Ivane Javakhishvili

Ivane Javakhishvili ( _ka. ივანე ჯავახიშვილი, also spelled Javaxishvili, or Javaxišvili) (April 11, 1876 – November 18, 1940) was a Georgian historian whose voluminous works heavily infuenced the modern scholarship of the history and culture of Georgia. He was also one of the founding fathers of the Tbilisi State University (1918) and its rector from 1919 to 1926.

Biography

Javakhishvili was born in Tbilisi, Georgia (then part of Imperial Russia) to an aristocratic family of Alexander Javakhishvili, who served as an educator at the Tbilisi Gymnasium. Having graduated from the Faculty of Oriental Studies of the St. Petersburg University in 1899, he became there a "privat-docent" at the Chair of Armenian and Georgian Philology. From 1901 to 1902, he was a visiting scholar at the University of Berlin. In 1902, he accompanied his mentor, Academician Niko Marr, to Mount Sinai where they studied medieval Georgian manuscripts. After the first volumes of Javakhishvili's monumental, but yet unfinished, "kartveli eris istoria" (A History of the Georgian Nation) appeared between 1908 and 1914, the young scholar quickly established himself as a preeminent authority on Georgian and Caucasian history, Georgian law, paleography, diplomacy, music, drama and other subjects, producing landmark studies in these fields. [Mikaberidze, Alexander (ed., 2007), [http://www.georgianbiography.com/bios/j/javakhishvili.htm Javakhishvili, Ivane] . "Dictionary of Georgian National Biography". Accessed July 3, 2007.]

Early in 1918, he served instrumental in founding Georgia's first regular university in Tbilisi, thus realizing a long-time dream cherished by generations of Georgian intellectuals but consistently frustrated by the Imperial Russian authorities. [Lang, David Marshall (1962), "A Modern History of Georgia", p. 211. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.] The Tbilisi University (present-day I. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, TSU, which now bears his name), of which Javakhishvili became a professor and the head of the Department of the History of Georgia, rapidly assumed a dominant position in Georgia's educational life. In 1919, Javakhishvili succeeded the noted chemist Petre Melikishvili as the second rector of the university: he served until June 1926, when, in the aftermath of anti-Soviet August Uprising of 1924, tolerance of non-Marxist intellectuals began to contract. [Suny, Ronald Grigor (1994), "The Making of the Georgian Nation", p. 223. Indiana University Press, ISBN 0-253-20915-3.] Although he was permitted to publish and teach, this eclipse probably saved his life, since his successor at the university, was among the victims of the Stalinist Great Purge of 1936-7. [Lang (1962), p. 245.] He was forced to leave the TSU in 1938, and appointed a director of the Department of History at the State Museum of Georgia which he headed until his death in Tbilisi in 1940. He was interred at the yard of the TSU.

Legacy and works

Javakhishvili authored more than 170 works dealing with various aspects of Georgia's political, cultural, social and economic history. Since the publication of its first edition back in 1908, his main work, "A History of the Georgian Nation" (fully published between 1908 and 1949), has remained one of the most comprehensive and eloquent treatments of pre-modern Georgian history. Regrettably, it has not been translated into any other language. Several of Javakhishvili's most influential articles and books including "A History of the Georgian Nation" have been reprinted in his twelve-volume collected works from 1977 and 1998. [Rapp, Stephen H. (2003), "Studies In Medieval Georgian Historiography: Early Texts And Eurasian Contexts", p. 15. Peeters Bvba ISBN 90-429-1318-5.]

References

Further reading

* Akakiĭ Surguladze (1976), " [http://books.google.com/books?id=X0_lGAAACAAJ&dq=Surguladze Ivané Javakhishvili (1876-1940)] "