Ziia Samedi

(pen name; real surname Samatov). Born Apr. 15, 1914, in the village of Khonikhai, now in Panfilov Raion, Alma-Ata Oblast. Soviet Uighur writer.

From 1931 to 1961, Samedi lived in Sinkiang (since 1955 the Sinkiang-Uighur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China). He took part in the revolutionary struggle against the Kuomintang government. From 1950 to 1958, Samedi was minister of culture of Sinkiang and chairman of the administrative board of the Sinkiang Writers’ Union. In 1957 he spoke out against the nationalities policy of the Chinese Communist Party leadership; he was dismissed from his posts and placed under house arrest. In 1961 he returned to the USSR.

Samedi published his first works in 1934. He is the author of several dramatic works, including the play The Bloody Stain (1934), the music drama Gerip and Sanam (1936), and the plays In Chinese Zindans (1948) and The Collapse of Tyranny (1952). He is also the author of a novella that was subsequently filmed: On the Banks of the Ili River (1952; 2nd ed., 1963). Samedi wrote the first historical novels in Uighur literature, Maimkhan (1965; Russian translation, 1969) and The Secrets of the Years (books 1–2, 1967–72).