Alexander Vasiliev (historian)

1–2, 1928) remains one of a few comprehensive accounts of the entire Byzantine history, on the par with those authored by Edward Gibbon and Fyodor Uspensky.

He studied under one of the earliest professional Byzantinists, Vasily Vasilievsky, at the University of St Petersburg and later taught Arabic language there.

In 1902, he accompanied Nicholas Marr in his trip to Saint Catherine's Monastery in Sinai.

During his stay at the Tartu University (1904–12), Vasiliev prepared and published a highly influential monograph, Byzantium and the Arabs (1907).

Towards the end of his life, he was elected President of the Nikodim Kondakov Institute in Prague and of the Association Internationale des Études Byzantines.