Begali Qosimov

Begali Qosimov was born on 19 December 1942 in the village of Denov in the Kasbi district of the Kashkadarya region. After finishing school in his home village, he entered the philology faculty of Tashkent State University (now the National University of Uzbekistan) in 1958, graduated in 1963 and began postgraduate study the same year.

He began publishing in 1964, with a first article in the newspaper «Sirdaryo haqiqati», and in 1967 issued a short monograph on the writer Mirmuhsin Shermuhamedov (Fikriy). That writer and his literary circle were also the subject of his candidate dissertation (1968). From 1966 he taught in the Uzbek literature department of Tashkent State University, as lecturer, senior lecturer and then associate professor.

He joined the Writers' Union of Uzbekistan in 1980. In 1984 he defended his doctoral dissertation on Uzbek poetry at the start of the twentieth century, in particular the poetry of 1905–1917, and in 1986 he became a professor. In 1993 he founded the university's department of Uzbek literature of the National Awakening period and headed it.

The core of his work is Jadid and enlightenment literature and the creative work and fates of its representatives. He wrote on Abdulla Avloniy, Mahmudkhoja Behbudiy, Ismail Gasprinski and Abdurauf Fitrat, and prepared selected works of Behbudiy, Avloniy, Sidqiy-Khondayliqiy, Ibrat, Ajziy and other Jadid authors for publication. He also studied the awakening and literary ties among Turkic peoples, and was responsible for the Uzbek part of the multi-volume «Literature of the Turkic World» published in Ankara.

In 1997 he became an honorary member of the Atatürk Cultural Centre in Turkey and in 1998 a corresponding member of the Atatürk Research Centre; in 1993 he received the Yasawi International Prize. He also took part in scholarly administration: in 1998–2002 he took part in the philology work of the Higher Attestation Commission of Uzbekistan and chaired the specialised council for philological sciences at the National University.

In 1999 he was named Honoured Science Worker of Uzbekistan. Begali Qosimov died in Tashkent on 25 September 2004. In 2025 he was posthumously awarded the Order «For Selfless Service».