Metadata: I. Iu. Krachkovskii
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- The National Library of Russia
- Holding institution (official language):
- Российская национальная библиотека. Отдел рукописей.
- Postal address:
- 91069, Russia, St. Petersburg, ul. Sadovaia, д. 18, main building; tel.: (812) 310-28-56; fax: (812) 310-61-48; e-mail: office@nlr.ru http://www.nlr.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 1125
- Title:
- I. Iu. Krachkovskii
- Title (official language):
- КРАЧКОВСКИЙ И. Ю.
- Creator/accumulator:
- I. Iu. Krachkovskii
- Date(s):
- 1486/1930
- Language:
- Arabic
- Yiddish
- German
- Russian
- Extent:
- 85 storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
- There are particular files containing documents that pertain to Jewish history and culture, including the following: a composite Arabic manuscript that contains a work unique among known monuments of Arabic literature titled “The Story of the Merchant’s Son, the Jew, and the Slave-Girl Rahat al-Kulub” (initial pages, 1691); a handwritten copy (with glosses added by the copyist) of the treatise “Al-risāla al-sābi'a bi-baṭl al-diyyāna al-yahūdiyya” (“A Refutation of the Jewish Faith,” presumably 17th-18th c.), whose author argues that the laws of the Torah should be replaced by those of the Koran and asserts that the appearance of Mohamed is predicted in the Bible (January 1865); a manuscript titled “On Contradictions in the Old and New Testaments,” which constitutes extracts from a polemical treatise by Sheikh Ben Yahya (Syria, 18th c.) against Judaism and Christianity using quotes from the Bible as compared between the Septuagint, Vulgate, and Talmud (1865); a leather-bound 1764 manuscript containing Yiddish translations of psalms by F. K. Reikhart (1635-39), with a title page in German and notes by an unidentified person on the manuscript’s initial pages regarding the various styles of Arabic lettering (inserted into the manuscript is a sheet on which I. Iu. Krachkovskii wrote: “A gift from B. A. Vil’skaia of the Geographic Society, who got it from an acquaintance”; March 1942).
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Ignatii Iulianovich Krachkovskii (1883-1951) was an Orientalist/Arabist and member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (beginning in 1921). In 1905 he graduated from the Arabic-Persian-Turkish-Tatar division of St. Petersburg University’s department of Oriental languages, receiving a gold medal for his essay on Arabic literature titled “The Rule of Caliph al-Mahdi.” From 1918 on he was a professor at Petrograd/Leningrad University. He took the initiative in organising the All-Union Association of Arabists in 1934-38. In 1941-42 he held the post of plenipotentiary of the presidium of the Academy of Sciences, and served as director of academic institutions of Leningrad. In 1943 in Moscow he organised the Institute of Oriental Studies group of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which would go on to serve as the basis for what is now the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1955-60 the publishing house of the Academy of Sciences issued a six-volume edition of his selected works. His primary works include “The Poetic Oeuvre of Abu al-Atahiya (c. 750-825)” (in Notes of the Oriental Department of the Russian Archeological Society, vol. 19, vyp. 2/3, 1908); “The Historical Novel in Modern Arabic Literature” (Journal of the Ministry of Education, 11); Abu al-Faraj of Damascus Materials for a Description of the Poetry (Prague, 1914); The Rise and Development of Modern Arabic Literature (The East, book 1; Prague, 1922); and Arabic Literature in the 20th c. (Leningrad, 1946); I. Iu. Krachkovskii also served as editor of a Russian translation of the Koran (with commentary) (1963), and of the eight-volume Books of the Thousand and One Nights (translated by M. Sal’e; Leningrad, 1929-38).
- Access points: persons/families:
- Krachkovskii, I. Iu.
- Mohamed
- Reikhart, F. K.
- Vil’skaia, B. A.
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds includes a single inventory without any apparent systematisation.
- Finding aids:
- An inventory is available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary