Khurshid Davron

Khurshid Davron was born on 20 January 1952 in the village of Chordara in the Samarkand district of the Samarkand region, into a white-collar family. Some sources say that on his mother’s side he descends from Makhdum-i A’zam, a leading master of the Naqshbandi order.

After school he enrolled in 1969 in the evening department of the journalism faculty of Tashkent State University, working on Tashkent building sites by day. He did military service in 1971–1973, then resumed his studies and graduated in 1977. From 1974 to 1989 he worked at the Yosh Gvardiya publishing house as an editor and head of an editorial department, and from 1989 to 1991 at the Kamalak publishing house as deputy director and director.

His first poems appeared in district and regional newspapers in 1976–1977. In 1979 two collections came out, “Qadrdon quyosh” and “Shahardagi olma daraxti”, followed by “Tungi bog‘lar” (1981), “Uchib boraman qushlar bilan” (1983), “To‘marisning ko‘zlari” (1984), “Bolalikning ovozi” (1986), “Qaqnus” (1987) and “Bahordan bir kun oldin” (1997). He has been a member of the Writers’ Union of Uzbekistan since 1979.

In the 1990s he worked mainly in prose, writing the historical stories “Samarqand xayoli” (1991), “Sohibqiron nabirasi” (1995) and “Shahidlar shohi” (1998), the last about Sheikh Najmiddin Kubro. As a dramatist he wrote plays about Babur and Mirzo Ulugbek. He translated Japanese, Russian and Latvian poets into Uzbek, among them the anthologies “Dengiz yaproqlari” (1988) and “Qirq oshiq daftari” (1989). He wrote the script of the television series “Temurnoma” (1996) and of the musical spectacle “The Great Silk Road”, staged at the Odéon theatre in Paris (1997).

From 1994 to 1996 he was deputy head of the Republican “Spirituality and Enlightenment” Centre; from 1996 he held senior posts at the National Television and Radio Company of Uzbekistan, and in 1998–2005 he was chief director of the Yoshlar television channel. He was a deputy of the Oliy Majlis in 2000–2004.

He received the Order of Friendship (“Do‘stlik”) in 1997 and the title People’s Poet of Uzbekistan in 1999. His prizes include the Mahmud Kashgari International Prize (1989), the international Golden Pen (2009), Azerbaijan’s Mikayil Mushfig Prize (2013) and Turkey’s Niyazi Misri Prize (2022). His poems have been translated into more than forty languages.