GENE D.MATLOCK QUOTED POLAND HISTORY PROF ZAJACKOVSKI POLES ARE SLAVING TURKS

    He was born on 12 November 1903 in Vilna (Wilno/Vilnius) city of Lithuania as the child of a Karaim (Karaim/Karai) family. His father, Alexander, was the head of the Jewish Karaite community. Zajaczkowski, whose mother tongue is Karaite Turkish, later learned Polish and Russian. Before entering university, he worked in the editorial department of Myśl Karaimska (Karaim thought) magazine published in Vilna. After his high school education, he studied oriental studies at the Jagiellon University in Krakow (Cracow) between 1925-1929. During these years, he took Arabic, Persian and Turkish lessons from the orientalist and Turcologist Tadeusz Kowalski, who taught at the same university. He became a doctor with his thesis named “Appendix in Karaite Language”. In 1929-1930, he conducted research on old Turkish and comparative Turkish dialects with Turcologist Willy Bang Kaup in Berlin. Later, he continued his research by working in the libraries of Paris, Istanbul, Bursa and Konya. He expanded his work on affixes in Karaite and published it as Sufiksy imienne i czasownikowe w jezyku zachodnio-karaimskim, giving its German equivalents in the dictionary (Karaków 1932). In 1933, he was appointed as an associate professor to the Department of Turcology at the University of Warsaw with his work on the Dimne translation. He was promoted to professor in 1935. In a bombardment in August 1944, his house was hit by a bomb; His house, furniture, manuscripts, books and two works ready for publication were burned. Between 1946-1950 he was the director of the oriental departments of the universities of Warsaw and Wroclaw (Breslau). During these years, he published an article called “Remarques concernant les études sémantiques turques” (RO, XV [1948], pp. 145-158). In 1957-1961 he was appointed head of the Oriental Institute in Warsaw. He carried out his oriental studies in Poland based on Turcology. He translated sixty ghazals from Hâfız-ı Şîrâzî into Polish and published them together with his biography (Gazele wybrane Hafiza, Z orjginalu perskiego przelozyl, przypisami opatrzyl oraz rozprawa o tworczosci Hafiza poprzedzil Ananiasz, 1957). In the same years, he redacted the Catalog Dokumentow Tureckich (Warszawa 1959), prepared by Z. Abrahamowicz, about the Turkish documents belonging to the years 1455-1672 in the Polish archives. He then wrote an article entitled “L’orientalisme et les études de philologie turque en Pologne” (TTK Belleten, XXV/97-100 [1961], pp. 447-453). He started a study called "Thesaurus Linguae Kipçacorum: Kipchak Dictionary" with a working group of his students in Warsaw.

In 1960, he received the title of honorary doctor (literature) from the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1961 he was elected a full member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He gave lectures at universities in Moscow, Jerusalem, Mainz, Neapel and Istanbul. He became famous especially with his studies on Karaim, Ottoman and Kipchak Turkish. He was elected as an honorary member by international organizations such as the Turkish Language Association (1957) and Societas Uralo-Altaica. XXXVI of the Ural Altaische Jahrbücher magazine. volume was gifted to him (1965). A celebration meeting was held in 1963 for the sixtieth anniversary of his birth, the thirtieth anniversary of his entry into the University of Warsaw, and the tenth anniversary of the Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has published more than 300 articles, including over 20 books. He published the popular Karaim magazine Myśl Karaimska (1932-1939, 1942-1952) and Przeglad orientalistyczny (1952-1953). He took part in the editorial board of the oriental magazine Rocznik Orientalistyczny in Poland. A. Zajaczkowski died on April 6, 1970 in Rome, where he went to give a lecture. After his death, many articles were written about him (Karamanlıoğlu, TDED, XIX [1971], pp. 31-32). A) Kipchak Turkish. 1. Manuel arabe de la langue des turcs et kiptchaks (époque de l'état Mamelouk) (Warszawa 1938). It is a study about the names part of Abu Muhammed Cemaleddin Abdullah et-Turki's Bulgatü'l-müştâk.

2. “Note complementari sulla lessicorafia arabo-turca nell'epoca dello Stato Mamelucco” (Annali, Nuova Serie I, Rome 1940, pp. 149-162). It is about et-Tuḥfetü'z-zekiyye fi'l-luğati't-Türkiyye.

3. Zwiazki jezykowe polowiecko-slowiańskie (Wroclawskiego 1949). It is related to the words of Kipchak origin used in Polca. With this work, Zajaczkowski revealed the importance of the Turkish language and especially the Kipchak Turkish in the field of Slavic, and by further developing his studies on the same subject, he wrote another work called Studia orientalistyczne z dziejów slownictwa polskiego (Wroclawskiego 1953).

4. Slownik arabsko-kipczacki z okresu państwa Mameluckiego (II, Warszawa 1954). It is a study about the verbs part of Bulgatü'l-müştâk.

5. Vocabulaire arabe-kiptchak de l'époque de l'état Mamelouk (Warszawa 1958). In this edition of the work, the facsimile of the part of the names published in 1938 was also given.