Djalil Giniyatovich Kiekbaev

Djalil Giniyatovich Kiekbaev was a Soviet Turkologist linguist, Doctor of Philological Sciences, professor, organizer of science and higher education, a prominent Bashkir writer, and a member of the Union of Writers of the Bashkir ASSR. He was born in the village of Karan-Yelga in the Ufa Governorate (now the Republic of Bashkortostan). After graduating from the Ufa Pedagogical College with a specialization in "Bashkir language and literature," Kiekbaev continued his studies at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages, where he studied German philology. For several years he taught German, English, and Russian in secondary schools.

From 1948 Kiekbaev worked at the Bashkir Pedagogical Institute and later at the university. He held the positions of associate professor and professor and chaired the Department of Bashkir Language. In 1960 he became the first Bashkir to earn a Doctor of Philological Sciences. His scholarly legacy includes more than fifty works dedicated to various aspects of the Bashkir language: phonetics, orthoepy, dialectology, morphology, vocabulary, phraseology, stylistics, and the history of grammar.

Kiekbaev was also a prolific writer. He produced textbooks for schools, secondary educational institutions, and universities, the novel "Relatives and Acquaintances," as well as stories and tales for children. In addition, he translated works of classic German literature into the Bashkir language. Djalil Giniyatovich Kiekbaev died on March 19, 1968, in Ufa.