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Marius CanardFBA (26 December 1888 – 13 September 1982) was a FrenchOrientalist and historian.
Marius Canard | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 26, 1888 Dracy-Saint-Loup, France |
| Died | September 13, 1982(1982-09-13) (aged 93) |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Historian |
| Years active | 1913-1961 |
He was born in a small village in the region ofMorvan, where his father was a school teacher. Canard studied at theCollège Bonaparte inAutun and completed his studies in the Faculty of Letters of theUniversity of Lyon, where he learned theArabic,Turkish andPersian languages under the guidance of his coevalGaston Wiet (1887–1971).
His first teaching post was as a high school professor atToulon in 1913. During theFirst World War, he served with the16th Chasseurs à cheval Regiment stationed atBeaune, and was decorated with theCroix de Guerre with a silver star. After the war, he went toMorocco, where he perfected his knowledge of Arabic. In 1920 he returned to Lyon, where he taught in theLycée du Parc. In order to further his language skills, he re-entered the local university's Faculty of Letters to learnSanskrit.
Canard then visited theÉcole des Langues Orientales (now known asINALCO) in Paris, where he came to know bothWilliam Marçais (1872–1956), andGeorges Marçais (1876–1962). The latter convinced Canard to return to theMaghreb, first as a teacher in theLycée de Tunis and then as a professor in the Faculty of Letters of theUniversity of Algiers. It was there that Canard, along with Georges Marçais, founded theInstitut d'Études Orientales and began a journal that soon acquired international prominence among Orientalists: theAnnales.
After 44 years of teaching in Algiers, Canard retired in 1961 to Paris. He died in Duingt in 1982.
Among Canard's major scholarly achievements are his history of theHamdanid dynasty, as well as his studies on theFatimid Caliphate, a field which at the time was otherwise the almost exclusive reserve ofVladimir Alexeyevich Ivanov (1886–1970). He also made important contributions on the history of Muslim relations with theByzantine Empire, and along with the BelgianHenri Grégoire (1881–1964) supervised the French edition ofAlexander Vasiliev's (1867–1953) monumentalByzantium and the Arabs (Византия и арабы).
