Stepanos Nazarian (, , , in Tiflis – , in Moscow) was an Armenian-Russian publisher, enlightener, historian of literature and orientalist.

Biography

He was born in the family of a priest. Graduated from the department of philosophy in the University of Tartu in 1840. In 1849 he became a professor of Persian and Arab literature in Moscow in the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages. He published a number of scholarly works and earned his doctoral dissertation on a work analyzing

Ferdowsi Abul-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi ( fa, ; 940 – 1019/1025 CE), also Firdawsi or Ferdowsi (), was a Persians, Persian poet and the author of ''Shahnameh'' ("Book of Kings"), which is one of the world's longest epic poetry, epic poems created by a sin ...

's Shahnameh. Under the influence of the European enlightenment movement and the Russian social movement of the 1840s, Nazarian increasingly began writing against the feudal system and its ideology. In the 1850s he became the leader of the Armenian enlightenment movement. Between 1858 and 1864 he published in Moscow the influential magazine ''Hyusisapayl'' (Aurora Borealis), that had a great effect on the development of progressive public thought in Armenia. He criticized serfdom and clerical power for the spiritual revival of the Armenian people; however, he refused to classify his actions as part of a broader class struggle. Nazarian advanced the idea of public education in the new enlightenment era as well as the replacement of Classical Armenian (grabar) with the new literary Ashkarhabar. He was a supporter of

deism Deism ( or ; derived from the Latin ''deus'', meaning "god") is the Philosophy, philosophical position and Rationalism, rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge, and asserts that Empirical evi ...

and promoted Russian and foreign literature. Translated many of

Friedrich Schiller Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friends ...

's dramas.

References

* Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1974 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Nazarian, Stepanos 1812 births 1879 deaths Historians from the Russian Empire Male writers from the Russian Empire 19th-century Armenian historians Ethnic Armenian translators Writers from Tbilisi Armenian people from the Russian Empire Armenian orientalists 19th-century translators 19th-century male writers from the Russian Empire