Ivane Javakhishvili

Historian, founder of Tbilisi University

1876–1940

Ivane Javakhishvili (1876–1940) was born in Tiflis into a noble family. He graduated from the Faculty of Oriental Studies at St Petersburg University, studied in Berlin, and in 1902 travelled with his teacher Nikolai Marr to Mount Sinai to work on medieval Georgian manuscripts. From 1908 his multi-volume “History of the Georgian Nation” began to appear, and it was this work that made his name.

In the spring of 1917 Georgian scholars gathered in his Petrograd flat to discuss a university of their own. Javakhishvili drafted its statute, and on 26 January 1918 the first university in Georgia opened in Tbilisi. At first he declined the rectorship in favour of Petre Melikishvili, succeeded him in 1919 and led the university until 1926, when he was removed as a historian outside the Marxist school.

In the 1930s his work was publicly condemned for departing from historical materialism, and in 1938 he had to leave the university for the State Museum of Georgia. A year later he was elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Javakhishvili died in Tbilisi in 1940 and is buried in the university park. Today the university bears his name, and his portrait is printed on the five-lari banknote.