From the 17th to early 20th century, Dushanbe grew into a market village controlled at times by the Beg of Hisor, Balkh, and finally Bukhara, before being conquered by the Russian Empire.

[32][33] The ruins of a Buddhist monastery of the Hephthalite period of the late fifth to sixth century, now referred to as Ajina Tepe, lie in the Vaksh valley near Dushanbe.

[20][43][25] The first time Dushanbe appeared in the historical record was in 1676, in a letter sent from the Balkh khan Subhonquli Bahodur to Fyodor III, the Tsar of Russia.

In the unstable environment of Russian intervention and local revolts, Bukhara took over the Dushanbe region, control over which the Emirate was able to sustain through the gradual establishment of a Russian-influenced centralized state.

The population also increased with thousands of ethnic Tajiks migrating to Tajikistan from Uzbekistan following the transfer of Bukhara and Samarkand to the Uzbek SSR as part of national delimitation in Central Asia.

[53][69] Many of these projects occurred under the 1925–1932 mayoralty of Abdukarim Rozykov, one of the first mayors of Dushanbe, who sought to transform it into a "model communist city" through modernization and urban planning.

[78] On 10–11 February 1990, 300 demonstrators gathered at the Communist Party Central Committee building after it was rumored that the Soviet government planned to relocate tens of thousands of Armenian refugees to Tajikistan.

[79] A few days after, and with looting still occurring throughout the city, demonstrators created the Provisional People's Committee, or the Temporary Committee for Crisis Resolution, which put forward demands such as "the expulsion of Armenian refugees, the resignation of the government and the removal of the Communist Party, the closure of an aluminum smelter in western Tajikistan for environmental reasons, equitable distribution of profits from cotton production, and the release of 25 protesters taken into custody.

[79] The riots were largely fueled by concerns about housing shortages for the Tajik population, but they coincided with a wave of nationalist unrest that swept Transcaucasia and other Central Asian states during the twilight of Mikhail Gorbachev's rule.

The climate is damper than other Central Asian capitals, with an average annual rainfall over 500 millimetres (20 in) as moist air is funneled by the surrounding valley during the winter and spring.

[101] There are 14 identified species of mammals in urban Dushanbe, including a fox, a weasel, the marbled polecat, the long-eared hedgehog, five bats, and five rodents.

[9][5][105]The population of Dushanbe grew at a rapid pace following the Soviet invasion of the 1920s, declined during the Tajik Civil War and rising unrest of the 1990s, and resumed its growth after that period.

[140][141] Before the Soviet invasion, education was limited in Dushanbe, mainly consisting of madrasas that taught the Quran and Persian and Arabic along with geography, geometry, algebra, and other sciences.

While state spending declined, private institutions temporarily developed in the market economy, accounting for growth in the number of universities in Dushanbe after independence.

[143][145][149] Rashid Beck Ahriev and Peter Komarov piloted the first flight to the city from Bukhara on 3 September 1924 on a Junkers F-13; the service ran three times a week from small airfield on modern day Rudaki Avenue.

[161] Today, Tajikistan's principal railways are in the southern region and connect Dushanbe with the industrial areas of the Gissar and Vakhsh valleys and with Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Russia.

In the early 2000s, a new railway line from Dushanbe to Gharm to Jirghatol was constructed that would connect the country to Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan while not going through Uzbekistan due to contemporary geopolitical tensions.

The collapse of the Soviet Union led to a crisis in the system, as fuel increased in price and looting became a consistent problem, with one incident occurring at the central bus station leading to the temporary suspension of lines.

[185] To alleviate the energy crisis, a second coal plant for the city is planned with extensive Chinese involvement, but has been criticized for pollution and negative environmental effects.

As of October 2019, 54 people were buried there such as Jabbor Rasulov, Bobojon Ghafurov, Muhammad Osimi, Mirzo Tursunzade, Loik Sherali, Muhammadjon Shakuri, Malika Sabirova, Tufa Fozylova, and Mukaddima Ashrafi.

Meat packing, soap production, bricks, lumber, silk thread, leather, clothing, and generation of electric power were all local industries during the time period.

[214][215][216] Compared with the rest of the country, however, Dushanbe is a less popular tourist destination, partially due to its relatively recent founding and lack of historical significance.

[223][224] Sergei Artemevich Balasanyan, an Armenian, was one composer who originally went to Dushanbe from 1936–1943 to prepare the SSR for an upcoming Tajik cultural festival to be held in Moscow.

[235] After independence, previously forbidden subjects like religion started to appear in literature, along with reflections on the civil war and a more international scene has developed in the city.

Modern sculpture mainly has historical subjects like Firdavsi, Shah Anushirvan, or Ismail Samani, often to commemorate Tajik nationhood and ethnicity by looking to past Achaemenid and Samanid figures.

The most popular sports in Dushanbe are sambo, wrestling, judo, karate, taekwondo, artistic gymnastics, weightlifting, archery, shooting, boxing, football, basketball, diving, tennis, chess, Buzkashi, and checkers.

It was distributed throughout Tajikistan and was the main Tajik language newspaper that opposed the previous Emirate and was clearly in support of communism, the October Revolution, and the Bukharan Communist Party.

The Sukhan newspaper, published by the Union of Journalists of Tajikistan, was a leading voice for liberalism and perestroika in the republic, writing about topics such as freedom of speech, democratization, and the opposition.

[262] On 16–17 May 2019 a high-level conference entitled "Countering Terrorism and its Financing Through Illicit Drug Trafficking and Organized Crime" was held in Dushanbe and attended by more than 50 countries.

The Asian members of the organization discussed common interests on topics such as peace and security, terrorism, arms control, the Iran nuclear deal, poverty, economic development, and globalization.