Komil Khorezmi

Komil Khorezmi is a pen name; his real name was Pahlavon Muhammadniyoz. He was born in Khiva in 1825 into the family of Abdulla Okhund, a madrasa teacher. He studied at a Khiva madrasa, learned Arabic and Persian, and began his career as a scribe at the khan’s court, first under Said Muhammad Khan.

Under Muhammad Rahim II (Feruz) he rose in the khan’s chancery and became mirzaboshi, the chief secretary. In 1873, as Russian troops approached Khiva, the text of the Gandimian peace treaty was written in his hand; the same year he was appointed devonbegi, a post he held until 1880. In 1873 and 1883 he travelled with the khan to Moscow and St Petersburg, and he visited Tashkent in 1891 and in 1896–1897.

As a poet Komil wrote more than eight thousand lines in ghazals, rubais, qasidas and murabbas, and his divan was printed by lithography in Khiva in 1881. He translated Persian works into Uzbek, wrote a preface to the Khiva edition of Alisher Navoi’s “Khamsa” and practised calligraphy.

His most lasting work was in music. At the khan’s request he devised the “tanbur line”, a notation whose lines correspond to the frets of the tanbur, to put folk and maqom melodies on paper. His son Muhammad Rasul Mirzaboshi carried the system further, and with it the Khorezm maqoms, including the Shashmaqom, were written down.

Komil Khorezmi died in Khiva in 1899. The hall for Quran readers he had built still stands over his grave and is now known as a house-museum in Khiva.