Dushanbe

Dussambe (Tajik and Russian: Душанбе, academically transliterated as Dušanbe, called Dyushambe until 1929, and Stalinabad between that year and 1961) is the capital and most populated city of the Republic of Tajikistan. It has an official area or surface of 203 km²; and its population is 1,201,800 inhabitants according to the Tajik national census of September 21, 2010, therefore implying 7240 inhabitants/km². It is, by far, the most populated city in the country.

Toponymy

The name of the capital of Tajikistan comes from the Tajik word for Monday (du "two" + shanba or shanbé "day", lit. "day two"), etymology that alludes to the fact that a market was held in the place that day of the week.

History

Although there are archaeological remains that date back to the V century BC. C., Dushanbe was a small town until about eight decades ago.

In 1920, the last Emir of Bukhara took refuge in Dushanbe after being overthrown by the Bolshevik revolution. He fled to Afghanistan after the Red Army conquered the area the following year. The city was taken by Enver Pasha in 1922 and was the headquarters of Ibrahim Bek, a Tajik leader who fought against the Bolsheviks.

Actually composed of three towns, of which the largest was called Diushanbe, the town was renamed Stalinabad, in homage to Joseph Stalin. In 1924 it achieved the status of capital of the Tajik Soviet Autonomous Republic. With the victory of the Red Army and the arrival of the railway in 1929, the town became the capital of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic.

The Soviets transformed the area into a cotton and silk production center, and relocated thousands of people from other Soviet republics to the city. In 1961, during the Nikita Khrushchev era, the city regained its historical name.

The population also increased due to the thousands of ethnic Tajiks who emigrated to Tajikistan after the passage of Bukhara and Samarkand to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. During the Soviet period Dushanbe was a quiet and relatively prosperous city, home to the Tajik State University and the Tajik Academy of Sciences.

In 1990, several riots occurred after plans to resettle tens of thousands of Armenian refugees were discovered, which encouraged local nationalist sentiment. Twenty-two people died during the subsequent clashes.

The city was badly damaged as a result of the Tajik Civil War, between 1992 and 1997, which occurred shortly after independence. During that period the situation was chaotic.

The tallest mast in the world is located in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, 165 meters high, and which is in the Guiness Book of Records as the tallest mast in the world. The flag that flies on this mast has dimensions of 60 meters in length and 30 meters in width, which implies 1800 square meters of flag. This mast was built in 2011.

Climate

Dushambe has a Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csa), with strong continental climatic influences (Köppen: Dsa). Summers are warm and dry and winters are They are cold, but not excessively so. The climate is wetter than other Central Asian capitals, with an average annual rainfall of more than 500 millimeters, as the surrounding valley channels moist air during winter and spring. Winters are not as cold as further north due to the city's shielding by mountains from the extremely cold Siberian air. January 2008 was particularly cold and the temperature dropped to -22°C.

Average Dusambé climate parameters (1991–2020, extremes 1926–present)
Month	Ene.	Feb.	Mar.	Open up.	May.	Jun.	Jul.	Ago.	Sep.	Oct.	Nov.	Dec.	Annual
Temp. max. abs. (°C)	21.8	27.7	32.2	35.3	38.8	43.0	43.7	45.0	38.9	36.8	31.9	24.3	45.0
Average temperature (°C)	9.0	11.0	17.0	22.8	27.9	33.6	36.4	35.5	31.3	24.4	16.7	11.1	23.1
Average temperature (°C)	3.1	5.0	10.5	15.8	20.1	25.1	27.4	26.0	21.2	14.7	9.0	4.6	15.2
Temp. medium (°C)	-0.9	0.5	5.5	10.1	13.4	17.2	18.9	17.2	12.7	7.8	3.8	0.4	8.9
Temp. min. abs. (°C)	-26.6	-17.6	-12.9	-6.1	1.2	8.4	10.9	8.2	-1.0	-4.4	-13.5	-19.5	-26.6
Total precipitation (mm)	100	95	102.	112	75	17	4	1	4	29	55	60	654
Precipitation days (≥ 1.0 mm)	8.5	9.1	13.4	9.8	7.8	1.5	0.7	0.1	0.8	3.7	5.3	8.1	68.8
Hours of sun	120	121	156.	198	281	337	352	338	289	224	164	119	2699
Relative humidity (%)	69	67	65	63	57	42	41	44	44	56	63	69	57
Source #1: Погода и климат Deutscher Wetterdienst
Source No. 2: NOAA (sun, 1961-1990)

Government

The city of Dushanbe is a political, industrial, scientific, historical and cultural center of the country.

The Presidential Palace, the Parliament, all the ministries and institutions, the offices of commercial banks, the embassies, the offices of large corporations and humanitarian organizations are located there.

Administrative division

Dushambe is divided into the following five districts:

• Frunzensky I
• Frunzensky II
• Ismoila Somoni
• Zheleznodorozhny
• Centre

Economy

Near Dushanbe there are several coal, lead, and arsenic mines. Dushanbe is an important textile center, mainly due to cotton, although it also produces silk, machinery, household appliances, leather objects, tractor components and food products.

In recent times, drug trafficking has acquired a growing weight in the local economy.

Transportation

The city is home to Dushanbe Airport, the main airport in the country. The Tajik Air airline is based there. The town is also an important automotive and railway center. The Dushanbe railway station connects the capital with the rest of the country's cities and to Russia, with trains to Moscow and Kazan.

