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I have studied about the Tajiks in China for more than a decade. I've looked at Chinese, Tajik, and English language sources. I have NEVER seen anyone refer to the Tajiks of China as Pamiris. I also wrote the original " Pamiri people" article, so I don't feel that I am being anti-Pamiri in my statements. I have placed "fact" tags where "Pamiri" has been used to describe the Tajik population of China. I'd love to see some sources that prove me wrong. David Straub ( talk) 22:51, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
Mountain Tajiks (or its variants) refers to all Pamiris and this page is not about all Pamiris, so it is not a good title for this page. Alefbe ( talk) 01:44, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
There seems to be some degree of disagreement about what the topic of this article should be. Let's address that directly. Yu Hai seems to be arguing that this article is about X group of people (known as Tǎjíkèzú in Chinese) regardless of where they live. Alefbe, on the other hand, argues that this article is about the X group's population in China specifically (there are lots of articles like that, such as Vietnamese people in China and ethnic Mongols in China). So, which should it be? I would like to ask, regarding Yu Hai's suggestion, is it redundant with some other existing article? My impression is that Tǎjíkèzú might simply be a term used in Chinese to refer to any East Iranian-speaking groups that live in the PRC. If that's the case, then an article about "Tǎjíkèzú people wherever they live" would just be an article about East Iranian speakers, which I don't think is what this article is supposed to be.— Nat Krause( Talk!· What have I done?) 23:32, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
In Turkic language, "Tajik" originally referred to Pamiris, medieval Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians, and Pashtuns etc - i.e. East Iranian. (Not Persians that are Southwest Iranian and didn't live in the area 1000 years before.) But in English wikipedia, unlike in Turkic, unfortunately, "Tajik" refers to Central Asian Persian. I think the meaning of "Tajik" has changed and the term can not be used here.
See Tajiks [1] "Language: Darī; Tajiki dialects. Of the basic Mediterranean sub-stock, they show Mongoloid attributes increasingly from south to north."
For Pamiri people, I think the terms "Pamiri" or "Ghalcha" are better, and "Tajik" is wrong, although historically "Tajik" was used in Turkic language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.58.100.78 ( talk) 06:12, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
As for David Straub's comment "In addition, I dare someone to show me a piece of literature from a reputable source, and that has been written in the last half-century, that reference to this group by any other term."
Here is a source about Pamiri people in Tajikistan: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/topic,463af2212,49709ec52,49749c9e37,0.html PAMIRIS: "Pamiris are considered 'Tajik' by the authorities in Dushanbe, but they are widely considered to constitute a separate ethnic group, differing from Tajiks in terms of language, religion and culture. Pamiri languages are a Southeastern branch of the Iranian language family. Additionally, while most Tajiks are Sunni, Pamiris are followers of the Ismaili branch of Shia Islam. They refer to themselves as Badakhshani or Pomir in their own languages."
And another source: "There are about 50,000 people living in the Tajik Autonomous District identified as Tajiks in the Chinese census. However, these people can be called Tajiks only in the broadest sense. The Sarikoli and Wakhi Chinese Pamir nationalities, as well as the Tajik, Pakistani and Afghan Pamir nationalities who live in Chinese Pamir, speak languages belonging to the Eastern Iranian language group, whereas Tajik is linked to Western Iranian."
Can you now see that whenever there is reputable source, they are called Pamiri people? Or still not? 116.58.100.78 ( talk) 05:56, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
To 虞海 (Yú Hǎi), the so called "plateau Tajiks" ( East Iranian speaking Pamiris) and "plain Tajiks" (Persian-speaking Tajiks proper) need not to be mixed together. There is an article Pamiri people, that also refers to Pamiris in China (Sarikoli and northern Wakhi) as "Pamiri people", and the term Pamiri is widely used by academia, that's why it's also used in the article lead. Other terms like "plateau Tajiks" that are sometimes also used for Pamiris are also mentioned in the article. 116.58.100.78 ( talk) 07:50, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
I advice the name Tujik people, it's transcription of Sarikoli: Tujik ziv – Hanzu ziv lughot -- 虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ( talk) 15:54, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
I am concerned by the number and type of edits being made by an editor using the isp 116.58.100.78 . I suspect that these edits are actually being made by a registered user who does not want to use their username. These edits unclude complete reverts of pages, deletion of sources that do not support their view, and the repeated change of any reference of "Tajik" to Pamiri, despite the fact that there was a lengthy discussion above to change the name of this page from Pamiri people in China to Tajiks in Xinjiang 116.252.76.44 ( talk) 17:42, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
Please don't attack me if you are unable to find a source claiming Pamiris are Persians. Also don't confuse the Turkic word "Tajik" with the Persian word for crown. Besides, in Sarikoli or Wakhi languages, which we need to consider instead of Persian, taj or taji doesn't mean crown. 116.58.100.78 ( talk) 09:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
User:David Straub asked me to add my comment. I originally created this page in order to hold content about the members of this ethnic group in China. Similar to Ethnic Mongols in China, Koreans in China, and other cross-border ethnic groups. But I haven't been watching this debate too closely, and I don't have much of an opinion. Anyway I'll try to give a more complete overview of the Chinese sources.
