Pavel Konstantinovich Kokovtsov

Background

Pavel Kokovtsov was born on the 1st of July, 1861 in Pavlovsk, present-day Leningrad Oblast.

Education

Kokovtsov graduated from the 1st St. Petersburg Classical Gymnasium with a gold medal. He also graduated from St. Petersburg University's Faculty of Oriental Languages in 1884. He was a student Of D. A. Khvolson, V .R. Rosen.

Career

After graduating from university Kokovtsov remained in the Department of Hebrew, Syriac and Chaldean Literature of St. Petersburg University's Faculty of Oriental Languages . Since 1894 he gave there lectures, introduced the teaching of the Akkadian language; Professor since 1912. He worked at the university until the early 1930s; in the 1930s, he continued his education at home. He continued (after A.Y.Garkavi) to describe and register of the Judeo-Arabic manuscript in the State Public Library; head of the Department of Jewish Books (since 1919) . From 1930 he worked at the Leningrad Department of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Kokovtsov's students were V.K.Shileyko, A.P. Riftin, V.V.Struve, G.V.Tsereteli.

Achievements

• He was the author of fundamental works in Hebrew and Hebrew-Arabic philology, including The Book of Comparison of Hebrew With Arabic by Abu Ibrahim (Isaac) Ibn Barun (1893), New Materials for the Characterization of Judah Hayyuj, Samuel Nagid, and Other Representatives of Jewish Philological Scholarship in the 10th, 11th, and 12th Centuries (1916), and Jewish Khazar Correspondence in the Tenth Century (1932).
  
  Kokovtsov published and did research on one of the most important remnants of Semitic epigraphy, the commercial treaty of Palmyra.
  
  His edition of the Aramaic inscriptions from Neirab (ninth century B.C.) had great importance for the study of the history of the ancient Orient.