Pavle Ingorokva

Pavle Ingorokva (Georgian: პავლე ინგოროყვა) (1893-1990) was a Georgian historian, philologist, and public benefactor.

He graduated from the University of St. Petersburg (1915). In 1917 he was one of the founders of the Union of Georgian Writers. Between 1923-1925, he was the editor-in-chief of the Georgian scientific and literary Journal Kavkasioni ("The Caucasus").

Between 1929 and 1940 Ingorokva was a Head of the Department of Manuscripts of the State Museum of Georgia (now the Georgian National Museum), in 1940-1950 a Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of History (Tbilisi). In 1958 he was one of the founders of the Institute of Manuscripts (now the Georgian National Center of Manuscripts). He was also a member of the Commission on Study of The Knight in the Panther's Skin of the Georgian Academy of Sciences (GAS).

Pavle Ingorokva's main fields of the scientific activity were the history of the Georgian literature, history of Georgia, source studies of the history of Georgia, Rustavelology (Study of the works of the mediaeval Georgian writer Shota Rustaveli), history of Georgian script, etc. Some of his findings have proved extremely contentious and most western scholars dispute them, claiming his work is biased from an ethno-nationalistic perspective; this is especially in regard to his discussion of the ethnogenesis of the Georgians and Abkhaz, and the age of the Georgian alphabet. A discussion of Ingoroqva’s work can be found in Bruno Coppieters, “In Defence of the Homeland: Intellectuals and the Georgian-Abkhazian Conflict” in Secession, History and the Social Sciences, ed. by Bruno Coppieters and Michel Huysseune, (VUBPress, 2002), p. 93-94.

See also

Some main works of Pavle Ingorokva