All the online sources and a big proportion of the offline sources in Chinese state word for word:
I think this is copied from an official document somewhere; it probably reflects "Whatever the Soviet Union says, let's say the exact opposite" political correctness ...
There's a couple of other viewpoints/more details in print sources [3]:
That last one is an example of what Yu Hai was mentioning above.
But this is just a shallow overview from Google. Chinese books aren't too well represented in GBooks. I have a copy of 塔吉克语简志 somewhere at home, or maybe I lent it out to someone, which I recall discusses this issue a bit more, but for anything else, I'd have to head for the library. cab ( talk) 01:41, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
Please explain the reason. -- 虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ( talk) 04:56, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
I removed them. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ethnic groups/Archive 7#Blanking of links. The Joshua Project data are full of errors (22,000 Koreans in Mozambique? 7,000,000 Mandarin speakers in Indonesia?), and their habit of dividing up self-identified single ethnic groups into multiple ones based on spoken dialect differences makes things even worse. I don't find them to be a reliable source either for ethnic group naming or for population numbers. cab ( talk) 08:05, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
Salikuer and Wahan are the terms we should be using in the article, as these are the original self-identifications of the people. Using Tajik is wrong and misleading. I can quote many sources that both Sarikoli and Wakhi are widely considered to be Pamiri people, not West Iranians Tajiks, by scholars. 116.58.100.78 ( talk) 09:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
" Ethnic Pamiris in China" is not controversial and widely used. 116.58.100.78 ( talk) 05:28, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
I think one of the problems with the recent edits to this article is that there is a confusion between language and ethnicity.
The term Pamir languages is universaly recognized and the group of people that is discussed in this article does fall under this category. Wakhi and Sarikoli are categorized as Pamir langauges.
The difference though is when the term Pamiri is used as an ethnic term, as in Pamiri people. This was a term constructed by Soviet scholars during the mid-20th century. And as far as I can tell, it has been embraced by the people in the former Soviet Union who it applies to, i.e. the speakers of Pamiri languages who live in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province. During the Civil war in Tajikistan in the 1990s the Pamiri population actually organized themselves into militias and in 1992-93 Pamiris were targeted for mass killings.
The problem is how to apply the term Pamiri, in an ethnic sense, outside of the former Soviet Union. Does this apply to populations in Afghanistan? I don't know. I haven't seen any sources of Pamiri language speakers applying the term to themselves. Can someone show me a Pre-Soviet era source that uses the term Pamiri in terms of ethnicity? Choose any language? Russian? Tajik? Persian? Chinese? English? I doubt if the they exist. The term used in China to describe the speakers is of Wakhi and Sarikoli is the word Tajik. I don't think it is the place of wikipedia to educate the Sarikoli and Wakhi speakers in China and tell them that they are actually Pamiris. David Straub ( talk) 05:41, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
I think if you say Pamiri is "a term constructed by Soviet scholars during the mid-20th century", you should also not ignore that the term Tajik was also constructed recently and not found in historical texts. In the proper sense, Tajik refers to Persian speakers (please see the references I quoted earlier; also see Tajik language which is a Persian dialect). 116.58.100.78 ( talk) 06:11, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
The result of the move request was no move. Deacon of Pndapetzim ( Talk) 05:48, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Tajiks of Xinjiang →
Tajiks in China — I propose moving the article Tajiks in Xinjiang to Tajiks in China. This is the only article about minority groups in China that uses the name of the province rather than the country in the article title. For other examples see
Mongols_in_China,
Koreans_in_China,
Vietnamese_people_in_China, and
Russians_in_China. Very few other articles about minority groups would use a province or state versus a country in the name. Moreover, this page’s original title was Tajiks in China and was changed to Pamiris in China by a user who eventually had their account permanently blocked (see:
User_talk:Banigul). The move was in violation of Wikipedia move protocol in that there was neither a discussion on the talk page nor was there a request to move the page. This page was then moved again without a request or discussion from Plateau Tajiks to Pamiri people in China, then to Mountain Tajik people, and finally Tajiks in Xinjiang. Within the article the term Tajik has been replaced by Pamiri by a single editor and there is currently an open dispute discussion the talk page. In my opinion, the term Tajik is more appropriate than Pamiri because the official name of the minority group in China is Tajik, virtually all of the literature with a very small number of exceptions refers to this group as Tajik, and the
Ethnic groups in China page refers to the group as Tajiks, as does the map
of ethnolinguistic groups in China.
