P rominent t ajik f igures of the

Ghafurov, Bobojon

Tajik politician and Orientalist Bobojon Ghafurovich Ghafurov was

born in the village of Isfisar in Khujand on December 31, 1909. He

joined the CPSU in 1932.

Ghafurov graduated from the High Juridical School in Samarqand in

1930 and following that he worked at both the People’s Commissariat

of Justice and the Qizil  Tajikistan journal. In 1935 he graduated from

the All-Soviet Communist Institute of Journalism and thereafter became

the Deputy Editor and Editor of the Uzbek Language journal Qizil Taji-

kistan. From 1938 to 1941 he was a post-graduate student at the Insti-

tute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in Mos-

cow. In 1941, he was appointed Propaganda and Agitation Secretary for

the Communist Party. From 1944 to 1946, he was the Second Secretary

and, from 1946 to 1956, he was the First Secretary of the Central Com-

mittee of the Communist Party of Tajikistan. From 1956 to the end of

his life, Ghafurov served as the Director of the Institute of Oriental

Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, and the Editor

of the Asia and Africa journal. He completed his doctoral dissertation,

entitled Istoria Sekti ismailitov (History of the Isma’ili Sect) in 1941.

Ghafurov’s research deals with an understanding of the history of the

freedom movements of the Eastern Peoples, the political aims of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the ancient and medieval

history of the Peoples of the East. Recognizing the importance of

Shashmaqom classical music in Tajik culture, Ghafurov supported the

transcription of the maqoms for posterity. He also supervised the publi-

cation of the five-volume History of the Tajiks in Russian which was

published between 1963 and 1965.

Ghafurov’s contributions include Istoria Sekti ismailitov (History of

the Isma’ili Sect, Moscow, 1941), Ta’rikhi Mukhtasari Khalqi Tojik (A

Brief History of the Tajiks, Stalinabad, 1947). This work was translated

into Russian and went through three reprints. An expanded version ap-

peared in 3 volumes between 1963 and 1965 under the title Tojikon:

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