A Tashkent composer and scholar who notated Uzbek classical music and the Shashmaqom, preserving them for future generations. A house-museum and a metro station in Tashkent bear his name.
Yunus Rajabiy was born in Tashkent on 5 January 1897 (some sources say 17 January). Devoted to music from childhood, he attended a maktab and madrasa; after his father's death in 1913 he worked to support the family. He learned the dutar and nay from masters and became known as a singer at teahouse gatherings. In 1919–1923 he studied at the Turkestan People's Conservatory, learning the Bukharan Shashmaqom, and in 1923 was sent to Samarkand to lead the musical drama theatre and ensembles. Later he directed the radio maqom ensemble and other groups in Tashkent, and in 1940–1941 attended composers' courses in Moscow.
Guardian of a musical heritage
His greatest achievement was collecting and notating melodies and songs that had lived for centuries in oral memory — more than a thousand songs and instrumental pieces. In 1955–1959 he produced the five-volume “Uzbek Folk Music”, and in 1966–1975 a six-volume edition of the Shashmaqom, one of the key written sources for Uzbek and Tajik classical music. He also composed many songs and scores for musical dramas. He was named People's Artist of Uzbekistan in 1953 and an academician in 1966, and died in Tashkent on 23 April 1976.
Remembered in Tashkent
The Tashkent house where he lived from 1957 to 1976, at 20 Yunus Rajabiy Street, became a museum in 1997, and a cultural centre named after him opened in 2001. A metro station, a maqom ensemble, the Jizzakh musical drama theatre and a Tashkent music teachers' college bear his name. His transcriptions were an important source when the Shashmaqom was recognised as UNESCO intangible heritage.
On the night of 29 May 1898 some 1,500 armed men led by the Naqshbandi sheikh Muhammad Ali Madali, known as Dukchi Ishan, attacked the Russian army camp at Andijan. The rising fed on resentment of colonial rule, taxation and land policy, as well as on religious appeals. The troops quickly recovered and beat off the attack, and within days the revolt was crushed. Dukchi Ishan and other leaders were executed, many participants exiled and their villages punished. The episode pushed the authorities to tighten control over Muslim institutions in Turkestan.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries a reform movement took shape in Turkestan: the Jadids, advocates of usul-i jadid, the “new method”. Inspired by the Crimean Tatar educator Ismail Gasprinsky, Mahmudkhoja Behbudiy, Munavvar Qori, Abdulla Avloniy, Is'hoqxon Ibrat, Abdurauf Fitrat and others opened schools teaching literacy by the phonetic method and wrote textbooks. From 1906 Uzbek-language newspapers such as Taraqqiy and Khurshid appeared in Tashkent, and Behbudiy's play “The Patricide” (Padarkush), staged in 1914, launched a national theatre. The Jadids sought to renew society through education, the press and reform. Many were repressed in the 1920s–1930s; their legacy is being rediscovered today.
On 25 June (8 July) 1916, at the height of the First World War, Nicholas II decreed the conscription of Turkestani men aged 19 to 43 for labour behind the front. Issued at harvest time and enforced through unfair lists, the decree provoked mass unrest. In July there were protests in Khujand, Tashkent and towns of the Fergana Valley; in Jizzakh the rising turned into armed fighting and was crushed with great brutality by punitive detachments, which left the old town badly damaged. The revolt also spread across Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Tens of thousands of labourers were eventually sent to the front zone regardless.
After the October Revolution of 1917, power in Tashkent passed to a Bolshevik-led soviet that excluded the local Muslim majority. In response, the Fourth Extraordinary Congress of Turkestan Muslims, meeting in Kokand on 27 November 1917, proclaimed a Turkestan Autonomy within a Russian federation. Its government was led by Mukhamedzhan Tynyshpaev and then Mustafa Chokay, with Jadids among its members. In February 1918 Red Guard units sent from Tashkent stormed Kokand; much of the city was destroyed and thousands of civilians were killed. Short-lived as it was, the autonomy is seen as a milestone in the region's pursuit of national statehood.
After the Turkestan Autonomy was crushed, an armed movement against Soviet rule spread through the Fergana Valley from 1918. Soviet sources called it the Basmachi movement; Uzbek historians today more often describe it as a struggle for independence. It was led by local commanders, or kurbashi, such as Ergash, Madamin Bek and Shermuhammad Bek (Kurshermat). After 1920 the fighting shifted to Eastern Bukhara and the mountains of Kashkadarya and Surkhandarya, where Ibrahim Bek was a leading figure; the Ottoman general Enver Pasha joined in 1921–1922 and was killed in 1922. Large Red Army forces had largely suppressed the movement by the mid-1920s, though isolated bands held out into the early 1930s.
In February 1920 the Red Army and Young Khivan forces ended the Khanate of Khiva: the last khan, Said Abdullah, abdicated, and in April the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic was proclaimed. On 2 September 1920 the Red Army under Mikhail Frunze, together with the Young Bukharans, took Bukhara after a bombardment that set the Ark and parts of the city ablaze; Emir Alim Khan fled to Eastern Bukhara and in 1921 to Afghanistan. In October the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic was created, headed by Fayzulla Khodjaev, with Fitrat among its ministers. Both republics were dissolved in the national delimitation of 1924.
