Аннотация:Professor V.F. Girgas (1835-1887) was the first arabist, who may be considered the founder of the new school of Russian Arabic science. His main interests extended to studying of the Arabic grammatical theories. Professor V.R. Rosen (1849-1908) was his pupil and the development of the new school of Oriental sciences was mainly connected to V. R. Rosen's name. One of the fundamental works created by V.F. Girgas and V.R. Rosen is "The Arabic Chrestomathy" (1875-1876), which acquired an honourable publicity and popularity from the moment of its appearance and came into use as one of the best textbooks at a number of the western universities. Even now the Chrestomathy has maintained all its importance of a competent and critical selection of texts when studying the Arabic language.