Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Dushanbe is the capital and most populous city. Tajikistan borders Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east. It is separated from Pakistan by Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor. It has a population of over 10.7 million people. The territory was previously home to cultures of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, including the Oxus civilization in west, with the Indo-Iranians arriving during the Andronovo culture. Parts of country were part of the Sogdian and Bactrian civilizations, and was ruled by those including the Achaemenids, Alexander the Great, the Greco-Bactrians, the Kushans, the Kidarites and Hephthalites, the First Turkic Khaganate, the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, the Samanid Empire, the Kara-Khanids, Seljuks, Khwarazmians, the Mongols, Timurids and Khanate of Bukhara. The region was later conquered by the Russian Empire, before becoming part of the Soviet Union.