Air transport

The first flight to the city was from Bukhara on September 3, 1924 by the Junkers F-13 aircraft piloted by Rashid Beck Ahriev and Peter Komarov; The service began operating three times a week from the small airfield on today's Rudaki Avenue. In 1927 the second air route in the Soviet Union from Tashkent to Samarkand to Termez to Dushanbe was inaugurated on the Junkers F-13, two years earlier after the introduction of automobiles and five before the railroad. A small Stalinabad airport was created, and in 1930 a first-class airport was built in the city. The first regular flight from the city to Moscow began in 1945 on the Li-2. The state airline, Tojikiston, now known as Tajik Air, was created in 1949. In the 1950s and 1960s, many new aircraft were introduced into the Tajik civil air fleet. The Civil Aviation Administration of Tajikistan was ranked first in the USSR for efficiency in the 1980s.

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  Dushanbe International Airport View

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  Dushanbe International Airport Terminal

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  Air Astana aircraft at Dushanbe International Airport

In the city is the Dushanbe International Airport which, in April 2015, had regular flights to Ürümqi, Kabul, Delhi, Dubai, Istanbul, Frankfurt and the main cities of Russia and Central Asia, among others. Tajik Air was headquartered on the grounds of Dushanbe Airport in Dushanbe. Somon Air, launched in 2008, is headquartered in Dushanbe. The government planned to dedicate 0.18% of Tajikistan's GDP to large-scale aviation development. part in Dushanbe. Japanese investors created a cargo terminal at the airport, at a cost of 28 million dollars.

Road system

The first road in the country, from the beginning of the 19th century, was that of Guzor, traveled by camels, and converted on a modern road by the Soviets. The first bus line was launched in 1930 and taxi service began in 1937. Cars are the main form of transportation in the country and in Dushanbe. A major highway traverses the mountains from Khujand to Dushanbe via the Anzob Tunnel, built by an Iranian operator. A second major highway runs from eastern Dushanbe to Jorog, Upper Badakhshan Province (formerly Gorno-Badakhshan), then to Murghob, and then divides into roads to China and Kyrgyzstan.

Many road and tunnel construction projects are underway or have been completed in 2014. The main projects include the rehabilitation of Dushanbe-Chanak (Uzbek border), Dushanbe-Kulma (Chinese border), Qurghonteppa-Nizhny Pyanj roads (Afghan border) and the construction of tunnels under the mountain passes of Anzob, Shakhristan, Shar-Shar and Chormazak.

Rail transport

The first Dushanbe railway line, which had a length of 245 km was built from 1926 to 1929 and opened on September 10, 1929 from Vhadat to Dushanbe to Termez which finally connected Dushanbe with Moscow. In 1933 and 1941, two more narrow-gauge railway lines were laid from Dushanbe, to Gulpista and Kurgan-Tyube. In 2002, a new railway administration took over and modernized the system.

Today, Tajikistan's main railways are located in the southern region and connect Dushanbe with the industrial areas of the Gissar and Vakhsh valleys and with Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. Tajikistan's railways are owned of the Tajik Railways, which operate them. In the early 2000s, a new railway line was built from Dushanbe to Gharm to Jirghatol that would connect the country with Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan bypassing Uzbekistan due to ongoing geopolitical tensions. The government is also promoting a proposed line from Dushanbe to Herat and Mashad. On June 18, 2018, the first railway between Dushanbe and Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan, completed its journey through the Uzbek region of Karakalpakstan. Tajikistan's northern railway system remains isolated from its other railway lines, including those of Dushanbe. There is also a service from Dushanbe to Khujand and the northern Uzbek city of Pakhtaabad.

Trolleybus system

The Dushanbe trolleybus system began on April 6, 1955 when a trolleybus administration was organized in the city. On May 1, 1955, the first Trolza trolleybus began operating on Lenin Avenue, the main avenue in Dushanbe. Routes continued to be added in 1957 and 1958, and in 1967, 9 routes were opened and the length of the network reached 49 km. The collapse of the Soviet Union caused a crisis in the system, as the price of fuel increased and looting became a constant problem, with an incident occurring at the central bus station leading to the temporary suspension of the lines. During this period, the number of trolleybuses fell from a peak of 250 in the late 1980s to just 45-50. In 2004, 100 new trolleybuses were ordered, which were delivered a couple of years later and contributed to the resumption of service.

In 2020, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development gave $8 million to repair the system. In 2020, Dushanbe had 7 trolleybus routes with 11 million passengers per year. Although trolleybuses were the main means of transportation in Soviet times, today they only account for 2% of motorized trips.

The Dushanbe trolleybuses are based on the design of the ZiU-9 trolleybus.

• TrolZa-5264.01 "Capital" (numbers 1000-1003);
• ZiU-682H-016 (012) (1004-1039, 2000-2027);
• ZiU-682H-016 (018) (nos 1042, 1053, 1054, 1058, 1059, 1072-1083, 2038, 2046, 2051-2079);
• ZiU-682V (n 1177, 2095, 2099).

Metro system

The construction of an above-ground metro system is planned for 2025. The first aerial metro line is expected to be completed in 2040 and connect the South Gate and Gulliston (circus area).

Places of interest

• Haji Yakoub Mosque
• Museum of Ethnography
• Tayiko Unified Museum
• Former Dusambé Synagogue
• Palacio de la Nación