Ghulam Zafariy

Ghulam Zafariy was born in 1889 in the Kattabog‘ (Eshonguzar) quarter of Tashkent’s Beshyog‘och district, to a coppersmith, Ustad Muzaffar; his mother was Fayziniso. Sources disagree about when and where he was born: some studies drawing on the memoir of his daughter Siddiqa G‘ulomova give 1888 and Kokand, while a newspaper article of 1968 and his prison questionnaire give 1899; most reference works give 1889 and Tashkent. He studied at an old-style school and a Russian-native school, then at the Khoja Ahmad and Ko‘kaldosh madrasas.

In 1912 he taught at a new-method school in Osh and then returned to Tashkent. From 1914 he worked as an actor and playwright in the Turon troupe organised by Abdulla Avloniy. That year his poems appeared in the journal “Oyna” and the newspaper “Sadoyi Farg‘ona”, and he wrote a one-act play, “Baxtsiz shogird” (“The Unfortunate Pupil”). In 1918–1921 he wrote one-act musical plays for children, among them “Bahor”, “Gunafsha”, “Tilak” and “Rahmdil shogird”, and is regarded as the founder of Uzbek children’s drama.

His best-known work is the musical drama “Halima”. A first version existed in 1919; on 14 September 1920 the Turon troupe staged it at the Rohat Bog‘cha theatre in the Old City, directed by Mannon Uyg‘ur, and the playbill called it a five-act “opera”. The play is built on folk melodies, and the author prepared the music himself with the help of the musician Shorahim Shoumarov and the hafiz Mulla To‘ychi. Fitrat, in his review, called the production an opera. Zafariy went on reworking the play in the following years, and “Halima” is regarded as the first national musical drama in the history of Uzbek theatre.

Zafariy was also seriously engaged in folklore and music. In 1921–1923 he worked at the music technical school in Bukhara, and in 1921–1922 he went on a folklore expedition to the Fergana Valley, writing down songs, proverbs and riddles. The collection “El ashulalari”, compiled with Elbek, was published in 1925. From the mid-1920s to 1927 he headed a music school in Termez, and from 1928 he worked at the Music Research Institute in Samarkand. He wrote articles including “Sharq musiqalari va cholg‘ulari” (“Eastern Music and Instruments”), “Musiqa muammosi” (“The Problem of Music”) and “O‘zbek musiqasi to‘g‘risida” (“On Uzbek Music”).

In 1932 Zafariy was arrested on a charge of counter-revolutionary activity; by a decision of the OGPU collegium of 21 May 1933 he was exiled to Siberia for three years. He returned to Tashkent in 1935, could not find work and for a time sold vegetables in a shop. He wrote operettas, among them “Paxtaxon” and “Sayil va to‘y”; the latter, written with Komil Yashin, was shown in May 1937 at the ten-day festival of Uzbek art in Moscow under the title “A Fair on the Collective Farm”.

NKVD officers arrested him a second time on 29 October 1937. The troika of the Uzbek SSR NKVD sentenced him to death on 4 December, and according to the entry in the archive file the sentence was carried out on 28 December 1937. Some publications give 4 December 1938 as the date of his execution. After the return of the work of repressed writers began in the late 1950s and early 1960s, his name was mentioned again, notably on a special page of the newspaper “Toshkent oqshomi” of 1 July 1968.