P rominent t ajik f igures of the

T
ABLE OF 
C
ONTENTS
A
CRONYMS AND 
A
BBREVIATIONS
iii
T
ABLE OF 
C
ONTENTS
v
I
NTRODUCTION
vii
B
IOGRAPHIES
1
A
PPENDIX 
I
 
A
CADEMY OF 
S
CIENCES
357
A
PPENDIX 
II M
EDIA
381
A
PPENDIX 
III E
DUCATIONAL 
I
NSTITUTIONS
384
A
PPENDIX 
IV A
UTHOR
'
S 
B
IOGRAPHY
385
I
NDEX
387

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I
NTRODUCTION
On my first trip to Tajikistan in 1990, after visiting the Academy of
Sciences and the Firdowsi State Library in Dushanbe looking for sources
of information on contemporary Tajik figures, I felt the need for a com-
prehensive volume to help the growing number of scholars, business
people, and international officials who would visit the beautiful Republic.
The only volume available in Tajiki, Adiboni Tojik (Tajik Scholars,
1966), henceforth TS, was already outdated. Additionally, it covered only
literary scholars, and not everyone in it was Tajik. Talking to American,
British, and German colleagues, as well as colleagues from other coun-
tries working in Dushanbe at the time, I learned that their difficulty was
compounded by the fact that they did not know Tajiki either. Since I was
in Dushanbe to participate in the 1400
th
Anniversary Celebration of the
birth of Borbad, the famed Sassanian musician and singer, I did not give
the matter more thought.
In 1997, I was asked to serve as the online and print editor of the
Tajiki text of an extensive series produced by Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty called Tojikiston dar Qarni Bistum (Tajikistan in the 20
th
 Cen-
tury, 1999). The series consisted of thirty segments, each dealing with a