David Straub (
talk) 14:17, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Slightly Oppose: Highland Tajiks do not distribute in China only, but also the whole Pamir plateau. I do also think the prep should be "of". -- 虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ( talk) 06:35, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
Jahangir Khoja was a sunni sufi fundamentalist. His contained sunni tajiks from central asia who speak the real tajik language. This article is about the pamiri ismaili shia tajiks found only in badakhshan and xinjiang. I deleted paragraphs which are talkinga bout the actual tajiks, move them to history of tajikistan or somehwere else. Jeumbledde ( talk) 22:27, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
http://books.google.com/books?id=JL4IAAAAQAAJ
http://books.google.com/books?id=up2jpwAACAAJ&source=gbs_book_other_versions
Kuoofra ( talk) 04:51, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
In Medieval Europe, people spoke their local languages among themselves such as Italian, French, Castilian, while not writing them down and using them as literary languages until much later. They wrote in Latin as their literary language.
In the same way, the some minorities in Chna do not have an alphabet for their own language. They only speak their language orally, and use the Chinese or another major language like Uyghur to write.
The Tajiks of Xinjiang only speak their own language orally, and use the Uyghur language to write.
http://books.google.com/books?id=oWc2I03-UQIC&pg=PA39#v=onepage&q&f=false
On the Ghalchah languages (Wakhand Sarikol (1876)
https://archive.org/details/onghalchahlangua00shaw
Government policies were in favor of Uyghurs when Persian language was abolished in Tajik schools in 1954.
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/chinese-iranian-ix
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/chinese-iranian-viii
Rajmaan ( talk) 06:40, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
In response to increased Tsarist Russian activity in Sarikol around 1900, the local Sarikoli begs and Sarikoli people feared that Russia was going to annex the region and take it away from China, fearing molestation at the hands of the Russians, they wanted to flee to Yarkand. They did not believe the official explanation that Russia was only concerned with the postal service in the area.
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Tajiks of Xinjiang article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I have studied about the Tajiks in China for more than a decade. I've looked at Chinese, Tajik, and English language sources. I have NEVER seen anyone refer to the Tajiks of China as Pamiris. I also wrote the original " Pamiri people" article, so I don't feel that I am being anti-Pamiri in my statements. I have placed "fact" tags where "Pamiri" has been used to describe the Tajik population of China. I'd love to see some sources that prove me wrong. David Straub ( talk) 22:51, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
Mountain Tajiks (or its variants) refers to all Pamiris and this page is not about all Pamiris, so it is not a good title for this page. Alefbe ( talk) 01:44, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
There seems to be some degree of disagreement about what the topic of this article should be. Let's address that directly. Yu Hai seems to be arguing that this article is about X group of people (known as Tǎjíkèzú in Chinese) regardless of where they live. Alefbe, on the other hand, argues that this article is about the X group's population in China specifically (there are lots of articles like that, such as Vietnamese people in China and ethnic Mongols in China). So, which should it be? I would like to ask, regarding Yu Hai's suggestion, is it redundant with some other existing article? My impression is that Tǎjíkèzú might simply be a term used in Chinese to refer to any East Iranian-speaking groups that live in the PRC. If that's the case, then an article about "Tǎjíkèzú people wherever they live" would just be an article about East Iranian speakers, which I don't think is what this article is supposed to be.— Nat Krause( Talk!· What have I done?) 23:32, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
In Turkic language, "Tajik" originally referred to Pamiris, medieval Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians, and Pashtuns etc - i.e. East Iranian. (Not Persians that are Southwest Iranian and didn't live in the area 1000 years before.) But in English wikipedia, unlike in Turkic, unfortunately, "Tajik" refers to Central Asian Persian. I think the meaning of "Tajik" has changed and the term can not be used here.
See Tajiks [1] "Language: Darī; Tajiki dialects. Of the basic Mediterranean sub-stock, they show Mongoloid attributes increasingly from south to north."
For Pamiri people, I think the terms "Pamiri" or "Ghalcha" are better, and "Tajik" is wrong, although historically "Tajik" was used in Turkic language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.58.100.78 ( talk) 06:12, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
As for David Straub's comment "In addition, I dare someone to show me a piece of literature from a reputable source, and that has been written in the last half-century, that reference to this group by any other term."
