Abdulla Alaviy

Abdulla Alaviy was born in 1903 in Pskent (Piskent), near Tashkent, into a family close to the educated milieu. From childhood he was drawn to history and literature: besides the madrasa he read widely on his own, learned Russian and German and got to know writing in those languages.

After 1917 he studied at a new-method school, first in Pskent and then in Tashkent, taught for a time and then went to Leningrad. In 1924–1927 he studied at the Leningrad Oriental Institute, where he also taught Uzbek language and literature.

In 1926, in the village of Evalak in the Pskent district, he wrote down a version of the epic “Alpomish” from the bard Berdi Baxshi. From 1927 to 1930 he taught at the Uzbek Pedagogical Academy in Samarkand, then the republic’s capital, working alongside the scholars and writers gathered there. According to his contemporaries he knew Arabic, Persian, Turkish, French and Latin.

Alaviy’s literary legacy is small: a few articles on classical literature, literary theory and the new alphabet, and no more than about ten poems. In poems such as “Yo‘lovchi” (“The Traveller”), “Erkin sahob” (“The Free Cloud”), “Arslonbobga” (“To Arslanbob”) and “Dengizga” (“To the Sea”) new lyrical tones were heard. He widened the possibilities of Uzbek syllabic verse and was one of the pioneers of free verse in Uzbek poetry, writing in Uzbek and Persian. The poet Rauf Parfi carried his lines of search forward in the next generation.

A serious illness cut short his life at a time of creative growth: he died in Samarkand on 7 January 1931. His death deeply affected Cho‘lpon and other poets, who wrote elegies in his memory.