Moshe Gil

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Professor Moshe Gil, 2011

Moshe Gil (born February 8, 1921 in Białystok , † January 23, 2014 in Tel Aviv ) was an Israeli medievalist and economic historian .

Life

Moshe Gil grew up in Romania . During World War II , he worked in the underground movement until, in 1942, he and a group of friends were sentenced to 25 years in prison. However, he only served two years of this until the end of the war.

Gil immigrated to Israel at the age of 24. For forty years he lived in the kibbutz Resafim . He and his wife Susanna had three daughters, who in turn gave birth to nine grandchildren.

In 1965, he began studying at Tel Aviv University and began a belated academic career. He dealt with questions of Roman agricultural policy, but soon he looked at the history of the Jews in the early Islamic world. His dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia under the direction of Shlomo Dov Goitein dealt with the documents of the Cairo Geniza .

Moshe Gil was appointed professor at the Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies at Tel Aviv University. He also held the Joseph and Ceil Mazer Chair in the History of the Jews in Muslim Lands .

In the course of his research and publication work, he dealt with the interaction between early Islam and the Jews, as well as with the establishment of the exile chat , with Jewish traders such as the Radhanites and the role of the Jews in Mecca . His main work is the History of Palestine, 634-1099 , which, according to Mark R. Cohen, surpassed everything that had been written about the epoch up to that point.

Publications

  • The Constitution of Medina: A Reconsideration , in: Israel oriental studies 4 (1974) pp. 44-65.
  • The Radhanite Merchants and the Land of Radhan , in: Journal of the economic and social history of the Orient 17 (1974) pp. 299-328.
  • Documents of the Jewish pious foundations from the Cairo Geniza , Brill, Leiden 1976.
  • The Origin of the Jews of Yathrib , in: Jerusalem studies in Arabic and Islam 4 (1984) pp. 203-224.
  • The Medinan Opposition to the Prophet , in: Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 10 (1987) pp. 65–96.
  • A History of Palestine, 634-1099 , Cambridge University Press 1992, 1997 (first in Hebrew 1983, only there in two volumes the sources from the Geniza of Cairo).
  • The Exilarchate , in: Daniel Frank (Ed.): The Jews of Medieval Islam. Community, Society, and Identity , Proceedings of an international conference held by the Institute of Jewish Studies, University College London, London 1992, 1992, pp. 33-65.
  • The Babylonian Encounter and the Exilarchic House in the Light of Cairo Geniza Documents and Parallel Arab Sources , in: Norman Golb (Ed.): Judaeo-Arabic studies proceedings of the Founding Conference of the Society for Judaeo Arabic Studies , Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997 .
  • Related Worlds. Studies in Jewish and Arab Ancient and Early Medieval History , Ashgate, 2004.
  • with Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Yochanan Peres: Jews in Islamic Countries in the Middle Ages , Brill, Leiden 2011.

Remarks

  1. ^ Newsletter of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, Cambridge University Library ( Memento of September 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), archive.org.
  2. ↑ Review by Mark R. Cohen, in: Jewish Quarterly Review 81 (1995) 190 f., Here: p. 190.
  3. ↑ Review: Mark R. Cohen: Review of 'A History of Palestine, 634-1099', by Moshe Gil , in: Jewish Quarterly Review 86 (1995) 190 f. ( academia.edu ).
personal data
SURNAME Gil, Moshe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 8, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Białystok
DATE OF DEATH 23rd January 2014
Place of death Tel Aviv