Abdurauf Fitrat was born in Bukhara in 1886. After studying in local madrasas he spent 1909 to 1913 in Istanbul, where his reformist thinking took its mature shape. He returned to write the movement's fiercest polemics, arguing that Bukhara's decline was the fault of Bukhara rather than of outsiders — a case that made him enemies on every side of it. He became a leading Young Bukharan and held ministries in the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic, then turned to scholarship in literature, linguistics and music. He was executed in the purges in 1938.
Key achievements
Wrote Munozara (1911), a debate in print on reform and education
Led work on modernising and standardising written Uzbek
