Bobojon Gafurovich Ghafurov (18 December 1908 – 12 July 1977) (Tajik: Бобоҷон Ғафурович Ғафуров) or Babadzan Gafurovich Gafurov (Russian: Бободжан Гафурович Гафуров) was a Tajik historian, academician, and the author of several books published in Russian and Tajik, including History of Tajikistan and The Tajiks.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Russian. (May 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Russian Wikipedia article at [[:ru:Гафуров, Бободжан Гафурович]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|ru|Гафуров, Бободжан Гафурович}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Ghafurov, the son of poet Roziya Ozod,^[1] was born in the village of Isfisar near Khujand in Tajikistan. He received his PhD from the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow in 1941 with a dissertation on the History of the Isma'ili Sect.^[2] Ghafurov's book The Tajiks (Tojikon) is especially influential in modern Tajikistan. Instead of accepting that Tajiks were simply Uzbeks who "forgot their language", as Uzbek nationalists commonly argue, The Tajiks argues that Uzbeks were Turkified from the original Iranian population of Central Asia.^[3]

From 1944 to 1946, he was the Second Secretary and, from August 1946 to 24 May 1956, he was the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Tajikistan.^[2][4] From 1956 to the end of his life, Ghafurov served as the Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, and as the editor of the Asia and Africa journal."^[2] The town of Ghafurov and Ghafurov district (formally known as Bobojon Ghafurov district), in the Sughd Province of Tajikistan, are named after him.