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[SOVIET ARABIC STUDIES] Khrestomatiia razgovornogo arabskogo iazyka (siriiskoe narechie) [i.e. A Reader of Spoken Arabic (Syrian Dialect)]

Semyonov, D.

Item #2790

Leningrad: Izd. Leningradskogo Vostochnogo Instituta imeni A.S. Enukidze, 1929. XVIII, 157 pp. 24,5x17 cm. In original printed wrappers. Small fragments of spine lost, tears of oversized covers, minimal foxing. Uncut and very good copy.

First and only edition. One of 1000 copies. Edited by Ignatii Krachkovskii (1883–1951), an Arabist and a professor of D. Semyonov.
This early Soviet book presents Arabic studies at the Institute of Living Oriental Languages founded in Petrograd in 1920. In 1927–1935, the Institute was named after Avel Yenukidze. The Oriental Institute was closed in June 1938 after numerous arrests of professors and students.

The author of this work is Soviet philologist and Arabist, Daniil Semyonov (1890–1943). He was born in Crimea, into the family of a sea captain. His mother spoke Turkish and she influenced son’s interest in Oriental languages. In 1908, he entered the Faculty of Oriental Languages at St. Petersburg University where he studied under N. Mednikov, A. Schmidt, I. Krachkovsky, and A. Khashab. He undertook language practice in Beirut in 1910–1911. Semyonov graduated from the university in 1912 with a degree in the Arabic‑Persian‑Turkish‑Tatar languages. He was then sent to the East to teach at a teachers’ seminary run by the Palestine Society in Nazareth. In 1914, the seminaries of the Palestine Society were closed, and Daniil returned to his homeland.

In Petrograd, he found work in the economic department of the Council of the National Economy and later served at the Petrograd Commercial Customs Office. Following the establishment of the Institute of Living Oriental Languages in Petrograd, he joined its faculty in 1922 as a lecturer and later an associate professor in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature. At the same time, he taught at the Leningrad Institute of History, Philosophy and Linguistics (LIFFLI). From 1934, he worked at the Arabic Cabinet of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences. During the Second World War, the Institute of Oriental Studies was evacuated. Five people remained in Leningrad to guard the Institute's property and its invaluable manuscript and book collections. The task of overseeing the protection of the Institute's building and archives was entrusted to Semyonov who was appointed as the Institute's authorized representative. The hardships of the siege led to his death in 1943.

Over the course of his academic career, several of his scholarly works were published. Among them were “A Reader of Spoken Arabic (Syrian Dialect)” (1929), “An Experiment in Comparing an Arabic Folk Tale with a Well-Known Russian One” (1930), “Views of French Scholars on the Current State of the Arabic Language and Its Future” (published in 1937), etc.

His “Reader” was compiled from folklore and literary works written in the Syrian dialect of Arabic. Primarily, it was a teaching aid but also a significant scholarly contribution. It was the first publication of its kind in Russia, as prior to the October Revolution instructional materials had been confined exclusively to the study of literary Arabic.

Worldcat shows copies located at Columbia, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Texas Universities.

Price: $500.00