Tajik

The Tajik people are an ethnic group of Central Asia. They speak the Dari dialect of Farsi (i.e., Persian) and are almost exclusively Muslim, mostly Sunni but with some Shia.

They are the second largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, next to the Pashtun, and are the dominant group of Tajikistan. One of their strongholds in Afghanistan is in the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul; Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Afghan resistance leader, was called the Lion of the Panshjir. Tajiks also live in China.