Cyril Toumanoff

Cyril Leo Heraclius, Prince Toumanoff (Russian: Кирилл Львович Туманов; 13 October 1913 – 4 February 1997) was a Russian-born American historian and genealogist who mostly specialized in the history and genealogies of medieval Georgia, Armenia, Iran and the Byzantine Empire. His works have significantly influenced the Western scholarship of the medieval Caucasus.

Family

Cyril Toumanoff was born in Saint Petersburg into a family of the military officer of the Russian army. His father came of the princely family of Tumanishvili from Georgia, whose ancestors had emigrated from their original homeland in Cilician Armenia in the 15th century. This family is on the list of the Georgian princes that was attached to the Treaty of Georgievsk concluded between the Georgian king Erekle II and the Russian empress Catherine II in 1783. On December 6, 1850, the Tumanishvili were officially enrolled on the Russian Empire's list of Georgian princely families as knyaz Tumanov. Toumanoff's mother, Elizabeth Zhdanova, was a descendant of a number of Russian noble families, with genealogical ties with the Western European nobility.