Born Mashriq Yunusov, he wrote poetry, children's books and early Uzbek school textbooks, and compiled the first Uzbek dictionary of homonyms. He died in a Magadan labour camp in 1939.
Avloniy's pupil
Mashriq Yunusov, who wrote as Elbek, was born in 1898 in the mountain village of Xumson, in the Bo'stonliq district near Tashkent. He studied at the Xoniy school and, from 1914, at the new-method school of Abdulla Avloniy — one of the jadid movement's great teachers — and followed his mentor into teaching.
Textbooks, verse and fieldwork
From 1920 he taught at the Narimonov pedagogical college in Tashkent and wrote the textbooks that a new school system needed — Yozuv yo'llari ("Ways of Writing", 1921) and a guide to the mother tongue in primary school (1923). His poetry collections Yolqinlar (1925) and Sezgilar (1927) followed. He collected folklore and dialects on expeditions to Bo'stonliq, Ohangaron, Chirchiq and the Fergana Valley, and in 1934 published the first Uzbek dictionary of homonyms.
Magadan
In 1937 he was arrested and sentenced to ten years in the camps. He died in a labour camp near Magadan, in the Soviet Far East, on 2 November 1939. He was rehabilitated in 1957, and his poems and textbooks returned to Uzbek readers.
Key achievements
- Compiled the first Uzbek dictionary of homonyms (1934)
- Wrote school textbooks including Yozuv yo'llari (1921) and Boshlang'ich maktabda ona tili (1923)
- Published the poetry collections Yolqinlar (1925) and Sezgilar (1927)