Aleksander Igumnow, pierwszy irkucki mongolista – nauczyciel profesora Józefa Kowalewskiego

The paper is devoted to a prominent Russian Mongolist – Alexander Igumnov who did not graduate from any university but managed to make a brilliant career. He was an author of one of the first Mongolian-Russian dictionaries and also a well-known translator and teacher of Mongolian in Irkutsk. He collected ethnographical, as well as historical materials and the epics of Mongolian peoples. In 1813, A. Igumnov founded a private Mongolian school in Irkutsk and taught there himself. The famous Mongolists, J. Kovalevski and A. Popov, were his grateful pupils with whom he shared his materials for a Mongol-Russian dictionary. This was the basis on which in 1849 J. Kovalevski wrote his well-known "Mongolian-Russian-French Dictionary". Unfortunately, most of A. Igumnov’s works got lost in different archives in Russia. However lately some of his works have been rediscovered and research on them is worth continuing.