Ismaili Centre, Dushanbe Ismaili Centre, Dushanbe The Ismaili Centre, Dushanbe is one of six such centres world-wide and is an Ismaili jamatkhana. It was the fifth purpose-built Ismaili Centre, and the first in Central Asia. Dushanbe is the capital of Tajikistan, a country characterised by an unusually extensive Ismaili population: the region of Badakhshan, which spills over northeastern Afghanistan, eastern Tajikistan and North Pakistan, is the only part of the world where Ismailis make up the majority of the population. Under Soviet rule, the religion was discouraged, but since 1991 has increased its public prominence, and the Personal Representative of the Ismaili imamate
Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic created at the same time within the predominantly Turkic Uzbek SSR as an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Tajik ASSR) – one rank below a Soviet Socialist Republic in USSR geopolitical hierarchy. The new autonomous republic included what had been eastern Bukhara and had a population of about 740,000, out of a total population of nearly 5 million in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic as a whole. Its capital was established in Dyushambe, which had been a village of 3,000 in 1920. In December 1929, Tajik ASSR was detached from the Uzbek SSR and given full status as a Soviet Socialist