Freiman, Aleksandr Arnoldovich

Born Aug. 10 (22), 1879, in Warsaw; died Jan. 19, 1968, in Leningrad. Soviet specialist in Iranian studies. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1928); corresponding member of the Iranian Academy (1944). Honored Scientist of the Tadzhik SSR (1949).

Freiman graduated from the University of St. Petersburg, where he was a student of K. G. Zaleman. Freiman became a professor at Leningrad State University in 1919 and until 1950 was chairman of the university’s subdepartment of Iranian philology.

Freiman’s chief works dealt with the historical development of the Iranian family of languages as a unified system; an example was Problems of Iranian Philology (1946). Freiman also analyzed and published Pahlavi texts, as well as Sogdian documents that were discovered during an expedition to Mt. Mug that he led in 1933. The Sogdian documents were published in the Sogdian Collection (1934).

Freiman made important contributions to the study of the history and cultural history of Middle Asia. He wrote works on Pahlavi lexicography, Khwarazmian grammar, and the etymological and dialectical links among the Iranian languages. Freiman was the editor of V. F. Miller’s Ossetic-Russian-German Dictionary (vols. 1–3, 1927–34), which included the two principal Ossetic dialects, Iron and Digor. Freiman was also one of the founders of Soviet Kurdish studies.