P rominent t ajik f igures of the

Abdullaev, Kamoludin

Tajik historian Kamoludin Najmiddinzoda Abdullaev was born into

the family of a government (Communist) official in the village of

Shulmak, Gharm, on February 21,1950. He received his early education

at home and in Russian schools while he grew up in Khorugh

(Badakhshan) and Khujand, before he moved to Dushanbe in 1962.

Abdullaev graduated from Tajikistan State University with a degree

in history in 1972. In 1981, he defended his post-graduate thesis entitled

Central Asian Periodicals as a Historical Source on the History of the

Elimination of the Basmachi ([Muslim Guerilla's]) Movement. In 1983,

he defended his doctoral dissertation at the Institute of History of the

Academy of Sciences of the USSR. It was entitled The Soviet Turkistan

Newspapers as a Historical Source on the History of the Elimination of

Basmachism in Central Asia. In the late 1980s, changing with the times,

Abdullaev altered his approach to historiography to deal with the new

realities of Central Asia.

Abdullaev has served in a number of positions since the late 1980s.

He was Research Fellow at the Institute of History, the Academy of

Sciences of Tajikistan (1975-89). And he was Head of the Department

of Political Research at the Institute of Political Research in Dushanbe

(1989-91). Between 1991 and 1997, he was Assistant Professor of

History of Central Asia (19

th

-20

th

 centuries) at Tajikistan State Uni-

versity. He was project Officer and Curriculum Development Specialist

for the Agha Khan Humanities Project for Central Asia from 1997 to

1999. More recently, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for

Strategic Research under the President of Tajikistan (1999-01) and the

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