Chronology

Dates that the sources disagree about are marked. Where the disagreement could not be settled, both are given rather than one chosen quietly.

1914: Born 4 May in Samarkand, Russian empire — 21 April by the old calendar.
1932: Leaves primary school and works as a teacher. Until 1939, a musician in the theatres and radio studios of Tashkent, Samarkand and Stalinabad.
1937: His father, Muqaddaskhon Shahidi, is killed in the terror.
1939: Artistic director of the song-and-dance ensemble of the Tajik State Philharmonic, until 1952. The date he settled in Dushanbe is given differently in different places: the Foundation's own text says he moved "due to political events", without a year; one dossier puts the family's move in the 1920s; the Russian sources put him in the theatres of three cities until 1939.
1940: Admitted to the Union of Composers of the Tajik SSR.
1942: Roziya, a musical comedy, written with Sergei Balasanyan.
1943: Studies composition with Alexander Lensky and Sergei Balasanyan at the studio of the Union of Composers, to 1946.
1946: Enters the Moscow Conservatory, aged thirty-two, with a group of Tajik melodists. He is the only one of them to graduate.
1948–49: Rondo; "Concert for piano & violin". Completes the national studio at the Conservatory in 1949.
1952: Enters the composition class of Vladimir Fere, to 1957.
1956: Chairman of the Union of Composers of the Tajik SSR, to 1960. Some sources give 1956–61.
1957: Graduates the Conservatory. Order of the Red Banner of Labour. On 6 May, Tojikistoni Soveti prints "Summing up the discussion on questions of the development of Tajik music (a reply to Z. Shahidi)". Cantata Zodagoni Oktyabr.
1960: Komde and Madan, the first Tajik national opera, after Bedil, staged in Dushanbe and afterwards in Samarkand. Completed 1959. Sadriddin Ayni, whom Shahidi regarded as his teacher, had pressed for it. Tajik sources give the premiere as 1961. His daughter, in July 2026, said 1960 — the strongest claim on it, and still a contested one.
1964: People's Artist of the Tajik SSR. Director of the Dushanbe music college, to 1965.
1967: Symphonic poem 1917.
1972: Buzruk, symphonic poem. Belcanto dates it 1976; the Music Encyclopedia, 1972.
1977: Symphony of Maqams.
1978: Vocal-symphonic poem In Memory of Mirzo Tursun-zade. Tajik sources give 1979.
1980: Opera Gulomon — The Slaves — after Sadriddin Ayni. The Foundation's own text gives 1978, Tajik sources 1979, Russian reference works 1980. Vocal-symphonic poem Ibn Sina. The documentary film The Maqams of Shahidi.
1981: String quartet. Oratorio The Legend of Lenin.
1982: The full score of Komde and Madan published in Moscow, after parts had appeared there through the 1960s and 70s. Recorded for Moscow radio under Gennady Rozhdestvensky.
1983: The Symphony of Maqams played at the Sixth Congress of the USSR Union of Composers and at the international symposium of maqam scholars in Samarkand.
1984: Rudaki State Prize, Tajikistan's highest award in the arts. Ceremonial Poem.
1985: Dies in Dushanbe on 25 February, aged seventy. Buried at Sari Osiyo.
1987: His house opens as a museum, as he had asked. The work was done by his daughter Munira and his widow Marhabo, and Munira dated the beginning of the systematic effort on his legacy to this year.
1989: It becomes the Republican Museum of Musical Culture. Tajik Wikipedia dates both the republican museum and the Foundation to 1996; every other source gives 1989 and 1992.
1992: The Shahidi Foundation constituted in February, during the civil war.
2001: First issue of Fonus.
2004: First Ziyodullo Shahidi International Festival of Contemporary Music, Dushanbe, 14–19 May, for his ninetieth anniversary.
2014: Centenary, marked in Tajikistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and France, and included in UNESCO's list of memorable dates.
2024: A concert for his 110th anniversary at the National Conservatory of Tajikistan.