|
On January 21, 2013, Dr Stanislav M. Prozorov, the leading Russian Islamologist, celebrated his 75th Birthday. He started his academic path in September of 1956 when he graduated from school in Voronezh and was admitted to Leningrad State University, the Faculty of Oriental Studies, the Major of the History of Arabic Countries. While a student at the Department of the History of Near Eastern Countries then headed by Prof Dr I.P.Petrushevsky, he developed interest in fundamental research issues. It was deepened later when he worked as an assistant researcher in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, at the Department of Oriental Studies and Written Heritage, 1961-62, and the A. Donish Institute of History, 1962-1964, where he had a chance to deal with Arabic manuscripts and inscriptions, as well as at the Historical and Philological Faculty of Tajikistan State University where he delivered a special course on the history of Arabic countries. In 1964-67, he was a doctoral student at the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies (now the IOM RAS) and there he finally chose his major research area in Islamic studies. His PhD Dissertation, Firaq al-Shi 'a (The Shi'ite Sects) by al-Nawbakhti as a Source on Islamic History [Ал-Хасан б. Муса ан-Наубахти. “Шиитские секты” (Исследование, перевод, комментарии)] defended on February 18, 1971, and later published in a revised form as a monograph (Moscow 1973) showed clearly his particular interest in Muslim Doxography. It was followed with the translation of the first part of al-Shahrastani’s The Book on Religions and Sects (Moscow 1984) and the facsimile edition supplied with rendering of the contents of a manuscript of Ali ibn Muhammad al-Fahri’s text on the history of religions kept at the IOM RAS (Moscow 1988). He also joined the great project of his tutor Dr P.A. Gryaznevich, Arabic Historical Literature from Early Middle Ages: the 7th to the first half of the 11th century [Арабская историческая литература раннего средневековья (VII – первая половина XI в.)] and wrote a monograph for it, Arabic Historical Literature from Iraq, Iran and Central Asia during the 7th to mid-10th Century [Арабская историческая литература в Ираке, Иране и Средней Азии в VII – середине X в. Шиитская историография] (Moscow 1980). Dr S. Prozorov was even more recognized by his collagues in all the post-Soviet states after he edited two encyclopedic dictionaries such as Islam [Ислам] (Moscow 1991) and Islam in the Territory of the Former Russian Empire [Ислам на территории бывшей Российской империи] (Vols. 1-4, Moscow 1998, 1999, 2001, 2003; Vol. 5 is ready to be published). Dr S. Prozorov spends much forces for preparing new academic cadres, he supervised three PhD dissertations, delivered special courses of lectures on Islam and Arabic Muslim Culture and Islam as the Ideological System at St Petersburg State University; edited the program of a course of lectures on Introduction to Islamology. He initiated also the new edition of the important Dictionary of Quran and Hadith by V.F.Girgas which provides students a clue to reading mediaeval Arabic texts (St Petersburg 2006). Forty years of academic and pedagogical activities of Dr S.Prozorov resulted in his fundamental monograph, Islam as the Ideological System [Ислам как иделологическая система] (Moscow 2004). At our Institute, Dr S. Prozorov has passed a long way from junior researcher (1967) up to the current position of the Deputy Director in Academic Affairs (2005). From 1980 to early 1990s, he headed the Group of Islamology, an unique academic division in the entire Academy of Sciences. It is thanks to him that the official web site of the IOM RAS, one of the best academic resources in Russia, was created almost ten years ago. He has been its chief curator during all this time. In 2010, he was appointed also the Head of the Department of Near and Middle Studies. Dr S. Prozorov’s academic merits were recognized abroad - in 2006, he received the Iran State Award for the book Islam as the Ideological System, and in April of 2011, the Tashkent Islamic University awarded him with its Golden Medal. He has been invited as an honored guest to many academic conferences and workshops in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, etc. The IOM’s administration and colleagues of Dr S.Prozorov congratulate him with the Jubilee and wish him health and long years of academic work. the IOM's Director, Prof Dr Irina F. Popova |
