Muqadamma Ashrafi

Muqaddama Ashrafi (June 5, 1936-June 29, 2013) was a Tajikistani medievalist and art historian.

Ashrafi was born in Tashkent into an ethnic Tajik family.[1] Her father was the noted composer Mukhtar Ashrafi.[2] She graduated from the Taskhent Musical School in 1954; in 1959 she received a degree in art history from the Moscow State University. From that year until 1961 she worked in the Oriental Studies Department of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow; beginning in 1962 she was a postgraduate student at that institution's Institute of Oriental Studies, graduating in 1968. From 1969 until 1971 she was employed at the Tajik Academy of Sciences in the Department of Philosophy; in 1972 she moved to the organization's Institute of History. That same year saw the beginning of her chairmanship of the humanities department at the Tajik Technological University. As a scholar, Ashrafi took as her specialties the medieval arts, especially painting, of Central Asia. She was married to the writer Kamol Ayni.[1] At the time of her death she was at work on the last volume of a planned trilogy on the subject of Tajik miniature painting, having already published the first two volumes in 2011.[2]