page_title: Leo (historian)
section_title: Academic career
hierarchical_section_title: Leo (historian) / Biography / Academic career
caption_attribution_description: English: Arakel Babakhanyan or Leo, Armenian historian (1860-1932). Armenian stamp for the 150th anniversary of his birth.
context_page_description: Arakel Grigori Babakhanian was an Armenian historian, publicist, writer, critic and professor of Yerevan State University. He was born in Nagorno Karabakh and is recognized as an authoritative historian on Armenia and is best known as the author of the multi-volume History of Armenia. Leo addressed the difficult issues of Armenian history, history of literature and many key issues of the early 20th century.
context_section_description: Leo's education and knowledge was based almost solely on self-erudition. He had welcomed the sovietization of Armenia in 1920 and offered his services to the newly established state. Though he had lectured there during the fall term of 1919, it was only in 1924 that he was formally offered a position of professor at Yerevan State University in the field of Armenian studies. He already had worked for numerous publishing houses and published several books on Armenian history but his three volume work, History of Armenia (Patmut'yun Hayots', vol. I, Tiflis, 1917; vols. II and III, Yerevan, 1946–1947), is the most notable. After Soviet Russian writer Andrei Bitov visited Yerevan in 1960, he remarked that "he did not enter any house which did not have the familiar three volumes of Leo's History of Armenia." His work traces Armenian history from its beginnings until the end of the nineteenth century, with the exception of the period stretching from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries (the third volume begins with the sixteenth century, whereas the second volume had ended in the eleventh). It devotes particular importance to the political, cultural and social issues that surrounded Armenian life and the role that Armenia's neighbors played in the country's history.
caption: Stamp commemorating 150th anniversary of  Arakel Babakhanyan's birth.
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