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Among the major problems his book addresses are the level of development of culture and economy of Central Asia, ties with neighbouring countries, the origin of the Aryans, cultural synthesis between Central Asian, Iranian, Indian and Hellenic people, and the chronology and culture of the Kushans. As a dyed-in-wool Marxist, Gafurov’s emphasis is, understandably, on issues related to economic development and social transformation apart from the popular struggles against foreign invaders as well as indigenous oppressors and tyrants. He has made extensive use of research by British, French, German, American, Japanese, Iranian and, of course, Indian scholars. Even a cursory glance as one pages through this volume would show, the work portrays the history of the Tajik people and their culture against the backdrop of the history and culture of other people of Central Asia as and neighbouring lands. Of the people of Iran and Afghanistan, not to mention India and China. Among other themes Gafurov highlights are the kinship and unity, of the Iranian and Indo-Aryan tribes. He broadly suggests that they came from a common source and appear to have migrated from Central Asia to Iran and later southwards to Afghanistan, and North India. This large affinity apart, there are close linkages in the realm of religion, epics and ideas about the cosmos. The first volume revolves around three principal themes: the primitive community system and its decline; the ancestors of the Tajiks in the era of development of slave-owning relations (which inter alia includes the Kushan interlude) and the emergence of the feudal relations in Central Asia bringing the study to the opening decades of the 8th century. The second volume (not yet in print?) deals both with the period of development and consolidation of the feudal system as well as the later era of feudalism with the narrative drawing close to the first half of the 18th century. A Tajik by birth, Babajan Gafurov was a leading Soviet scholar, a member of the prestigious Soviet Academy of Sciences and Director of its Institute of Oriental Studies. He was decorated with the Order of Lenin more than once and widely respected for his knowledge and scholarship. Tajikistan in its new post-Soviet incarnation has proclaimed Gafurov a ‘hero’ and named a city in the Republic after him. This speaks volumes for his place in the affections of his people. Professor Devinder
Kaushik, Chairman of the Maulana Azad Institute, has done well to append
a brief introduction which while full of Gafurov as a person sadly
misses out completely on the rich and varied texture and the broad scope
of his work. This would have been useful both for the lay reader as well
as the learned expert. As one who had known the Tajik academic at the
personal as well as professional level no one would have been better
qualified to do so. |
This impressive tome is
the English version published for the first time of the well-known
Soviet Tajik Orientalist Babajan Gafurov’s magnum opus, Tazhiki. First
published from Moscow in Russian in 1972, it appeared 17 years later
from Dushanbe (1989); the book under review is based on the latter
edition. Tazhiki is a well-researched, comprehensive historical
account of all the peoples of Central Asia, and not of the Tajiks only.
Drawing on the earlier seminal works of such Soviet academics as Bartold
Semenov and Andreev, Gafurov has made excellent use of historical
sources and with his own researches on Tajik history.