Mukhamedov, Shakir

Mukhamedov, Shakir Mukhametshevich

 

Born May 8 (20), 1865, in the city of Buinsk, present-day Tatar ASSR; died Nov. 10, 1923, in Orenburg. Tatar writer.

The son of poor parents, Mukhamedov studied in a madrasa. Beginning in 1879, he lived and worked in Orenburg. In 1889 he moved to Moscow, where he was employed in the office of a merchant, who sent Mukhamedov to work in Harbin, where he lived in 1900–01 and where he began to write.

Mukhamedov’s first novellas, Ignorance, or Uncle Galiakber (1901) and Under a Leaf, or the Makar’evskii Fair (1903), exposed the ignorance and greed of the Tatar bais (wealthy stock raisers, merchants, or landowners). The satirical novella The Japanese War, or Volunteer Batyrgali Agai (1905) ridiculed the false patriotism of the merchants. In 1906–07, Mukhamedov published the satirical journal Karchyga (Hawk) in Orenburg. Toward the end of his life, he withdrew from literary activity.

WORKS

Saylanma äsärlär. Kazan, 1958.

REFERENCE

Gainullin, M. Tatarskaia literatura i publitsistika nachala XX veka. Kazan, 1966. Pages 364–76.