SCIENTIFIC HERITAGE AND CONTRIBUTION OF THE OUTSTANDING TURKOLOGIST SCIENTIST RASHIT SHAKUROV TO THE HUMANITIES

Abstract

The article examines the scientific heritage of the famous Turkologist Professor R.Z. Shakurov, his contribution to Bashkir humanities in the mid-twentieth and twenty-first centuries. R.Z. Shakurov successfully worked in various scientific fields, made a significant contribution to the development of Bashkir linguistics (including dialectology, toponymy), folklore studies, literary studies, encyclopedias, etc. The scientist stood at the origins of the Bashkir encyclopedia in the post–Soviet period, and it was he, a well-known Turkologist, who was formed and then lead a group of scientists to create the Bashkir encyclopedia in the early 1990s. R.Z. Shakurov developed the concept and dictionary for the Bashkir encyclopedia. Since 1991, he has been appointed head of the Bashkir Soviet Encyclopedia group and head of the Bashkir Encyclopedia Department. From 1995 to 1998, he was the director of the Scientific Publishing House «Bashkir Encyclopedia». He prepared and published the first short encyclopedia of Bashkortostan among the former autonomous republics in Russian (1996) and Bashkir (1997). Rashit Shakurov developed the concept of a multi-volume universal «Bashkir Encyclopedia», approved by the Scientific and Editorial Board of the Bashkir Encyclopedia on January 17, 1996, and prepared a dictionary that formed the basis of the seven-volume encyclopedia. Shakurov is the author of more than 30 books, more than 450 scientific publications, and more than 800 articles (have been published in periodicals) on literature, folklore, toponymy, dialectology, history and culture of Bashkortostan and Bashkirs. One of the scientist's latest books, «Treasures of Bashkir Folk Art», published in 2024 with the support of the Grant Fund of the Head of the Republic of Bashkortostan, includes a folklore collection collected over a period of more than half a century. Rashit Shakurov has made an invaluable contribution to the humanities and has educated several generations of scientists who continue his researches