Mirza Mukhammed Ali Kazem-Bek

Kazem-Bek, Mirza Mukhammed Ali 

(Aleksandr Kasimovich Kazem-Bek). Born July 22, 1802, in Rasht, Iran; died Nov. 27, 1870, in St. Petersburg. Russian Orientalist. Corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1835); doctor of Eastern languages (1869).

Kazam-Bek received a Muslim education at home. In 1823 he adopted Christianity. From 1826 to 1849 he was at the University of Kazan, where he taught Persian and Turkish and where he became a professor in 1836. Beginning in 1849 he was head of the subdepartment of the Persian language at the University of St. Petersburg; in 1855 he became head of the university’s department of Eastern languages (first dean).

Kazem-Bek was the author of books on the history of the Caucasus, Iran, Middle Asia, and the Crimea, as well as on the history of Islam and of the Iranian and Turkic languages. He introduced many new Eastern sources into scholarship. He was the first in Russia to publish an essay on Babism and studies of the grammar of Eastern languages. A complete list of his works is given in the journal Russkii Arkhiv, 1894, no. 2.

REFERENCES

Grigor’ev, V. V. Imp. Sankt-Peterburgskii universitet. St. Petersburg, 1870.
Smirnov, N. A. Ocherki izucheniia islama v SSSR. Moscow, 1954.
Guseinov, G. N. Iz istorii obshchestvennoi i filosofskoi mysli v Azerbaidzhana XIX v, 2nd ed. Baku, 1958. Pages 117–61.
Abdullaev, M. Kazem-Bek—uchenyi i mysliteV. Makhachkala, 1963.
Rzaev, A. Mirza Kazem-Bek. Baku, 1965.
Mazitova, N. A. Izuchenie Blizhnego i Srednego Vostoka v Kazanskom universitete 1-aia pol. XIX v). Kazan, 1972.

G. A. KLEINMAN