The museum

He left instructions that his house should become a museum of his work. In 1987 his daughter Munira and his widow Marhabo carried them out, and in 1989 the house-museum became the Republican Museum of Musical Culture named after Ziyodullo Shahidi — the first museum devoted to music in Tajikistan.

What it holds is his working life rather than his reputation: manuscripts and scores in his hand, gramophone records, personal papers, and instruments — his own, and those of Shohnazar Sohibov, Fazliddin Shakhobov, Fozil Soliev, A’zam Kamolov and other masters of the maqam. The house was also, for decades, where the musicians of Central Asia came when they were in Dushanbe, and some of what is in the museum arrived that way.

Everything else that followed — the Foundation, the journal, the festivals, the work abroad — started here. Asked in July 2026 when the systematic work on her father’s legacy had begun, his daughter dated it to the founding of the museum in 1987, with the Foundation five years behind it. On 14 May 2026 the museum held an evening in his memory: Jahongir Rasulov sang Muhabbat, on words by Mirzo Tursun-zade, and the opera singer Libuše Santorišová sang Komde’s romance.

Its address has changed, and we are not certain what it is now. See Visit before you travel.