Christian Martin Fraehn

The title page of the Recensio (1826) describes its author Christian Martin Fraehn as doctor of theology and philosophy, councillor of state, member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg for the interpretation of oriental antiquities, director of its Asiatic Museum and chief librarian, honorary librarian of the Imperial Public Library, and member of academies and societies in Paris, Stockholm, Lisbon, Turin, Copenhagen, Calcutta and London and of the University of Kazan. ¹

In his preface he says that in 1817 he left Kazan for Rostock, and when he passed through St Petersburg the Academy, on the advice of his colleague Krug, entrusted him with examining, arranging and describing its Islamic coins, most of which he found an unsorted heap. ² He discarded the interpretations of his predecessor Kehr as too often wrong and arranged the coins in his own way. ³ Sixty years later Henri Lavoix names "the illustrious Fraehn" first among those who had studied Abbasid coinage. ⁴