Ivane Javakhishvili (or Ivane Javakhov) (1876–1940). One of the most distinguished Georgian historians and scholars. One of the founders of Tbilisi State University.
Born in Tbilisi, he graduated from the Faculty of Oriental Languages of St. Petersburg University in 1899 and became a privat-docent at the Chair of Armenian and Georgian Philology.
In 1901–1902, he was a visiting scholar to the University of Berlin, and in 1902, he and Academician Nikolay Marr studied ancient Georgian collections in the Sinai. In 1906, he defended his thesis on state structure of ancient Georgia and Armenia, one of the first scientific studies of class society of these countries. In 1918, he was instrumental in founding Tbilisi State University (TSU), where he became professor and dean of the Faculty of Philology and served as the university rector from 1919–1926. From 1918–1938, he headed the Department of History at TSU.
From 1919–1925, Javakhishvili directed the Georgian Historical and Ethnographic Society and, from 1937–1940, the Shota Rustaveli Museum. In 1939, he became a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He established himself as a preeminent authority on Georgian and Caucasian history, Georgian law, paleography, diplomacy, music, drama, and other subjects, producing landmark studies.
Javakhishvili was well known for his thorough knowledge of Georgian, Armenia, Greek, Latin, Persian, and other sources that he consulted throughout his studies. A prolific writer, he left a diverse literary legacy, which includes Political and Social Movements in Georgia (1906), a four-volume History of the Georgian People (1908–1949), Problems, Sources and Methods of History (4 vols., 1916–1926), Ancient Georgian Historical Written Language (1916), Georgian Numismatics and Metrology (1925), Georgian Paleography (1926), Georgian Diplomacy (1926), History of Georgian Law (2 vols. 1928–1929), Economic History of Georgia (2 vols., 1930–1934), and Fundamentals of the History of Georgian Music (1938).