Muqaddama Ashrafi ( tg, Муқаддима Ашрафӣ; June 5, 1936 – June 29, 2013) was a

Tajikistan Tajikistan (, ; tg, Тоҷикистон, Tojikiston; russian: Таджикистан, Tadzhikistan), officially the Republic of Tajikistan ( tg, Ҷумҳурии Тоҷикистон, Jumhurii Tojikiston), is a landlocked country in Centr ...

i medievalist and art historian.

Biography

Ashrafi was born in

Tashkent Tashkent (, uz, Toshkent, Тошкент/, ) (from russian: Ташкент), or Toshkent (; ), also historically known as Chach is the capital and largest city of Uzbekistan. It is the most populous city in Central Asia, with a population of ...

into an ethnic Tajik family. Her father was the noted composer

Mukhtar Ashrafi Mukhtar Ashrafi (russian: Мухтар Ашрафович Ашрафи, Uzbek: ''Muxtor Ashrafiy''; in Bukhara – 10 December 1975 in Tashkent) was a Soviet Uzbek composer. He was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1951. He became a member o ...

. She graduated from the Taskhent Musical School in 1954; in 1959 she received a degree in art history from the Moscow State University. From that year until 1961 she worked in the Oriental Studies Department of the USSR Academy of Sciences in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

; beginning in 1962 she was a postgraduate student at that institution's Institute of Oriental Studies, graduating in 1968. From 1969 until 1971 she was employed at the

Tajik Academy of Sciences Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan ( tg, Академияи илмҳои Ҷумҳурии Тоҷикистон, italic=yes, ''Akademiyai ilmhoi Jumhuriyi Tojikiston''; russian: Академия наук Республики Тадж ...

in the Department of Philosophy; in 1972 she moved to the organization's Institute of History. That same year saw the beginning of her chairmanship of the humanities department at the Tajik Technological University. As a scholar, Ashrafi took as her specialities the medieval arts, especially painting, of

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...

. She was married to the writer Kamol Ayni. At the time of her death she was at work on the last volume of a planned trilogy on the subject of Tajik

miniature painting Miniature painting may refer to: * Miniature (illuminated manuscript), a small illustration used to decorate an illuminated manuscript * Persian miniature, a small painting on paper in the Persian tradition, for a book or album * Ottoman miniature, ...

, having already published the first two volumes in 2011.

References

{{authority control 1936 births 2013 deaths 20th-century Tajikistani historians 21st-century Tajikistani historians Tajikistani women historians Ethnic Tajik people Members of the Tajik Academy of Sciences Historians of Central Asia Moscow State University alumni Writers from Tashkent Tajikistani medievalists 20th-century Tajikistani women writers 21st-century Tajikistani women writers Women medievalists Women art historians