Here is a source about Pamiri people in Tajikistan: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/topic,463af2212,49709ec52,49749c9e37,0.html PAMIRIS: "Pamiris are considered 'Tajik' by the authorities in Dushanbe, but they are widely considered to constitute a separate ethnic group, differing from Tajiks in terms of language, religion and culture. Pamiri languages are a Southeastern branch of the Iranian language family. Additionally, while most Tajiks are Sunni, Pamiris are followers of the Ismaili branch of Shia Islam. They refer to themselves as Badakhshani or Pomir in their own languages."
And another source: "There are about 50,000 people living in the Tajik Autonomous District identified as Tajiks in the Chinese census. However, these people can be called Tajiks only in the broadest sense. The Sarikoli and Wakhi Chinese Pamir nationalities, as well as the Tajik, Pakistani and Afghan Pamir nationalities who live in Chinese Pamir, speak languages belonging to the Eastern Iranian language group, whereas Tajik is linked to Western Iranian."
Can you now see that whenever there is reputable source, they are called Pamiri people? Or still not? 116.58.100.78 ( talk) 05:56, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
To 虞海 (Yú Hǎi), the so called "plateau Tajiks" ( East Iranian speaking Pamiris) and "plain Tajiks" (Persian-speaking Tajiks proper) need not to be mixed together. There is an article Pamiri people, that also refers to Pamiris in China (Sarikoli and northern Wakhi) as "Pamiri people", and the term Pamiri is widely used by academia, that's why it's also used in the article lead. Other terms like "plateau Tajiks" that are sometimes also used for Pamiris are also mentioned in the article. 116.58.100.78 ( talk) 07:50, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
I advice the name Tujik people, it's transcription of Sarikoli: Tujik ziv – Hanzu ziv lughot -- 虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ( talk) 15:54, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
I am concerned by the number and type of edits being made by an editor using the isp 116.58.100.78 . I suspect that these edits are actually being made by a registered user who does not want to use their username. These edits unclude complete reverts of pages, deletion of sources that do not support their view, and the repeated change of any reference of "Tajik" to Pamiri, despite the fact that there was a lengthy discussion above to change the name of this page from Pamiri people in China to Tajiks in Xinjiang 116.252.76.44 ( talk) 17:42, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
Please don't attack me if you are unable to find a source claiming Pamiris are Persians. Also don't confuse the Turkic word "Tajik" with the Persian word for crown. Besides, in Sarikoli or Wakhi languages, which we need to consider instead of Persian, taj or taji doesn't mean crown. 116.58.100.78 ( talk) 09:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
User:David Straub asked me to add my comment. I originally created this page in order to hold content about the members of this ethnic group in China. Similar to Ethnic Mongols in China, Koreans in China, and other cross-border ethnic groups. But I haven't been watching this debate too closely, and I don't have much of an opinion. Anyway I'll try to give a more complete overview of the Chinese sources.
All the online sources and a big proportion of the offline sources in Chinese state word for word:
I think this is copied from an official document somewhere; it probably reflects "Whatever the Soviet Union says, let's say the exact opposite" political correctness ...
There's a couple of other viewpoints/more details in print sources [3]:
That last one is an example of what Yu Hai was mentioning above.
But this is just a shallow overview from Google. Chinese books aren't too well represented in GBooks. I have a copy of 塔吉克语简志 somewhere at home, or maybe I lent it out to someone, which I recall discusses this issue a bit more, but for anything else, I'd have to head for the library. cab ( talk) 01:41, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
Please explain the reason. -- 虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ( talk) 04:56, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
I removed them. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ethnic groups/Archive 7#Blanking of links. The Joshua Project data are full of errors (22,000 Koreans in Mozambique? 7,000,000 Mandarin speakers in Indonesia?), and their habit of dividing up self-identified single ethnic groups into multiple ones based on spoken dialect differences makes things even worse. I don't find them to be a reliable source either for ethnic group naming or for population numbers. cab ( talk) 08:05, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
Salikuer and Wahan are the terms we should be using in the article, as these are the original self-identifications of the people. Using Tajik is wrong and misleading. I can quote many sources that both Sarikoli and Wakhi are widely considered to be Pamiri people, not West Iranians Tajiks, by scholars. 116.58.100.78 ( talk) 09:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
" Ethnic Pamiris in China" is not controversial and widely used. 116.58.100.78 ( talk) 05:28, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
I think one of the problems with the recent edits to this article is that there is a confusion between language and ethnicity.
The term Pamir languages is universaly recognized and the group of people that is discussed in this article does fall under this category. Wakhi and Sarikoli are categorized as Pamir langauges.
