Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has instructed the country’s Ministry of Education and Science to improve the quality of teaching the Persian script, commonly referred to in Tajikistan as the “ancestral alphabet.”
Rahmon emphasized the importance of learning the script on Thursday following a cabinet meeting.
In Tajikistan, the Persian script is increasingly described as the “ancestral alphabet,” a term that has become more common in the country’s cultural and identity-related discourse in recent years.
The Tajik president had previously proposed the establishment of an “Aryan Civilization Center” during his annual address to parliament in 2025, a move many analysts viewed as part of Tajikistan’s broader symbolic identity policies.
Until around a century ago, Persian script was widely used across the territory of the Emirate of Bukhara, which included parts of present-day Tajikistan.
After the creation of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic in 1929, the Latin alphabet replaced the Persian script, and in 1940 the Soviet government introduced Cyrillic as Tajikistan’s official writing system.
Two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, on June 22, 1989, Tajikistan adopted its state language law through efforts by intellectuals and cultural figures. The law officially identified the state language as “Tajik (Persian).”
In recent years, cultural identity, the Persian language, and symbolic reconnection with historical and civilizational heritage have become central themes in Tajikistan’s cultural policies.
