People and the economy

Turkic-speaking Kyrgyz populate the eastern Pamirs, while Mountain Tajiks live in the western valleys. The Mountain Tajik are Ismāʿīlī Shīʿite Muslims who speak several eastern Iranian languages (the most common are Wakhi and Shugni), and almost all also speak the Tajiki language of the lowland-dwelling Tajiks of Tajikistan and Afghanistan, who are largely Sunni Muslims.

In the portion of the Pamirs in the Kǔhistoni-Badakhshon autonomous region of Tajikistan, the great bulk of the population lives above 5,000 feet (1,500 metres), and no settlement is located below 11,500 feet (3,500 metres) in the Kyrgyz sector. Of those residing in the eastern area, most migrate in the course of their annual pastoral tasks. At high elevations, the Kyrgyz exhibit much greater longevity and lower infant mortality than the Tajiks. Substantial population movement has occurred since 1940, when the majority of the residents of the western Pamirs were forcibly removed to the irrigated cotton communes established on the broad river plains in Tajikistan. Agropastoral activities, often associated with communal farms, occupy the remaining inhabitants of the Pamirs. Population pressure in Tajikistan—which has a high birth rate and a large proportion of its population living in poverty—has made it necessary to establish new settlements and farms in the western Pamir valleys. This resettlement of formerly depopulated valleys is most evident in the Surkhob and Obikhingou valleys upstream from the huge hydroelectric dams at Norak and Roghun on the Vakhsh River.

Khorog and Qalaikhum in Gorno-Badakhshan, both on the right bank of the Panj River, are the major southwestern centres; Gharm, Tojikobod, and Jirgatol in Tajikistan are modern small towns in the northwest; and Murghob in Kǔhistoni-Badakhshon is the focus of activity in the eastern Pamirs. Taxkorgan is the only town in the Chinese Pamirs. In the Vākhān region during the 1980s, the Kyrgyz abandoned their settlements, and the dispersed Mountain Tajik communities gathered into tight clusters as a result of civil strife caused by the Afghan War.

The high-elevation pastoralism practiced in the eastern Pamirs is devoted to yaks and related crossbreeds, sheep, and goats; barley, pulses, rapeseed, potatoes, and other root vegetables are the main crops of this region. In the valleys of the western Pamirs, the former Soviet government mandated the cultivation of cotton and other crops. Large orchards—notably of apples, pears, and apricots, as well as vineyards—line many western valleys and foothills between 5,000 and 6,500 feet (1,500 and 2,000 metres). Wheat is the dominant grain and corn (maize) the chief winter fodder. Cattle are replacing sheep and goats as principal livestock in the western valleys.

Motor-vehicle tracks reach all settlements in the Pamirs, and there is frequent air service to many small towns. Large passenger helicopters serve isolated locations on an infrequent basis. Jeep tracks constructed in the 1980s support the Mountain Tajik living in the Vākhān region of Afghanistan. A major frontier road facilitates the movement of military garrisons in the Tajik and Kyrgyz portions of the Pamirs and links Tajikistan with the city of Osh in Kyrgyzstan. A major route along the old Karatikin Silk Road up the Surkhob and Kyzylsu rivers and the Alai Valley runs from Tajikistan through southern Kyrgyzstan to China. In the Chinese Pamirs, the extension of the Karakoram Highway serves the Sarykol and Subashi pamir through the western extension of the Kunlun Mountains.

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Study and exploration

From the 1st through the 7th century ce, three branches of the Silk Road crossed the Pamirs. The 2nd-century Alexandrian scholar Ptolemy referred to the mountains as Comedae in his Guide to Geography. Troops of Tang-dynasty China invaded the Pamirs in 747 but withdrew shortly thereafter. The Venetian traveler Marco Polo may have traversed the Vākhān region en route to Cathay (China), but it was not known to Europe until 1603 when the Portuguese Jesuit missionary Benedict de Goes reported on his travels through the area. As Konstantin Petrovich Kaufmann conquered successive Central Asian khanates for Russia during the mid-19th century, British representatives—such as John Wood in the 1830s—sought a suitable physiographic boundary between Russian Central Asia and British India. The legendary journeys of the Englishman Ney Elias brought an enlightened European view of the region and its peoples, one without military or political bias. Political control of the mountains was settled in 1891 when tsarist forces rebuffed the British at Bozai Gombaz (Bazai Gombad) in the southern Pamirs. Russian and British negotiators subsequently established the new buffer state of Afghanistan—including the narrow Wakhan Corridor (now the Vākhān region)—between their respective territories. The boundaries between China and Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in the Pamirs, however, have remained in dispute.

Exploration in the late 19th century was dominated by Russian scientists, who studied glaciation, geology, botany, and zoology. During this period, expeditions by other countries became infrequent, and the Danish expedition of 1898–99 signaled the end of indiscriminate European incursion into Russian-controlled Central Asian territory. Other expeditions, including the much-touted foray by the British statesman Lord Curzon in 1894, only scouted the fringes of the Pamirs.

During the Soviet period, explorations in the Pamirs became systematic. In 1928 an expedition explored the region of the Fedchenko Glacier, making possible the first accurate topographical maps of the northwestern Pamirs. This was followed in the early 1930s by the establishment of a high-elevation hydrologic and meteorologic observatory—the first of its kind—at an elevation of about 15,700 feet (4,800 metres) on a lateral moraine of the glacier. The laboratory has produced much valuable scientific data on the physical properties of the Pamirs. In one study, the superior adaptation to high-elevation living by the Kyrgyz, compared to the Tajik, has been a subject of physiological research. Many mountain-climbing and trekking groups visit the Pamir region each year; most activity occurs in the Trans-Alai Range, including Lenin Peak.