The Modern Novel

Biography

Abdulla Qadiri (also called Abdullah Qadiri, Abdulla Qodiriy, Abdulla Qodirii, Abdullah Kadiri and Abdulla Kodiri) was born in Tashkent in 1894. His father was seventy-four when he was born and had been married four times. He only went to school at nine and then started working for a merchant when he was twelve. This merchant sent him to a Russian school. He left the merchant after a couple of years to help support his father, by working as a gardener and in the bazaar. However, he managed to successfully take his school-leaving certificate.

By this time, he had started writing poetry. He started working for a fabric dealer (whose daughter he later married) and continued writing, both articles in the press and stories. After the fall of Nicholas II, he joined the People’s Militia and also spent a year studying in Moscow. He started writing in magazines and his novel Oʻtgan kunlar (Days Gone By) was published in one of the magazines. However, he was arrested for an article he published. He was sentenced to two years in prison but only served a short time. However, he could no longer write for the press. This enabled him to focus on his novels. He joined the Writers’ Union and even went to Moscow as part of a delegation. He had started writing a novel called Amir Umarxonning kanizi [The Slave of the Emir Omar Khan] when he was again arrested as a counter-revolutionary. He confessed to being a nationalist under torture, was condemned to death and shot in October 1938.

His story was the subject of Hamid Ismailov‘s Jinlar Bazmi (The Devil’s Dance).

Other links

Abdulla Qodiriy
The Uzbek Modernist, Abdullah Qodiriy. A Writer and His Novel
Qodiriy, 1938