On August 8, 2011, Abdurakhman Jamalovich Kalimov, who worked at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences for more than thirty years, passed away. He has written numerous works on his native Dungan language, which is spoken by descendants of Chinese-speaking Huizu Muslims who migrated to the Russian Empire in the 19th century and in 1924 received the status of one of the national minorities of the Soviet Union.

Abdurakhman Kalimov was born on May 5, 1923 in the Dungan village of Irdyk (Mariinskoe, Erdoğu, Yrdık) Jety-Oguz district of the Issyk-Kul region of the Kyrgyz SSR in the family of a well-to-do peasant merchant. The future linguist began his long and glorious career in 1937 at the Dungan branch of the Central Kyrgyz Pedagogical Technical School named after M. N. Pokrovsky in Frunze. In 1938, the Dungan branch was liquidated, and in 1939 Kalimov became a student, and in 1942 a post-graduate student of the Kyrgyz Pedagogical Institute, majoring in Kyrgyz language and literature, and thereby acquired a deep knowledge of the Kyrgyz language. This knowledge was useful to him later in his studies of the changes, including grammatical ones, that occurred in the Dongtang-Huizu language as a result of their contacts with the Turkic peoples, first after moving to Xinjiang from the interior of China and then to the Russian Empire.

In 1943, Kalimov was drafted into the army and sent to the Frunze Military Infantry School, in 1944 he entered the Central Committee of the Communist Party(b) of Kyrgyzstan and was sent to Xinjiang as chief of staff of the 10th Special Dungan Cavalry Regiment operating in the so-called East Turkestan Republic. Kalimov's main awards are the Order of Independence of the East Turkestan Republic, the Order of the Patriotic War of the 2nd degree and the medal "For Valiant Labor during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945".

In 1946, the twenty-three-year-old Captain Kalimov was discharged and again entered the graduate school of the Kyrgyz branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences - this time with a degree in Dungan language. Soon he transferred to Leningrad-to the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences and in 1951 successfully defended his PhD thesis "Grammatical features of counting words, counting suffixes and units of measurement in the Dungan language"under the supervision of A. A. Dragunov. In the same year, 1951, Abdurakhman Jamalovich moved to Moscow in connection with the transfer of the Institute of Oriental Studies there, where he worked in the Department of Languages until his retirement in 1983.

A great influence on the novice linguist was exerted by his teacher A. A. Dragunov, whose work in the field of Dungan linguistics Kalimov devoted a special article ("Research on general and Chinese linguistics", Moscow, 1980, pp. 121-126). In large part, it is thanks to his teacher Abdurahman. Jamalovich studied the Chinese official language Putonghua, was well acquainted with the theoretical publications of the largest Russian linguists-sinologists, and in his research took into account the data and ideas about isolating languages that were accumulated in Chinese and foreign linguistics proper. In 1967, Kalimov prepared the monograph "Dungan Language" for publication for the Main Editorial Office of Eastern Literature of the Nauka Publishing House. This work was in fact the first experience of a complete systematic description of the phonetics, vocabulary, and grammar of the Dungan literary language, but for some reason it remained in the manuscript. The materials of the monograph formed the basis of the section on the Dungan language in the fifth volume of the series " Languages of the Peoples of the USSR "(Moscow, 1968).

Another unpublished study by A. Kalimov in the 1980s. it was published in the new century ("Names of Central Asian Dungans: dictionary of personal names". Bishkek, 2003). It was based on extensive unique material collected by the author over several years in the places of compact residence of Dungans, and includes numerous variants of the same names, including Arabic in origin. The publication of this work was not least possible due to the interest that emerged in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan in the Dungan language due to intensive contacts with neighboring China. Even earlier, in the 1960s, the topic of modifying Arabic words that are used by Huizu Muslims all over China and pronounced differently by them depending on a particular Chinese dialect was raised in a special report by Abdurakhman Jamalovich (On the phonetic modification of Arabic borrowings in the Dungan language / / Semitic Languages. Issue 2, Moscow, 1965, pp. 610-616).

At the very beginning of his scientific career, as secretary of the special commission established in 1952 under the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Abdurakhman Dzhamalovich took an active part in the development of the Cyrillic version of the Dungan script. The commission was headed by A. A. Dragunov, and included Moscow scientists from various academic institutions (A. A. Reformatsky, G. D. Sanzheev, G. G. Stratanovich), as well as Dungan linguists who participated in the development of writing based on Latin graphics. Yanshansin and Yu. Tsunwazo. The draft of new spelling and punctuation, finally approved in Frunze in 1954, was based on the version that A. Kalimov specially developed, taking into account the works of E. D. Polivanov and Yu. Ya. Yanshansin of the 1930s. In 1956, the draft was published in "Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz SSR", in 1959. It was published in a collection of Dungan materials in Chinese, edited by Professor Du Songshou. Abdurakhman Jamalovich made a significant contribution to the Dungan lexicography as a compiler or editor of several dictionaries, in particular, publishing together with M. A. Khasanov "Russian-Dungan Dictionary of Linguistic and literary terms "(Frunze, 1971). He also worked on the development of school programs and in collaboration with Yu. Tsunwazo published a school textbook of the Dungan language.

Even at an advanced age, Abdurakhman Jamalovich continued to travel to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, participated in discussions and conferences, visited Dungan schools, and helped his compatriots who came to Moscow. In Kalimov's homeland, in the village of Irdyk, one of the streets is named after him. Until the end of his life, Abdurakhman Jamalovich was friends with his Russian colleagues, generously shared with them his extensive knowledge and rich materials from his personal library. He has consulted many foreign linguists and orientalists, including Professors Hashimoto Mantaro and Svetlana Rimskaya-Korsakova Dyer, and in recent years, Professor Kanno Hiroomi. Academician B. L. Riftin's interest in Dungans, Dungan language and folklore was aroused by A. Kalimov as a student at Leningrad State University.

Everyone who knew Abdurakhman Jamalovich Kalimov will remember him as a bright and kind, deeply decent person, a good family man, a talented scientist, whose works occupy a worthy place among other domestic studies on the languages of China and Central Asia.

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