand), and there are less than 100 people in the entire Mountainous Badakhshan. Moreover, not all Pamir peoples live in Tajikistan! There are Sarykol in China, akin to Rushans and Shugnans, in Afghanistan there are almost disappeared Sanglists, as well as Mujandis, although the latter are not entirely Pamiri: if the Yagnobi are the last Sogdians, then the Mujandi are the last Bactrians. A little more distant relatives in Pakistan are the Hindu Kush Ismailis Kho and Burish, who speak other languages. However, no matter how diverse these peoples are, they have more differences from others than from each other. In the speech of any Pamiri people, I regularly heard the word "chees?" ("what?"), and in the villages you can often see them chid - Pamir house.
Moreover, such chids, as in the frame above, I saw only in Ishkashim - not at home, but naturally clay bunkers, protection not so much from enemies as from landslides and floods. Outside, most chids have long looked like ordinary cottages, but inside ... Fortunately, visiting other people's houses in the Pamirs is easier than anywhere else. The entrance of the cida is a spacious semi-veranda, the main part of which is occupied by bunks:
But in a conversation with tourists, Pamiri usually do not say “chid”, but simply “five-pillar house”: the main room of the chid always rests on 5 pillars - three on one and two on the other side. The pillars have their own names, and relative to the frame below I will list them from right to left. Muhammad is the corner pillar of the house, the strongest and most important, and under it was placed a cradle with a newborn boy (she really is here behind the edge of the photo), on it is a portrait of the Aga Khan. Ali, named after the cousin of the Prophet, is a symbol of fidelity, and a bride and groom sit underneath. Aside from the others, Fatima is the only female pillar in honor of the Prophet’s daughter - underneath him a bride is dressed up for the wedding and the cradle of the newborn girl is placed. A couple - Hassan and Hussein, the righteous imams, the grandchildren of the Prophet, the sons of Ali and Fatima. Hassan personifies the connection with the earth and goes into the earth below the foundation; Hussein symbolizes fire and light, and under it a candle “charogravshan” is lit in memory of the deceased.
In some valleys, the same pillars are named after celestial bodies, and this was, perhaps, before the adoption of Islam: Chid - nothing more than an ancient house-temple. The carved arch above Hassan and Hussein is Buchkovach, an altar with argali horns or carvings in the form of them. Pay attention to the fact that the bunks are in two tiers - the floor, where the hearth used to be, represents the inanimate world, the first tier - plants, the second - animals, and on top of them - a man.
The same above is the Chorhan vault, the tiers of which are Earth, Water, Wind and Fire from bottom to top, the latter being personified by sunlight from the only ceiling window in the past.
Pamir house showed frantsouzov - but there is a museum in which I never got, and in the frames above - the usual houses of ordinary Badakhshans. The pre-Islamic past is personified by the mazars that I regularly met in the Ishkashim Valley - natural temples of the ancient religion that gained Muslim legends. Somewhere - just fences, somewhere - shady sacred groves:
Somewhere - the altars brought to the street in the walls, and somewhere - whole sanctuaries with several rows of buildings. But always - with the horns of goats and argali:
However, the Pamirs are not pagans, which is clearly seen in their typically Muslim cemeteries on the slopes:
