Ohsson, Abraham Constantin Mouradgea d'

Born Sept. 26, 1779, in Istanbul; died Dec. 25, 1851, in Berlin. Swedish diplomat and Orientalist. Armenian by birth.

Ohsson entered diplomatic service in 1799 and served as Swedish envoy to The Hague (1816–34) and Berlin (1834–50). He was the author of the four-volume History of the Mongols: From Genghis Khan to Tamerlane (2nd ed., 1834–35; Russian translation, vol. 1, Irkutsk, 1937). For the first time in Mongolian studies, Ohsson made use of the works of Fazl Allah Rashid al-Din, Ata Malek-e Joveyni, and other medieval Iranian historians, and drew upon Armenian, Georgian, Polish, and Russian chronicles, as well as chronicles written in Latin. Ohss-on’s book is the most important work on the history of Mongolia written by a bourgeois scholar.