Claude Cahen

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Claude Cahen with his wife 1989

Claude Cahen (born February 26, 1909 in Paris , † November 18, 1991 in Savigny-sur-Orge ) was a French orientalist and historian of the Islamic world.

life and work

Cahen studied at the École normal supérieure , at the Sorbonne and at the Institut national des langues et civilizations orientales . In 1932 he received his agrégation in history. In 1940 he received his doctorate in Paris (Docteur des lettres, La Syrie du Nord à l'époque des Croisades et la principauté franque d'Antioche , and second part: Le régime féodal de l'Italie Normande ). In 1940 he became a prisoner of war, but escaped deportation and was liberated in 1945. After the war, he worked as a professor at the University of Strasbourg from 1948 to 1959 and then taught at the Chair for History of the Orient at the Sorbonne from 1959.

Among other things, he was visiting professor at the University of Michigan (1967).

He dealt in particular with the Islamic Middle Ages, for example Islamic sources (historiography) of the Middle Ages and the Crusades (beginning with his dissertation in 1940 on the Principality of Antioch in Northern Syria), generally with the economic history of Islam and its social systems (e.g. Futuwwa ) , the Seljuks and Turkey before the Ottoman Empire .

From 1973 he was a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres . From the 1930s to 1960 he was a member of the French Communist Party and he was a Marxist , which, according to Bernard Lewis, had little effect on his work as a historian. After Lewis, he was one of the most important historians of the 20th century in relation to Islamic sources for the Crusades and the Latin kingdoms in the Middle East.

In 1957 he became editor of the Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient .

In 1945 he received the Schlumberger Prix of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. In 1983 he became a member of the American Philosophical Society .

He came from a Jewish family; an uncle on his mother's side was the mathematician Paul Lévy .

Fonts

  • Islam I: From the origin to the beginnings of the Ottoman Empire, Fischer Weltgeschichte Volume 14 (French edition: L'Islam: des origines au début de l'empire Ottoman, Paris 1970 and Paris: Hachette 1997)
  • Introduction à l'histoire du monde musulman médiéval VIIe – XV siècle. Methodology et elements de bibliographie, Paris 1982
  • La Syrie du nord à l'époque des croisades et la principauté franque d'Antioche, Paris, Institut francaise de Damas, Bibliothèque Orientale 1, 1940 (dissertation)
  • La campagne de Mantzikert d'apres les sources musulmanes. Byzantion, Volume 9, 1934, 613-642
  • Notes on l'histoire des croisades et de l'Orient latin , part 2 Le regime rural syria au temps de la domination franques , Bulletin de la Faculté des Lettres de l'Université de Strasbourg, Volume 29, 1950/51, p. 286 –310 (Part 1: En quoi la conquete turque appelait-elle la croisade?, Volume 29, 118–125, Part 3 Orient latin et commerce du Levant , Volume 29, 328–346)
  • An introduction to the First Crusade, Past and Present, Volume 6, 1954, pp. 6-30
  • L'Islam et la Croisade, Comitato internazionale di scienze storiche: X Congresso internazionale di scienze storiche, Roma 4–11 September 1955. Relazioni, vol 3, 625–635
  • L'histoire économique et sociale de l'Orient musulman médiéval, Studia Islamica, Paris 1955 (Lecture Orientalists Congress Cambridge 1954)
  • Les facteurs économiques et sociaux dans l'ankylose culturelle de l'Islam, in Classicisme et déclin culturel dans l'histoire de l'Islam , Symposium Bordeaux (June 1956), éditions Besson et Chantemerle 1957
  • Mouvements populaires et autonomismes urbains dans l'Asie musulmane du Moyen Âge, in Arabica Volume 5, 1958, 225-250, Volume 6, 1959, 25-56, 233-265
  • Douanes et commerce dans les ports méditerranéens de l'Égypte médiévale, Brill, Leiden 1964
  • Pre-Ottoman Turkey: A General Survey of the Material and Spiritual Culture and History, c 1071-1330, London 1968
  • Turco-Byzantina et Oriens Christianus, London, Variorum Reprints, 1974 (Articles)
  • Les Peuples musulmans dans l'histoire médiévale, Éditions Institut français de Damas, Damascus 1977 (articles)
  • Makhzûmiyyât: Études sur l'histoire économique et financière de l'Égypte médiévale, Brill 1977 (articles)
  • Orient et Occident au temps des croisades, éditions Aubier Montaigne, 1983, 1992 (articles)
  • Chapter on Islam in Edouard Perroy, Jeannine Auboyer, Claude Cahen, Georges Duby , Michel Mollat Histoire générale des civilizations, Volume 3: Le Moyen Age , Paris, Presses Universitaires de France 1953, 2nd edition 1957
  • Chapter The Mongols , The Selchukid State of Rum , The Turkish Invasion; the Selchukids , in History of the Crusades , Volume 1, Philadelphia 1955

He wrote several articles in the Encyclopedia of Islam (Brill, Leiden) and was a translator and editor of Islamic texts.

literature

  • Raoul Curiel, Rika Gyselen (eds.): Itineraires d'Orient: Hommages a Claude Cahen , Res Orientales 6, Bures-sur-Yvette 1994 (Festschrift with biography by his son Michel Cahen)
  • Volume 43, No. 1, 1996 of the journal Arabica is dedicated to him (with bibliography).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Biography based on Fischer Weltgeschichte, Volume 14
  2. ^ Lewis, Obituary in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 141, 1997, pp. 218-220
personal data
SURNAME Cahen, Claude
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 26, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH November 18, 1991
Place of death Savigny-sur-Orge