Abdurauf Fitrat (sometimes spelled Abdulrauf Fitrat or Abdurrauf Fitrat, ; 1886 – 4 October 1938) was an Uzbek author, journalist, politician and public intellectual in Central Asia under Russian and Soviet rule.
Fitrat made major contributions to modern Uzbek literature with both lyric and prose in Persian, Turki, and late Chagatai. Beside his work as a politician and scholar in many fields, Fitrat also authored poetic and dramatic literary texts. Fitrat initially composed poems and authored essays and polemic prose in the Persian language, but switched to a puristic Turkic tongue by 1917. Fitrat was responsible for the change to Uzbek as Bukhara's national language in 1921, before returning to writing texts in Tajik later during the 1920s. In the early 1920s, Fitrat took part in the efforts for Latinization of Uzbek and Tajik.
Fitrat was influenced by his studies in Istanbul during the early 1910s, where he came into contact with Islamic reformism and authored several philosophical essays. After returning to Central Asia, he turned into an influential ideological leader of the local jadid movement. In opposition to and in exile from the Bukharan emir he sided with the communists. After the end of the emirate, Fitrat accepted several posts in the government of the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic, before he was forced to spend a year in Russia. Later, he taught at several colleges and universities and held a research position at the Academy of Sciences of the then Uzbek SSR.
During Stalin's Great Purge, Fitrat was arrested and prosecuted for counter-revolutionary and nationalist activities, and finally executed in 1938. After his death, his work was banned for decades. Fitrat was rehabilitated in 1956, yet critical evaluation of his work has changed several times since. While there are Tajik criticis that call the likes of Fitrat "traitors", other writers have given him the title of a martyr (shahid), particularly in independent Uzbekistan.
Naming variants
Fitrat's name has a number of variation across forms and transliterations: He mostly went by the pen name Fitrat ( Fiṭrat, also transcribed as Fetrat or, according to the Uzbek spelling reform of 1921, Piträt). This name, derived from the Arabic term , fiṭra, meaning “nature, creation”, in Ottoman Turkish stood for the concept of nature and true religion. In Central Asia, however, according to the Russian turkologist Lazar Budagov, the same word was used to refer to alms given during Eid al-Fitr. In Persian and Tajik the notion of fitrat includes religion, creation and wisdom. Fitrat was used as a pen name before by the poet Fitrat Zarduz Samarqandi (late 17th to early 18th centuries). Abdurauf Fitrat's first known pseudonym was Mijmar (taken from the Arabic , miǧmar, “incensory”).
Fitrat's Arabic name is ʿAbd ar-Raʾūf b. ʿAbd ar-Raḥīm (sometimes rendered ), with Abdurauf as his proper name. During his Istanbul period he prefered to add the nisba Bukhārāī 'The Bukharan' to his name. In reformed Arabic script, Fitrat was depicted as or . The Turkic variant of the nasab is .
Some of the many Russian variants of his name are Abdurauf Abdurakhim ogly Fitrat and Abd-ur-Rauf; Fitrats Soviet, russified name is Abdurauf Abdurakhimow or, omitting the component Abd, Rauf Rakhimovich Fitrat. The variant Fitratov can also be found. In Uzbek-Cyrillic script his name is to be depicted with ; his name in modern Tajik is Abdurraufi Fitrat.
Fitrat sometimes bore the titles of "hajji" and "professor".
Life and Work
Education in Bukhara
Fitrat was born in 1886 (he himself stated 1884) in Bukhara. Little is known about his childhood, which is, according to Adeeb Khalid, characteristic for Central Asian figures of this era. His father AbdurahimBoy was a devout Muslim and a trader, who would leave the family in the direction of Margilan and later Kashgar. Fitrat came by most of his worldly education through his broadly read mother, named Mustafbibi, Nastarbibi or Bibijon according to varied sources. According to Edward A. Allworth she brought him into contact with the works of Bedil, Fuzûlî, Ali-Shir Nava'i and others. Abdurauf grew up with a brother (Abdurahmon) and a sister (Mahbuba).