Alexander Kazhdan | |
|---|---|
 Kazhdan in 1992 | |
| Born | Александр Петрович Каждан (1922-09-03)3 September 1922 |
| Died | 29 May 1997(1997-05-29) (aged 74) Washington D.C., U.S. |
| Known for | Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium |
| Children | David Kazhdan |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Pedagogical Institute of Ufa Moscow State University (PhD) |
| Thesis | Agrarnye otnosheniya v Vizantii XIII-XIV vv. (1952) |
| Influences | Eugene Kosminsky |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Byzantine studies |
| Institutions | |
Alexander Petrovich Kazhdan (Russian:Алекса́ндр Петро́вич Кажда́н; 3 September 1922 – 29 May 1997) was a Soviet and AmericanByzantinist. Among his publications was the three-volumeOxford Dictionary of Byzantium, a comprehensive encyclopedic work containing over than 5,000 entries.
Born inMoscow, Kazhdan was educated at thePedagogical Institute of Ufa and theUniversity of Moscow, where he studied with the historian ofmedieval England,Eugene Kosminsky.[1] A post-warSoviet initiative to revive Russian-languageByzantine studies led Kazhdan to write a dissertation on the agrarian history of the late Byzantine empire (published in 1952 asAgrarnye otnosheniya v Vizantii XIII-XIV vv.) Despite a growing reputation in his field, anti-Semitic prejudice in theJoseph Stalin-era Soviet academy forced Kazhdan to accept a series of positions as a provincial teacher (inIvanovo, 1947–49, andTula, 1949–52).[1] Following the death of Stalin in 1953, however, Kazhdan's situation improved, and he was hired by a college inVelikie Luki. In 1956 he finally secured a position in the Institute for History of theSoviet Academy of Sciences, where he remained until leaving the Soviet Union in 1978. In the USA Kazdan brought up a lot of Byzantologists, among them M. V. Bibikov,S. A. Ivanov and I. S. Chichurov.
Kazhdan was a prolific scholar throughout his career in the Soviet Union, publishing well over 500 books, articles, and reviews, and his publications contributed to the growing international prestige of Soviet Byzantine studies.[2] His 1954 article, "Vizantiyskie goroda v VII-XI vv.," published in the journalSovetskaya arkheologiya, argued on the basis of archaeological and numismatic evidence that the seventh century constituted a major rupture in the urban society ofByzantium. This thesis was widely accepted in the second half of the twentieth century[2] and led to intensive research on discontinuity in Byzantine history and the subsequent rejection of the earlier conception of the medieval Byzantine empire as a frozen relic oflate antiquity. Other major studies dating from this first half of Kazhdan's career includeDerevnya i gorod v Vizantii IX-X vv. (1960), a study of the relationship between city and countryside in the ninth and tenth centuries;Vizantiyskaya kul'tura (X-XII vv.) (1968), a study of Middle Byzantine culture; andSotsial'ny sostav gospodstvujushchego klassa Vizantii XI-XII vv. (1974), an influentialprosopographical and statistical study of the structure of the Byzantine ruling class in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Kazhdan also contributed heavily to the field ofArmenian studies, notably writing about theArmenians who formed the elite ruling classes that governed the Byzantine Empire during the Middle Byzantine Era in hisArmiane v sostave gospodstvuyushchego klassa Vizantiyskoy imperii v XI-XII vv. (1975).[3]
In 1975, Kazhdan's son, the mathematicianDavid Kazhdan, immigrated to the United States, where he accepted a position atHarvard University. This produced an immediate change in Kazhdan's situation in the Soviet Union;[1] his wife, Musja, was fired from her position at a Moscow publishing house and censorship of his work by his superiors in the Soviet academic establishment increased. In October 1978 Alexander and Musja left the Soviet Union, having received a visa for immigration to Israel, coming to the United States three years afterward. In February 1979 they arrived atDumbarton Oaks, a center for Byzantine studies inWashington, D.C., where Kazhdan held the position of senior research associate until his death.[2]
Kazhdan's first major publications in English were collaborative:People and Power in Byzantium (1982), a broad ranging study of Byzantine society, was written withGiles Constable;Studies in Byzantine literature (1984) with Simon Franklin; andChange in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (1985) with Ann Wharton Epstein. His greatest English-language project was likewise a massive collaborative effort: the three-volumeOxford Dictionary of Byzantium (1991), edited by Kazhdan, was the first reference work of the sort ever to be published, and remains an indispensable point of departure for all areas of Byzantine studies. He wrote approximately 20%, or about 1,000, of the entries in theDictionary, which are signed with his initialsA.K.[2]
As Kazhdan became more comfortable with English, his pace of publication once again matched that of his Russian years. His later scholarship is above all marked with a growing concern withByzantine literature, particularlyhagiography.
Kazhdan died inWashington, D.C., in 1997. His death cut short his work on a monumentalHistory of Byzantine Literature; however, the first volume of this work, covering the period from 650 to 850, was published in 1999.
