Sadriddin Ayni

Sadriddin Ayni (1878–1954) was a Tajik writer, poet and scholar, regarded as the founder of modern Tajik literature. Educated in the madrasas of Bukhara, he joined the Jadid reform movement and later wrote novels and memoirs of pre-revolutionary Bukhara. He defended the place of Persian-Tajik culture in Soviet Central Asia and in 1951 became the first president of the Tajik Academy of Sciences.