P rominent t ajik f igures of the

Prominent Tajik Figures of the Twentieth Century

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

35

Ashrafi, Mukaddima

Tajik art historian Mukaddima Mukhtorovna Ashrafi was born on

July 5, 1936, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Her father, Mukhtor Ashrafi, was

a well-known composer and conductor in Uzbekistan and she is the

wife of Tajik intellectual Kamol Aini.

Ashrafi graduated from Moscow State University with an MA in Art

History in 1959 and a Ph.D. in Art History in 1972. From 1959 to 1961,

she served as a research fellow in the Department of Literature of the

Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet

Union. Thereafter, until 1972 she served as a research fellow in the

Department of Manuscripts of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the

Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan. From 1972 to the present, she has

been serving as a senior research fellow and chief researcher at the

Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan. She

completed her post-doctorate work in Art History at the Institute of Art

History in Moscow in 1986, and she became a professor in 1997.

Currently, she works in the Department of Humanities of the Tech-

nological University of Tajikistan.

Ashrafi has received a number of Fellowships , including UNESCO

Research Fellowship in France, the UK, and Ireland in 1980, and the

Iran Heritage Foundation Research Fellowship in 1997. She has also

been a Visiting Scholar with the Agha Khan Foundation in 1990 and

1991, as well as at the Institute Francais d'Études sur L'Ásie Centrale

(IFEAC), 2001.

Ashrafi's publications include Miniatures of the 16

th

 Century in MSS

of Works by Jami, 1966), The Bukhara Miniatures School of the 40s-70s

of the 16

th

 Century, 1974), Persian-Tajik Poetry in Miniatures of the

14

th

 to 17

th

 Century, 1974), The Development of Iranian Miniatures in

the 16

th

 Century, 1978), Bihzod and the Development of the Bukhara

Miniature School of the 16

th

 Century, 1987), and "The Art of the Book,"

History of central Asian Civilization (UNESCO), Paris, 2000.

Ashrafi has traveled extensively in Iran, France, Ireland, India,

Germany, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Jordan, and the United States.