Alexander Eduardowitsch Schmidt

Alexander Eduardovich Schmidt ( Russian Александр Эдуардович Шмидт ; born March 12 ^{. Jul} / 24. March  1871 ^greg. In Astrakhan ; † 9. August 1939 in Tashkent ) was a Russian Arabist and university teachers of German origin.

Life

Schmidt, son of a military doctor with a hereditary title of nobility , attended the 1st Tifliser Humanist Gymnasium , which he graduated from in 1889 with a gold medal. Then he studied at the Oriental Studies - Faculty of the University of St. Petersburg . In 1894 he completed his studies in the Arabic - Persian - Turkish department with a 1st class diploma. He was a pupil of Viktor von Rosen . Because of his talent for languages, he knew French , English , German , Dutch , Italian , Spanish , Latin , ancient Greek , ancient and new Hebrew and Uzbek . Schmidt stayed at the university to prepare for a professorial career. In 1896, after passing his master’s degree , he received a two-year scholarship abroad , which he used for further studies with Ignaz Goldziher in Budapest , Joseph von Karabacek at the University of Vienna and Michael Jan de Goeje at the University of Leiden . In 1897 he published his first academic work on Arabic studies .

In 1898 Schmidt became a private lecturer at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of St. Petersburg and gave lectures on the Arabic language and Islamic studies . In 1899 he published a critical analysis of the book Islam and its Future by the orientalist and writer A. J. Krymski . In addition to his teaching activities, Schmidt was inspector of the Alexander Lyceum and later editorial secretary of the Sankt-Peterburgskije Vedomosti . From 1907 to 1920 he worked in the Russian Public Library , where he rose from senior assistant to assistant to the director. From 1912 he worked for the new Islamic magazine Mir Islama of the Imperial Society for Oriental Studies, published by Vasily Wladimirowitsch Bartold . He has often given lectures in the Eastern Department of the Russian Archaeological Society in St. Petersburg and in the Lazarev Institute for Oriental Languages in Moscow . In 1914 he successfully defended his master’s dissertation on asch-Schaʿrānī and his book of scattered pearls. In September 1917 Schmidt became an associate professor at the University of Petrograd.

After the October Revolution , Schmidt was elected full professor at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Petrograd in 1918. From October 1918 he worked in Moscow at the ethnological - linguistic faculty of the Lazarev Institute for Oriental Languages, where he gave a lecture on Islamic law and Islamic studies. In 1920 he became a member of the College of Orientalists at the Asian Museum of the Academy of Sciences .

From the end of 1917 Schmidt and other representatives of the scientific societies had participated in the work of the organizing committee for the planning of the Turkestan State University to be founded in Tashkent. On August 31, 1919 Schmidt was elected vice- rector of this university, so that on January 17, 1920 he was sent to Tashkent in this capacity together with a first group of professors. In addition to the selection of teaching staff, he was responsible for completing the university library . From the end of 1920 to mid-1921 he was dean and professor of the historical - philological faculty of the Turkestan university. In addition, he was from April 1920 professor and from December 1920 rector of the Institute of Oriental Studies, which was founded at the same time in Tashkent (until mid-1921). In September 1920, after the fall of the regime of the Emir of Bukhara , he traveled to Bukhara with a group of orientalists (Bartold, Wassili Lavrentjewitsch Vjatkin and others) to examine the monuments of the past and to take measures to protect them. 1920–1921 he was a member of the scientific commission for the study of the everyday life of the indigenous population of Turkestan . In 1922 he took part in the expedition to Turkistan to investigate the mausoleum of Hodscha Ahmad Yasawi . From August 1922 to February 1923 he was vice chairman of the State Science Council at the People's Commissariat for Education of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Turkestan . In July 1923 he took on behalf of Turkestan guide on the transfer of the Kufic Samarqander Uthman - Koran from Ufa to Tashkent in part. He also took part in research expeditions to Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan . In 1923 the Turkestan University became the Central Asian State University (SAGU), into which the Oriental Studies Institute was incorporated as the Oriental Studies Faculty. In 1925 Schmidt was the only one from the Uzbek SSR to be elected a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (AN-SSSR).

In May 1931 Schmidt was arrested by order of the Tashkent OGPU , convicted in October 1931 under Article 58 of the RSFSR's Criminal Code and banished to Alma-Ata in January 1932 together with 10 other professors or lecturers from the Faculty of Oriental Studies . The Oriental Studies Faculty of SAGU was closed and in March 1931 Arabic studies at SAGU were discontinued.

In April 1933, the government of the Uzbek SSR decided that the State Public Library in Tashkent became the central collection point for manuscripts . Then came manuscripts in large numbers from the libraries and institutions of all the cities of the republic. AA Moltschanow was hired in May 1933, Schmidt in June 1934 and Alexander Alexandrovich Semjonow in May 1936 to record, classify and examine the manuscripts . On behalf of the Institute for Oriental Studies of the AN-SSSR, Schmidt worked on a critical, commentary edition of the book on the property tax of the judge Abū Yūsuf from the time of Hārūn ar-Raschīd .

In 1938 Schmidt was arrested again. He confessed to forming a counterrevolutionary sabotage group of faculty members and died before he was convicted.

Honors

• Russian Order of Saint Anne II Class
• Order of Saint Stanislaus II class

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} ШМИДТ Александр Эдуардович (1871–1939) . In: Люди и судьбы. Биобиблиографи-ческий словарь востоковедов - жертв политического террора в советский период (1917–1991) . St. Petersburg 2003, ISBN 5-85803-225-7 ( pvost.org [accessed October 27, 2018]).
2. ↑ ^{a b} Юрий ФЛЫГИН: Тот, кто возвращал в Ташкент Коран Османа . In: Звезда Востока . No. 1 , February 26, 2007 ( mytashkent.uz [accessed October 28, 2018]).
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Biografika: Шмидт Александр Эдуардович (accessed October 28, 2018).
4. ↑ Russian Academy of Sciences: Шмидт Александр Эдуардович (accessed October 28, 2018).
5. ↑ ^{a b} Люди и судьбы. Биобиблиографический словарь востоковедов-жертв политического террора в советский период . St. Petersburg 2003 ( memo.ru [accessed October 28, 2018]).