The director of the Hermitage Museum, the Russian orientalist Mikhail Piotrovsky - who was a guest on the "The Interview" program - was preoccupied with the Arab-Islamic culture, and was especially fond of the history and civilization of Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula in general.

Piotrovsky is one of the orientalists who took an interest in oriental historical and archaeological studies, as he learned at the Department of Oriental Studies at Leningrad University, which sent him to Egypt as part of a training course at the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

Then he went to the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, where he worked as a translator and teacher of Yemeni history.

In 1973, he obtained his doctorate for his thesis on the story of the Himyarite king, Asaad Al-Kamil.

He chose Arabic studies and learned the Arabic language, because his father, Boris Piotrovsky - the former director of the Hermitage Museum - did not master it, and specialized in the history and civilization of Yemen because this country represents the entire Arab world in terms of culture and civilization, as Piotrovsky said to the program "The Interview" broadcast by Al-Jazeera on 12/11/2022.

The Russian orientalist - who was born in 1944 in the Armenian capital - read the Holy Qur’an, and has written books on Islamic political history, Arab culture, and the antiquities of the Arabian Peninsula.

And he spoke to the program "The Interview" about the greats of Russian literature who cared in their works about Islam and the Messenger - may God bless him and grant him peace - among the most prominent of them the greatest poet of Russia Alexander Pushkin, the writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy, as well as the philosopher and novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky.

He stressed that the best thing Pushkin wrote in his works was about imitating the Holy Qur’an, in reference to his poem “Imitation of the Qur’an.”

5 years to know what's inside the Hermitage

He denied the existence of a conflict with Muslims in Russia, stressing that the Russian Empress Katrina II (died in 1796) was the one who established the administration of Muslims and all religions that were present in the Russian Empire at the time, and organized their affairs for them, so that they would have the freedom to practice their religious and cultural rituals like everyone else. Other religions, but politics have nothing to do with it.

He believes that the study of civilizations should be objective, and also opposes what was put forward by the late Palestinian thinker Edward Said, who sees Orientalism as a tool for political domination. Piotrovsky says that Oriental studies in Russia are based on 3 aspects, the first of which is that they are purely scientific studies, and secondly, there are branches of science that help The state in understanding foreign policy, and the third issue is related to religious propaganda.

He revealed that the founder of Arabic studies in Russia in the 19th century had written articles criticizing those who study Islamic civilization for the sake of propaganda for Christianity, and demanded the need to respect the civilization being studied.

It is noteworthy that the Russian orientalist presides over the Hermitage Museum, which is the second largest museum in the world after the Louvre, and it is said that a person needs 5 years to know what the Hermitage contains inside it.

The museum is located in the center of St. Petersburg, and contains millions of rare pieces and artifacts.

The museum's budget is about $3 billion, half of which is provided by the Russian state and the rest is paid by the museum, according to its director, who stressed that the Hermitage is above politics.

The interview guest received several awards and honors, including the Presidential Award in the field of art and literature, and the State Prize in Russia.

In 1997, the Astronomical Union named a minor planet Piotrovsky, as a joint tribute to him and his father.

In 2011, he was elected to the Russian State Duma, but later gave up his position.