Zakhoder, Boris

Born Aug. 6 (18), 1898, on the estate of Borok, near Gorky; died Jan. 7, 1960, in Moscow. Soviet scholar in Oriental medieval studies. Doctor of history (1941) and professor (1941).

Zakhoder taught at Moscow State University for about 20 years (beginning in 1934). In 1944 he became head of the Oriental Division of the history department at the university and a senior research fellow of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He conducted research on the history and culture of the countries of the Near East, Middle East, and Middle Asia; he was the first to translate into Russian Nizam al-Mulka’s Siyyaset-name (1949) and Kazi Akhmad’s Treatise on Calligraphers and Artists (1947); he also published a number of works on Arabic and Persian geographical literature. Zakhoder was the author of the Soviet Union’s first textbook on the medieval history of the Near East (published in 1944).