Избранные письма А.Я. Борисова П.К. Коковцову: из переписки выдающихся русских семитологов

The article contains a publication of selected letters of a notable Russian semitologist Andrey Yakovlevich Borisov (1903-1942) to the Academician Pavel Konstantinovich Kokovtsoff (1861-1942), Borisov’s University teacher and a prominent scholar in the field of Semitic Studies. Both scholars died tragically during the Siege of Leningrad. The introduction contains biographical data and an outline of the fruitful and versatile research of both scholars, which was so vividly presented in the letters of Borisov. The first letter is probably the most interesting of all as it was written in Hebrew in a very high and elaborate style and it can be dated to 1924 when Borisov first came to Leningrad from Tartu and was aspiring to become a student of Kokovtsoff at the Leningrad University. He describes dramatically his learning and his amazing achievements in reading Hebrew literature. Other letters, which are dated to the end of 1930s, discuss various subjects in the general field of Semitic Studies, but mainly Judeo-Arabic literature in manuscripts of the Firkovich Collection in the Russian National Library and the Aramaic inscriptions from the Ancient Iran and Palmyra. The last letter published in the article is addressed to Ignatiy Yulianovich Krachkovskiy (1883-1951) and was written by Borisov in January 1942, a few days after the death of Kokovtsoff and a few months before his own untimely demise. This letter contains valuable information about both Kokovtsoff’s and Borisov’s families and early life and shows the origins of their specific interest in Semitic studies.