The difference though is when the term Pamiri is used as an ethnic term, as in Pamiri people. This was a term constructed by Soviet scholars during the mid-20th century. And as far as I can tell, it has been embraced by the people in the former Soviet Union who it applies to, i.e. the speakers of Pamiri languages who live in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province. During the Civil war in Tajikistan in the 1990s the Pamiri population actually organized themselves into militias and in 1992-93 Pamiris were targeted for mass killings.
The problem is how to apply the term Pamiri, in an ethnic sense, outside of the former Soviet Union. Does this apply to populations in Afghanistan? I don't know. I haven't seen any sources of Pamiri language speakers applying the term to themselves. Can someone show me a Pre-Soviet era source that uses the term Pamiri in terms of ethnicity? Choose any language? Russian? Tajik? Persian? Chinese? English? I doubt if the they exist. The term used in China to describe the speakers is of Wakhi and Sarikoli is the word Tajik. I don't think it is the place of wikipedia to educate the Sarikoli and Wakhi speakers in China and tell them that they are actually Pamiris. David Straub ( talk) 05:41, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
I think if you say Pamiri is "a term constructed by Soviet scholars during the mid-20th century", you should also not ignore that the term Tajik was also constructed recently and not found in historical texts. In the proper sense, Tajik refers to Persian speakers (please see the references I quoted earlier; also see Tajik language which is a Persian dialect). 116.58.100.78 ( talk) 06:11, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
The result of the move request was no move. Deacon of Pndapetzim ( Talk) 05:48, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Tajiks of Xinjiang →
Tajiks in China — I propose moving the article Tajiks in Xinjiang to Tajiks in China. This is the only article about minority groups in China that uses the name of the province rather than the country in the article title. For other examples see
Mongols_in_China,
Koreans_in_China,
Vietnamese_people_in_China, and
Russians_in_China. Very few other articles about minority groups would use a province or state versus a country in the name. Moreover, this page’s original title was Tajiks in China and was changed to Pamiris in China by a user who eventually had their account permanently blocked (see:
User_talk:Banigul). The move was in violation of Wikipedia move protocol in that there was neither a discussion on the talk page nor was there a request to move the page. This page was then moved again without a request or discussion from Plateau Tajiks to Pamiri people in China, then to Mountain Tajik people, and finally Tajiks in Xinjiang. Within the article the term Tajik has been replaced by Pamiri by a single editor and there is currently an open dispute discussion the talk page. In my opinion, the term Tajik is more appropriate than Pamiri because the official name of the minority group in China is Tajik, virtually all of the literature with a very small number of exceptions refers to this group as Tajik, and the
Ethnic groups in China page refers to the group as Tajiks, as does the map
of ethnolinguistic groups in China.
David Straub (
talk) 14:17, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Slightly Oppose: Highland Tajiks do not distribute in China only, but also the whole Pamir plateau. I do also think the prep should be "of". -- 虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ( talk) 06:35, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
Jahangir Khoja was a sunni sufi fundamentalist. His contained sunni tajiks from central asia who speak the real tajik language. This article is about the pamiri ismaili shia tajiks found only in badakhshan and xinjiang. I deleted paragraphs which are talkinga bout the actual tajiks, move them to history of tajikistan or somehwere else. Jeumbledde ( talk) 22:27, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
http://books.google.com/books?id=JL4IAAAAQAAJ
http://books.google.com/books?id=up2jpwAACAAJ&source=gbs_book_other_versions
Kuoofra ( talk) 04:51, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
In Medieval Europe, people spoke their local languages among themselves such as Italian, French, Castilian, while not writing them down and using them as literary languages until much later. They wrote in Latin as their literary language.
In the same way, the some minorities in Chna do not have an alphabet for their own language. They only speak their language orally, and use the Chinese or another major language like Uyghur to write.
The Tajiks of Xinjiang only speak their own language orally, and use the Uyghur language to write.
http://books.google.com/books?id=oWc2I03-UQIC&pg=PA39#v=onepage&q&f=false
On the Ghalchah languages (Wakhand Sarikol (1876)
https://archive.org/details/onghalchahlangua00shaw
Government policies were in favor of Uyghurs when Persian language was abolished in Tajik schools in 1954.
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/chinese-iranian-ix
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/chinese-iranian-viii
Rajmaan ( talk) 06:40, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
In response to increased Tsarist Russian activity in Sarikol around 1900, the local Sarikoli begs and Sarikoli people feared that Russia was going to annex the region and take it away from China, fearing molestation at the hands of the Russians, they wanted to flee to Yarkand. They did not believe the official explanation that Russia was only concerned with the postal service in the area.