Shelomo Dov Goitein

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shelomo Dov Fritz/Friedrich Goitein (April 3, 1900 — February 6, 1985) was an Arabist, historian, Jewish ethnographer, famous for his expositions of Jewish life in the Islamic Middle Ages, based on the analysis of thousands of Geniza documents, in particular, for his monumental 5-volume work A Mediterranean Society.

Goitein was born in a village of Burgkundstadt, southern Germany, to a rabbinic family. He was brought up with both secular and talmudic education. During 1918-1923 he studied Arabic language and Islam in University of Frankfurt while continuing his talmudic study with a private teacher. In 1923 he emigrated to Palestine.

In 1957 he moved to the United States and took up a position at the University of Pennsylvania.

[edit] Works

A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. I: Economic Foundations, University of California Press (September 1, 2000), ISBN 0-520-22158-3
A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. II: The Community, 1967
A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. III: The Family, ISBN 0-520-22160-5
A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. IV: Daily Life, ISBN 0-520-22161-3
A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. V: The Individual, ISBN 0-520-22162-1
A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. VI: Cumulative Indices, ISBN 0-520-22164-8
The Land of Sheba: Tales of the Jews of Yemen, 1947
Religion in a Religious Age, June 1996
Jews and Arabs: Their contact through the ages, January 1, 1964
Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders
Jews and Arabs: A Concise History of Their Social and Cultural Relations