Having graduated from the Faculty of Oriental Studies of the St. Petersburg University in 1899, he became a privat-docent of the Chair of Armenian and Georgian Philology at his alma mater.

[1] Early in 1918, he was instrumental in founding Georgia's first regular university in Tbilisi, thus realizing a long-time dream cherished by generations of Georgian intellectuals but consistently frustrated by the Imperial Russian authorities.

[3] In 1936, the repression against Javakhishvili escalated, as TSU Rector K. Oragvelidze delivered a thesis at the Faculty of History that criticized his scientific work.

[5] He was forced to step down at TSU in 1938, but was soon appointed director of the Department of History at the State Museum of Georgia which he headed until his death in Tbilisi in 1940.

Several of Javakhishvili's most influential articles and books including A History of the Georgian Nation have been reprinted in his twelve-volume collected works from 1977 and 1998.