But their Islam is special: Ismailism, or rather inferiority. The Prophet Muhammad knew that Islam would split into many movements, and even during the life of his relatives, Sunnis and Shiites appeared: the first believed that the elected Caliph could lead Muslims, the second - that only the imam is a descendant of the Prophet, that is, the already mentioned Ali and Fatima. The Sunnis remained the majority, the Shiites the oppressed minority, and many of their communities continued to live their lives, fragmenting with newer and newer branches, like Protestantism or Old Belief. In 760, another conflict of Shiite imams took place, and a new branch emerged - the Ismailis, and the next split at the end of the 11th century divided them, and the Nizari became the largest Ismaili branch. The Ismailis are very different from other Muslims: they recognized free will, encouraged a reasonable interpretation of the Qur'an, rejected Sharia, and greatly simplified rituals, thus avoiding "Islamic globalization" and allowing the converted peoples to remain as they are, which contributed to the spread of Ismaili on the periphery. At the turn of the 9th-10th centuries, the Ismaili Fatimid Caliphate with its capital in Cairo began with the Tunisian Berber uprising, and by the 11th century it had become almost the strongest state in the Islamic world. And there, in Fatimid Egypt, Nasir Khosrov, a wandering poet from (present-day South Tajikistan, where I showed even the madrassah where he studied), got there and accepted Ismailism. Later he returned to Persia, then still completely Sunni, almost became a victim of persecution (especially since the Ismaili Alamut, the stronghold of the Assassins, the first in the history of Islamic terrorists, raised his head), fled to the Pamir ... and there, with a kind word, he managed to do that which the Arabs could not fire and sword: Khosrov took root among the highlanders, and communicating with him, the pagan highlanders were imbued with the ideas of Islam. Nowadays there are about 15 million Ismailis in the world, but most of them live not in the Middle East, but in Europe and America, while the Pamiri, Kho and Burishi are the only Ismaili nation of their kind.
27. photo Andrei Manchev.
And this pretty distinguishes them from Tajiks and Uzbeks. Pamirians are religious, but religion here does not prevent girls from walking with their faces open and their heads uncovered, to study and communicate on equal terms with men, and even prayers are performed not 5 times a day, but three times. The Pamiri people do not build mosques, instead of them there are jamaathans (the "assembly house") with a portrait of Imam Ali on the wall, as in the frame above (I myself have forgotten to visit such a place). Like Protestantism, which began with bloody religious tyranny, in its history, Ismailism has gone from a militant anti-system to a civilized religion of free choice. But what distinguishes Islamism from Protestant or Old Believer movements is the Vertical. An Ismaili imam is a king and a god, his word is an unquestioned law, and in the same Alamut everyone was ready to sacrifice his life at the first request of the "elder of the mountain" ibn Sabbah. The Ismailis always have a spiritual leader at any level, and in every Pamir village there is a caliph with whom people coordinate many issues of their even everyday life. The trip to the caliph is sacred, and I remember how we waited 4 hours for passengers who went to talk to him in front of the road ...
And over all Badakhshan, the Aga Khan IV dominates, since 1957 the 49th imam of the Nizari, the fourth of the Aga Khan dynasty founded in 1817 in Iran (fortunately, the descendants of the prophet formed hundreds of dynasties for more than a thousand years). He lives in Switzerland, his fortune from countless donations and investments is estimated from 1 to 3 billion dollars, and he uses these wealth to support fellow believers around the world. He knew that somewhere in the gloomy USSR there was a whole people faithful to him, but the Pamiri people themselves had practically forgotten them in those days ... until a civil war broke out. The Pamirs were the stronghold of the opposition, and although there was no war in the Badakhshan valleys and even the partisans did not get further than Yazgulyam, the Pamir, then totally dependent on external supplies, was on the verge of starvation, and locals call it nothing more than a “blockade”. Well, the Aga Khan reminded himself of the prodigal sons, organizing the supply of the Pamirs through Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan, and according to legend, he even proposed at his own expense to relocate all 200 thousand Pamiris to Canada. Since then, in every Pamir house there is a portrait of him, here and there you can often see his flag - the Pamir people are much closer to the Dushanbe president.
