Author · Uzbekistan
Elbek
Died in 1939
Mashriq Yunusov, who signed as Elbek from 1919 on Fitrat's advice, was born in 1898 in the village of Xumson, in the Tashkent region, into a family of poor peasants. He arrived in Tashkent in 1911 and attended a school in the old quarter. A linguist and educator, he worked on fixing Uzbek orthography, wrote a mother-tongue textbook for primary school, taught up to the pedagogical institute, and collected songs and tales in the villages. A victim of the purges, he died in deportation at Magadan; he was rehabilitated in 1957.