Stepan Nazarian

Born May 15(27), 1812, in Tbilisi; died Apr. 27 (May 9), 1879, in Moscow. Armenian publicist, enlightener, literary historian, and Orientalist.

The son of a priest, Nazarian graduated from the faculty of philosophy of the University of Dorpat (Tartu) in 1840. In 1849 he became a professor of Persian and Arabic literature at the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages in Moscow. His writings included Survey of Ghaikan Literature From the 14th Century to Modern Times (1846), Abu al-Qasim Ferdowsi and the Tus Author of the Book. . . Shah-nameh (doctoral dissertation, 1849), and A Brief Survey of the History of Ghaikan Literature to the End of the 13th Century (1844).

Influenced by the European Enlightenment and the Russian social movement of the 1840’s, Nazarian attacked the feudal system and its ideology. In the 1850’s he became head of the Armenian enlightenment movement. From 1858 to 1864, in Moscow, Nazarian published the journal Iusisapail (Northern Lights), which influenced the development of progressive social thought in Armenia. Nazarian struggled against feudalism and clericalism and championed the spiritual renaissance of the Armenian people; however, he denied the class struggle. Nazarian advanced the idea of public education in a new enlightened spirit and promoted the replacement of Old Armenian (grabar) by the new literary language (ashkharhabar). In his philosophy, he was an adherent of deism. Nazarian popularized Russian and foreign literature and translated the dramas of F. Schiller into Armenian.