Ibrahim Muti'i (May 1920 – January 13, 2010) (; ) was a well-known linguist from Xinjiang, China. He is best known for his research on Uyghur language and culture. He is considered to have been one of the top scholars of his generation in Uyghur.
Early life
Muti'i was born in May 1920, in Lükchün, a small village outside Turpan in eastern Xinjiang. He was orphaned at an early age. His father, a tailor, died when he was only two years old. His mother died when he was seven. His family sent him to Urumqi to enroll in a primary school in 1928, which he did while living with his uncle. Jadid Tatars taught Ibrahim.
In 1935, at the age of fifteen, Ibrahim Muti'i received a scholarship for a two-year course of study in law at the University of Central Asia in Tashkent, in the Soviet Union. During this time, he not only learned Uzbek and Russian, but also studied Old Turkic. He had a chance to read original research material about the Uyghur people. He returned to China from Soviet Union after graduating in with a law degree in 1937 and taught Uyghur literature, language, and linguistic methodology at Xinjiang Normal University.
In 1940 he was imprisoned by the Chinese warlord Sheng Shicai, along with many other well-known, well-educated young Uyghur dissidents who Sheng Shicai thought would spread independent ideas and threaten his authority. Muti'i was released in 1945.
Professional career
After release from prison, he became the first Professional Chief (Dean) for the former Xinjiang Institute (current Xinjiang University), and later served as Vice President. He married Enwere-appay, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, in 1946. She was a teacher at the Number 5 Elementary School in Urumqi.
In 1947 he was employed as a journalist by Erkin, () a private newspaper in Urumqi. During this time, there were insufficient new materials for understanding multilingual features either for writing new textbooks or for teaching students. To address this need, he compiled teaching materials such as Uyghur Tili Serfi (Morfologiyisi) ("Uighur Morphology"), Uyghur Tili Nehwi (Sintaksisi) ("Uyghur Syntax"), Uyghur Til-Edebiyat Qaidiliri (Istilistikisi) ("Uighur Rhetoric"), and Uyghur Tilining Addiy Imla Qaidisi ("Uyghur simple orthography"). These were unpublished mimeographs for the use of university students. He engaged in teaching while conducting his research, published as Türkiy Tillarning Qisqiche Tarihi ("Brief Introduction of Turkic Language") in Nanjing Time (Chinese magazine) in 1949.
Ibrahim opposed the Second East Turkestan Republic and was against the Ili Rebellion because it was backed by the Soviets and Stalin. The former ETR leader Saifuddin Azizi later apologized to Ibrahim and admitted that his opposition to the East Turkestan Republic was the correct thing to do.
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, he was transferred to Beijing and worked at the State Nationalities Commission (Dölet Ishlar Komitéti) for three years. He transferred to the Nationalities Press (Milletler Neshriyati) in 1955. Working together with a large team of scholars, he helped publish an 18th-century volume of a Dictionary in Five Languages (Besh Tilliq Manjuche Lughet), a dictionary representing the common linguistic and cultural heritage of several ethnic groups in China. This dictionary includes Manchu, Tibetan, Mongolian, Uyghur, and Chinese.
Second incarceration
Muti'i spent eighteen years of his adult life in jail because of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) as a result of having been wrongly charged of crime during the period of internal political strife and ideological conflict. However, he continued his studies while incarcerated.
Additional scholarship
After the Cultural Revolution his work resumed and was relocated to the Language Institute of Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. He resumed his work, later joining other linguists on a six-year project to research and to translate and publish a Uyghur Turkic Dictionary (Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk) to Modern Uyghur.
Beginning in 1984, he did field work in Kashgar with Mirsultan Osmanov, a well-known Uyghur linguist also one of his best students. Their goal was to find Mahmud Kashgari's exact hometown and mausoleum, which they identified, based on numerous facts, in their paper Mehmud Kashgherining Yurti, Hayati we Maziri Toghrisida "On the Hometown, Biography and Shrine of Mahmud al-Kashgari".