Tajik President Orders Stronger Education Of Persian“Ancestral Alphabet”

According to state media reports, Rahmon instructed schools and universities to improve the quality of Persian-script education within programmes promoting“Aryan history and culture.” Tajikistan's official language is Tajik Persian, but it is currently written using the Cyrillic alphabet introduced during the Soviet period.

The Persian script was widely used in Tajikistan before Soviet authorities replaced it with Cyrillic in 1940 under a language policy aimed at integrating Tajiks more closely into the Soviet administrative and cultural system.

Under the current curriculum, the subject known as“Ancestral Alphabet and Texts” is taught in secondary schools. The government earlier moved the subject from lower grades to seventh and eighth classes and increased teaching hours to two sessions per week.

Officials say the programme aims to familiarise younger generations with Tajikistan's historical literary, scientific and cultural heritage preserved in Persian manuscripts and classical texts.

Tajik National University said Persian-script instruction is also included in courses on Tajik language history, classical literature and orthography at its Faculty of Literature.

Debate over returning Tajikistan fully to the Persian script has continued for decades and remains one of the country's most sensitive linguistic and cultural issues. The discussion gained momentum during the final years of the Soviet Union amid rising national identity movements.

A 1989 language law declared Tajik the state language and opened the way for Persian-script education in schools, but the country never formally abandoned Cyrillic after independence and the civil war of the 1990s.

President Rahmon last year also instructed the education ministry and universities to take“effective measures” to expand Persian-script teaching and called on intellectuals and academics to support the effort.

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