Especially in Badakhshan he builds bridges, roads, power plants, schools, helping distant co-religionists at least so that they idolize him. Yes, and in Dushanbe I already. However, other countries are helping the Pamirs - for example, Germany has invested in a substation:
The Pamir lives its own life, and its isolation from Tajikistan, the rejection of the central authorities, which I did not even see in Crimea under Ukraine, somewhere on the very verge of an undeclared state. In addition to the appointed "Kulyab" power, there is also its own parallel power, which is much more respected by the people. The relapse of the civil war - the Khorog events of 2012 - was remembered by the Pamiri as a special operation against their informal authorities, and they heard the legend that the current "ISIS war minister" commanded that operation. About the Kulyabites, the locals spoke to me in plain text and with undisguised anger - "these are the invaders!" But for all their globalization, the Pamiri people are much more Tajiks looking at Russia, with the same nostalgia they remember the army standing here (the more so, as I was told secretly already outside of Badakhshan, the Pamiri people are very afraid of Pashtuns), they are fluent in Russian and watch Russian TV . The main claim of the Pamiris to Russia is that Russia abandoned them. They told me more than once with hope: "Well, Russia has taken Crimea, so maybe it will reach us soon?" I think the Pamir is the most pro-Russian region outside of Russia.
There are many Russian heritage of tsarist times - mainly all kinds of fortresses and barracks.
In Tajikistan, Pamiris are considered a variety of Tajiks, although for me they are farther from the Tajiks than the Uzbeks. But what are the Pamir people in communication? I will say briefly - this is the removal of the brain.
Most of all, the Pamirians reminded me of well-bred children.
At first glance it is clear that these are people from the Roof of the World, that is, slightly not from this world. They are talkative, boastful, love to joke, and sometimes it's rather insulting ("Whose girls are prettier - Pamirs or Kyrgyz? You don’t say so, I had a Kyrgyz grandmother!"), Among them there are many natural speakers, and the patriotism of my native land rolls over as the most desperate Ukrainian nationalist did not even dream of. But at the same time, the Pamirs are naive (and even proud of it), dreamy and often look into the distance.
But the Pamiris are not wild highlanders, and among them there are an unusually many intelligent people. The locals themselves say that in the USSR (and in the Union there were still mentally many who didn’t even get it) in the proportion of people with higher education — 83% — they were second only to Jews. It is not entirely clear why they need a higher education, what they want to do with it in a remote mountain village - but the fact is that in this remote area I often met people of a completely non-rural mind and outlook. Each Pamirian polyglot - in addition to his native language, he speaks Persian (Tajik) and Russian, and often also English. And as the apotheosis, female education is appreciated here, and in the old days the Pamiri people taught literacy to their daughter first, and only then to their son.
To all this, however, it is attached that, together with the above, it gives both impressive hospitality (you walk here naturally from tea to tea in different houses), as well as all sorts of very strange behavior tweaks.
For example (this episode was in the last part) I stop the car with a young driver and an old boss, imposingly lounging in the back seat. With my arrival, my grandfather reluctantly moved to the front seat - he is the eldest, he is the boss, and cannot go behind an outsider!
Elsewhere, I was looking for a car along a side valley. The Pamirets called me for tea and immediately handed me over to a military friend who in the house next to the military part fed me pilaf from the field kitchen. Upon returning, the first Pamiri is surprised: “Where were you? 6 cars passed here!” - while purely in terms of traffic, 6 cars could be driven by a cavalcade only.
Tired in the evening, I come to the cafe. Two Pamiris immediately sit down and try to talk to me, I ask them to leave because I’m tired and want to be alone, and the Pamiris are nervous: "What are you? Are you disdaining me?", After which a guard stands between us.
The village guys smiled at me only while I was calm, and as soon as I started to get nervous, they grinned wryly and asked how I would sell my phone to them. Well, I got nervous not just like that, but after waiting 5 hours over the agreed time the same car, the passenger of which went to the caliph.
And if the cunning Uzbek deceives subtly and neatly, so that I don’t even understand this, then the Pamir’s deceiver will deceive me - it’s cunning and naive, assuming that I just accept his rules. And the most annoying thing that I often accepted was that very quickly you begin to believe in people and become completely defenseless against deception.
