Ahmad Donish

Ahmad Donish (full name Ahmad Makhdum; also known as Ahmad Kalla and Ahmad Muhandis) was born around 1827 in Bukhara; sources give a year between 1827 and 1829. He grew up in the family of a poor mullah, the imam of a small mosque. His mother taught him to read, and at school he cared less for memorising the Qur’an than for street storytellers and tales of history.

While studying at a madrasa he taught himself astronomy, geometry, medicine, history, literature and music, and became skilled in calligraphy and painting. The court architect noticed his talent and took him under his wing. Around 1850 Donish entered the service of Emir Nasrullah as a calligrapher and painter; he later became court astronomer and a go-between for the emir and the clergy.

As a freethinker he was unpopular at court: both Nasrullah and his successor Muzaffar wanted to use his knowledge while keeping him away from the palace. He was therefore sent three times to St Petersburg as secretary of a Bukharan embassy, in November 1857, October 1869 and January 1874. The journeys convinced him of Bukhara’s backwardness and of the need for reform; he also favoured the teaching of Russian.

His ideas on change are set out in “Risola dar nazmi tamaddun va ta’avun”, a part of his work “Nawadir al-waqayi'”. He proposed putting the treasury in order, fixing salaries and ethical standards for officials, and adding science and technology to the madrasa curriculum. For such views religious circles denounced him as an unbeliever. In 1879–1880 he withdrew from court; Emir Muzaffar, displeased with his treatise, sent him in 1885 as a judge to the remote districts of Guzar and Nahrpay. After the emir’s death Donish returned to Bukhara and devoted the rest of his life to writing; according to one source, under the new emir Abdulahad he ran the library of one of the madrasas.

His best-known book is “Nawadir al-waqayi'” (“Rare Events”), written in 1875–1882: moral tales, reflections on the state, family, learning and travel, and accounts of his journeys to Russia. In a history written in 1895–1897 he traced the Bukharan emirs from Daniyal Biy to the age of Abdulahad and criticised the emirate’s institutions and Tsarist colonial policy, so it had to circulate in secret. Donish wrote in Persian (Tajik) and composed ghazals, qasidas and rubais; his style is plain, with images taken from the oral tradition.

In Bukhara a literary circle of poets and musicians formed around him, among them Shohin, Hayrat and Dilkash; he influenced later Bukharan reformers such as Sadriddin Ayni and Tash-Khoja Asiri. He died in Bukhara in 1897. Manuscripts of his works are kept in Tashkent, Dushanbe and St Petersburg, above all at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan; in 1972 the Tajikfilm studio made a film about him, “A Star in the Night”.