Dmitry Ivanovich Ilovaysky was an anti-Normanist Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n historian who penned a number of standard history textbooks.

Ilovaysky graduated from the Moscow University in 1854 and first attracted critical attention with his thesis on the Principality of Ryazan in 1858. He was wounded during the Siege of Plevna, in which he took an active part.

In the 1870s, Ilovaysky started publishing his extensive overview of Russian history. In his later writings, he expounded a controversial hypothesis of Azov Rus, which was alleged to have been centered on Sarkel

Sarkel

Sarkel was a large limestone-and-brick fortress built by the Khazars with Byzantine assistance in the 830s. It was named white-house because of the white limestone bricks they have used to build Sarkel...

 and Tmutarakan

Tmutarakan

Tmutarakan was a Mediaeval Russian principality and trading town that controlled the Cimmerian Bosporus, the passage from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov. Its site was the ancient Greek colony of Hermonassa . It was situated on the Taman peninsula, in the present-day Krasnodar Krai of Russia,...

.

Ilovaysky was the father-in-law of Ivan Tsvetayev, who founded the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts.