This life in old Russia flashed by like an exotic flower... I. Y. Krachkovsky Arabists of St. Petersburg University and the Russian Oriental Society celebrated in October 2010 the 200th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding Egyptian scholar - philologist, philosopher, and historiographer Muhammad Ayyad at-Tantawi, whose second half of his life was spent on the banks of the Neva River. On a granite monument erected in 1881 at the Volkov Cemetery, decorated on one side with gilded Arabic script, a stingy Russian text reads: "Ordinary Professor of St. Petersburg University, State Councilor Sheikh Mohammed Ayyad at-Tantawi. He died on October 27, 1861, at the age of 50." Oriental studies in St. Petersburg and in Russia as a whole at the stage of its formation in the XVIII-XIX centuries was widely represented by the names of famous scientists-natives of Europe and the East. A special place among them belonged to immigrants from the Middle East, among whom, of course, we should again recall the name of Mirza Kazembek (1802-1870) - "a native of Persia, in Islam - Muhammad Ali", in Christianity - Alexander Konstantinovich, who became the first dean of the Faculty of Oriental Languages (FWY) established in 1855. He made a significant contribution to the development of St. Petersburg and Russian Arabic studies in the mid-19th century. Muhammad Ayyad at-Tantawi, born about 1810 in northern Egypt, in the village of Nijrid near the city of Tanta. A graduate of al-Azhar University in Cairo, Tantawi became famous in his youth as a brilliant teacher, a connoisseur of, in the words of Academician I. Y. Krachkovsky, "the national language and literature". Due to his wide popularity both in the East and in Europe, the young Sheikh of al-Azhar was invited in 1839 on the recommendation of Professor C. Fren to Russia, where in 1840 he began teaching Arabic in the Educational Department of the Asian Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1847. Tantawi began working at the ... Читать далее