Shlomo Dov Goitein

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Shlomo Dov Goitein (ca.1978)

Shlomo Dov Goitein (born April 3, 1900 in Burgkunstadt as Fritz Goitein , † February 6, 1985 in Princeton ) was an Arabist and Orientalist .

Life

He came from the extensive family of rabbis and scholars Goitein , whose name can be traced back to the Moravian town of Kojetín . His great-great-grandfather was Baruch Bendit Goitein (1770–1839), called Kesef Nivchar after his work on questions of the Talmud that appeared in Prague in 1827/28 . His father Eduard Ezechiel Goitein, who was still born in Hungary, was district rabbi in Upper Franconia from 1895 to 1914 .

Fritz Goitein studied Arabic and Islamic studies at Frankfurt University from 1918 to 1923 under Josef Horovitz (1874–1931) and then emigrated to Palestine . In 1928 he became a lecturer at the Institute for Oriental Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . In the meantime Hebrew to Shlomo Dov Goitein, he worked in the 1930s as the British government school inspector for the Jewish schools of Palestine. In 1947 he received a professorship at the Hebrew University, which he held for ten years. In 1957 he moved to the USA and became a professor of Arabic at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia . He retired in 1971 and lived the rest of his life in Princeton, where he became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study . In 1970 he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society .

His research activities can be divided into three periods. In the first period Goitein published some research on religious institutions of Islam , such as: B. Islamic prayer and the fasting month of Ramadan . At the end of these Islamic studies he published in 1936 the fifth volume of the historical work Ansāb al-ashrāf by the Arab historian al-Baladhuri from the 9th century.

In his second research period, Goitein dealt primarily with the cultural heritage of the Yemeni Jews . The results of this work include Yemenica , a collection of proverbs from Central Yemen , and the publication of the travelogue of Chaim Chawshush (Ḥaim Ḥabshush † 1899), who in 1870 met the French orientalist Joseph Halévy on his travels through Yemen up to and including Saudi Arabia in 1934 - Accompanied Najran belonging to Arabia ( Judeo-Arabic (sanaʾni) text 1941, Hebrew translation 1939).

Goitein devoted his third research period to the publication of documents from the Cairo Geniza , the conclusions of which he published in his monumental five-volume work A Mediterranean Society . He also wrote Jews and Arabs - Their Contacts through the Ages (3rd edition 1967).

Work (selection)

  • A Mediterranean Society , The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza , 6 volumes, University of California Press , Berkeley and Los Angeles 1967–1988, ISBN 0-520-04869-5
  • Studies in Islamic History and Institutions. Leiden 1966
  • Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders. Princeton 1973
  • SD Goitein and Mordechai A. Friedman: India Traders of the Middle Ages. Documents from the Cairo Geniza (India Book). Leiden and Boston 2008, ISBN 978-90-04-15472-8

bibliography

  • Encyclopaedia Judaica . Volume 7, p. 694.
  • Gideon Libson: Hidden Worlds and Open Shutters. SD Goitein Between Judaism and Islam. In: David N. Myers and David B. Ruderman (Eds.): The Jewish Past Revisited. Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians. Yale University Press, New Haven 1998, pp. 163-198
  • Goitein, SD The life story of a scholar . In: Robert Attal: A bibliography of the writings of Prof. Shelomo Dov Goitein. Jerusalem 1975, pp. XIII-XXVIII
  • Franz Rosenthal : Shelomo Dov Goitein. In: Der Islam , Volume 63, Issue 2 (1986), pp. 189–191, doi: 10.1515 / islm.1986.63.2.189 .
  • Monica Strauss: Maritime Trade: Arabia and India. Between Cairo and Mangalore. In: Structure . Main topic: The myth of the Silk Road . Searching for traces: the beginning of globalization. No. 7/8, July / Aug. 2010. pp. 19–21 - With further articles on Benjamin von Tudela , silk weaving , among others In German, abstract in English (on the role of Gs in researching the genizah )

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Isaak Landmann: The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia. Volume 5, p. 11
  2. ↑ Member History: Shlomo Dov Goitein. American Philosophical Society, accessed August 23, 2018 (incorrect spelling of first name).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Goitein, Shlomo Dov
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Goitein, Fritz (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Israeli-American Arabist and Orientalist
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Burgkunstadt
DATE OF DEATH February 6, 1985
Place of death Princeton