Avraam Iakovlevich Garkavi

Born 1835; died 1919. Russian Semitist. One of the first to study Arab sources for the history of the peoples of Eastern Europe.

Garkavi received his education at the Vilno Rabbinical School and the Oriental department of the University of St. Petersburg. His study Stories of Muslim Authors About the Slavs and Russians (master’s thesis, 1868), which contains excerpts from the works of 26 Arab writers of the seventh to tenth centuries, is an important source work for the study of the history of ancient Rus’. Garkavi compiled a description of the Semitic manuscripts at the Public Library in St. Petersburg, where he became head of the Division of Hebrew Books in 1876. He published a series of classics written in medieval Hebrew. Garkavi was the author of many works devoted to the history of the Jews, Khazars, and Karaites, as well as to Semitic epigraphy, ethnology, and philology. (For a list of Garkavi’s works, see the book Garkavi Tsvi, Avtobibliografiia, 1970.)