Sadriddin Ayni (April 1878 - 15 July 1954) (Tajik: Садриддин Айнӣ, Persian: صدرالدين عيني), also Sadriddin Aini, a Tajik intellectual prolifically engaged in poetry, fictional writing, journalism, history and lexicography. He is regarded as Tajikistan's national poet and one of the most important writers of the country's history.
Ayni was born of peasant stock in the village of Saktara in what was then the Emirate of Bukhara. He became an orphan at 12 and moved to join his older brother in Bukhara, where he attended a madrasa and learned to write in Arabic.
In the early 1920s Ayni helped to propagate the Russian Revolution in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In 1934 he attended the Soviet Congress of Writers as the Tajik representative. By purporting national identity in his writings, he was able to escape the Soviet censors that quieted many intellectuals in Central Asia. Ayni survived the Soviet Purges, and even outlived Stalin by one year. He was member of the Supreme Soviet of Tajikistan for 20 years, was awarded the Order of Lenin three times, and was the first president of the Academy of Sciences of Tajik SSR. After 1992, his writing helped to bind together a sense of Tajik nationalism that survived the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ayni recreated Tajik literature in Tajikistan that had been banned during emirate when he wrote Dokhunda (1927), the first Tajikistani novel in the Tajik language. His main work is the four-volume Yoddoshtho.
Ayni's early poems were about love and nature, but after the national awakening in Tajikistan, his subject matter shifted to the dawn of the new age and the working class. His writings often criticized the Amir of Bukhara. Two recognizable writings include The Slave and The Bukhara Executioners.
Ayni died in Dushanbe where a mausoleum stands in his honor.
According to RFERL Tajik Service, Ayni's house in Samarkand is under threat to demolish it by Uzbekistan government. The source also indicates for the past years all Tajik schools were closed and their numbers decreased.[1]