And in general, let’s say frankly, with all the local friendliness, I didn’t communicate with any people as hard as with the Pamirs.
As usual, a little ethnography from the museum in Dushanbe:
In the frame above - the peasant (alas, I did not re-take the tablet and the purpose of all the instruments is not clear to me), in the frame below the hunter and the villagers in holiday suits:
Pamir embroidery, from which colorful skullcaps are most often found in everyday life:
And the best Pamir souvenir is grandiose socks and gloves made of yak wool, indispensable for the fierce mountain winter:
The second decorative and applied art of the Pamirs after embroidery is wooden carving. Here are rare examples without argali horns:
Although in general the material culture of the Pamirians is rather scarce, even in the kitchen there is nothing memorable except for shirchaya (traditional mountain tea with milk, butter and salt - this is drunk, for example, in Tibet), and European food is prepared in Pamir better than in southern Tajikistan. In addition to embroidery and carving, I remember the baskets most of all:
The intangible culture is much brighter among the Pamiri people, all kinds of songs and dances, including the modern stage, and the arsenal of musical instruments alone impresses in the same museum. From left to right, three kinds of rubabs, a long dutar, and two tambourines (duf-doira) below - Dushanbe on the right, honest Pamiri on the left. I never attended a Pamir wedding, although according to other travelers passing Badakhshan in the fall, it was an abnormal bad luck. But I also came across many other attributes of the Pamiri people - for example, the patterned copper triangles of the newlyweds or the amulets on their shoulders that barely peeked out from under the sleeves, grabbed by a tight belt ... but Pamiri people don’t allow such things to be photographed.
At least update real ethnography in Badakhshan without a museum, including manual labor in meager fields without straightening your back:
And in general, all of this is imposed by the fact that the Pamir lives in terrible poverty, while others here even nod to Afghanistan, saying, "It’s better there!"
Actually, it’s good to live in the Pamirs and there’s nothing to do with it. For agriculture, winters and scarce soils are too harsh; for industry - too bad roads and the absence of even the most theoretical prospects for the construction of railways, for guest workers - too expensive a life. Under the Soviets, the region developed as a fortified area on the dangerous southern flank, and depended entirely on supply from the Center. Well, now a lot of help in Badakhshan valleys is tourism:
There are really many tourists on the Pamir Highway - on motorbikes, bicycles, jeeps, singles and organized groups:
And the Pamir is hardly going to benefit. Society is not disfigured by poverty itself, but by its contact with wealth, and this is especially felt in the Ishkashim valley, where the poorest villages and the most active tourist flow are. Here I saw helpers (skinny teenagers who were known from far Asia who offered to show the way for little money), and teenagers jumped out from some yards and tried to sell me some little thing like those pseudo rubies. In these villages no one invites guests, because in each there is a guesthouse. And it hurts to see how hospitality evaporates where money can be obtained for the same things.
The best way to learn the Roofs of the World is not to ride the Pamir Highway, but to drill into some kind of remote valley, into a kishlak without electricity under the very sky at the foot of steep cliffs, and sit there for a week, slowly returning down. For the sake of this, I hope that I will someday return here, and in those valleys at least tourism, at least war, at least time is unlikely to change anything.
Be that as it may, the Pamir is one of the brightest impressions of the post-Soviet space.
In the next part, about the unchanged background of the Pamir Highway - Afghanistan beyond the Panj.
TAJIKISTAN-2016
and .Khorog. City on the Roof of the World.
Wahan corridor
Goron and his geysers.
Ishkashim. Namatgut and the path to Bibi Fatima.
Ishkashim. Bibi Fatima and Wrang.
Ishkashim. Langar and Ratm.
Eastern Pamir tract
Langar - Alichur. On the eaves of the Roof of the World.
Murghab and surroundings. Life on the Roof of the World.
Murghab - Karakul. Extreme Top.
Karakul - Osh. Old Pamir tract.
Same:
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