Name

Dimitrie Cantemir

Original name

Дмитрий Константинович Кантемир

Main activity

Statesman

Secondary activity

Scholar

Title

Prince of Moldavia

Name variations

Demetrius Cantemir, Dimitrios Kantemiris, Demetrius Kantemir, Dmitrii Kantemir, Kantemiroğlu, Küçük Kantemiroğlu"

Education place

Education institution

Activity place

Activity institution

Activity start date

Activity end date

Place of birth

Date of birth

1673

Place of death

Dmitrovsk

Date of death

1723

Bibliographical references

https://www.zotero.org/groups/2447618/euqu_european_quran/collections/8N8N9JV3/tags/Dimitrie_Cantemir/collection

Descriptive card

Dimitrie Cantemir was the son of the Moldavian prince Constantin Cantemir (d. 1693). After his father’s death in 1693, he ruled for three weeks but failed to secure confirmation from the Ottomans. He returned to the Porte as an aristocratic hostage and then served as a diplomatic representative. In November 1710, Cantemir was appointed prince of Moldavia. Soon after, he signed a treaty of alliance with Tsar Peter the Great and joined forces with the Russian army in its 1711 anti-Ottoman campaign; in 1722, he joined Peter the Great on the Persian campaign. Despite being a prolific writer, the only work that Cantemir published during his Russian period was Kniga sistima ili Sostoianie muhammedanskiia religii (‘The system or structure of the Mohammedan religion’), on the Qur’an.

Entry author

Gulnaz Sibgatullina