A prominent statue of Ibn Sina (Avicenna), the 10th–11th century physician and philosopher, stands in central Dushanbe as one of the city's many monuments to the Persian literary and intellectual tradition. The Tajik state has made a deliberate effort to link the country's identity to the great figures of the Samanid and later Persian-speaking world — Rudaki, Avicenna, Hafez, Firdawsi — as part of nation-building after independence.
The statue is near the medical university that bears Avicenna's name. It's worth noting that these figures lived in a world before modern national boundaries made them "Tajik" or "Uzbek" — Avicenna himself wrote in both Persian and Arabic and worked at courts across Central Asia and Persia.