"When the language was discovered in the 19th century, it was spoken in the central part of the remote high valley of the Yaghnob river. This valley is situated in Tajikistan, about 100 km north of Dushanbe... There were about 2,500 speakers in the 1960s; 1,500 of these native speakers were living in 22 settlements within the Yaghnob valley, and roughly 900 resided outside of the valley... In 1970, however, the Soviet authorities forced the whole population of about 3,000 people to leave the Yaghnob valley. Five hundred families migrated to Zafarobod in northern Tajikistan, 200 families to the area surrounding Dushanbe. Only about 300 people were living in the Yaghnob valley in 1990, when the Dushanbe-based Council of Ministers passed the decision to re-establish all villages whose populations had been resettled."