Katia Cytryn is an archeologist specializing in the Islamic period. Her five main research interests are:
(1) Islamic ceramics - from the beginning of the period to the late Ottoman period;
(2) Mosque architecture, with emphasis on the early Islamic period;
(3) Tiberias as a provincial capital in the early Islamic period (she has been directing excavations there on behalf of the Hebrew University since 2009);
(4) The architecture of roads in the Islami period, particularly the road stations in Bilad al-Sham - the subject of her dissertation, a monograph, and several articles;
(5) Most recently, in light of findings from excavations in Tiberias, Khirbat al-Minya, and Magdala, Cytryn has taken an interest in the early sugarcane cultivation in Palestine and industrialization processes by the Frankish colonizers on the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th and 13th centuries. To delve more deeply into the subject, she also studies the ancient and modern sugarcane history in Brazil, her native country, in order to understand the various production processes.
Cytryn won the Yigal Alon Prize in 2009-2013, and the Golda Meir Scholarship in 2009. Her excavations in Tiberias were financed by several organizations, including the Yizhar Hirschfeld Fund on behalf of Yad HaNadiv, the Swiss Van Brechem Foundation, and the German Tiessen Foundation. She participated in an Excellence Hub of the Israel Science Foundation on the formation of Islamic society in the Land of Israel.
Among Cytryn's international collaborations we may note the joint excavation sith the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology (GPIA) in Jerusalem and Tiberias; and a short excavation season in Magdala together with the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. Recently, she published a collection of articles on "discipline-transforming" projects, jointly edited with the late Donald Whitcomb of the University of Chicago and Kristoffer Damgaard of the University of Copenhagen. Cytryn teaches a variety of courses on archeology and material culture in the Islamic period and supervises advanced students in Israel and abroad.
Courses taught:
Objects in Context: Material Culture in the Islamic Period; Jerusalem Under Islamic Rule: Architecture and Art; Not Only Warriors: Mamluk Art and Architecture; Mosque Architecture
Or Amir studies the social history of Islam in the late Middle Ages, with emphasis on the Mamluk period. His research focuses on the social role of Sufi sheikhs and saint rituals in Islam, as well as questions related to religious, spiritual and social authority. Amir obtained his PhD from the Hebrew University in 2020. His dissertation examined the relations between Sufi saints and the Mamluk government. In addition to these areas, Amir also studies the history of Palestine in the Mamulk period; his articles on Safed and Gaza were published in leading journals. From 2014-2028, Amir was a fellow in an ERC research group led by Prof. Michal Biran focused on mobility and intercultural contacts in the Mongol Empire. This research produced several articles on the movements of Islamic scholars between the Mongol Empire and the Mamluk Sultanate.
Courses taught:
Sufism and Saint Rituals in Islam; Religion, Society and State from the Seljuks to the Ottomans; Premodern Islamic Historiography
Recent Publications:
2021. “From Saint to Eponymous Founder: Abū Bakr al-Mawṣilī (d. 797/1394) and his Ṭarīqa Mawṣiliyya.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 143(1): 1-20. 2024. “The Dual Meaning of Shafāʽa and the Social Function of the Saints in Mamluk Society.” 2024. Arabica 71(4-5): 430-73. 2025. “'Is Fiqh Now Determined Based on Dreams?!' The Debate Over the Legal Value of Dreams and the Question of Religious Authority in Sunni Islam.” Islamic Law and Society 32(3): 173-202.
Dr. Sivan Balslev is a historian of modern Iran, specializing in sociocultural history in the 19th and 20th centuries, with emphasis on children, gender, and sexuality. Her first book, Iranian Masculinities: Gender and Sexuality in Late Qajar and Early Pahlavi Iran was published by Cambridge University Press in 2019, and translated in Persian in Iran. In 2021, she won an ISF research grant titled "The History of Children in Modern Iran, 1870-1970". Her articles were published in leading journals such as Gender & History, Labor History, and Iranian Studies.
Courses taught:
Modern Iran; Culture and Resistance in Modern Iran; The History of Children in the Modern Middle East; Masculinity, Society and Politics in Modern Iran
Recent publications:
Balslev, Sivan. 2024. “The School Principal and the Children: Patriarchy and Changing Childhoods in Jalāl Āl-e Ahmad’s Novella.” Iranian Studies 57 (3): 431-450. Balslev, Sivan. 2024. "International Organizations and the Question of Child Labor in the Iranian Carpet Industry". Labor History. https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2024.2318196 Balslev, Sivan. 2024. "Scouting in Iran Amid Changing Practices of Masculinity and Childhood". Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2024.2325737
Prof. Michal Biran is a historian of Central Asia, the medieval Islamic world and Imperial China. She is a Max and Sophie Mydans Foundation Professor in the Humanities and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Biran also teaches in the Department of Asian Studies. Biran's main research area is the history of the Mongol Empire (13th-14th centuries) and intercultural contacts between China, nomad empires, the Islamic world and Europe in the premodern era. She led a large ERC-funded research project as well as coedited The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire (with Kim Hodong, 2 vols., 2023). Currently she is directing a project funded by the ISF, together with Prof. Gideon Shelach-Lavi, on steppe towns in medieval Mongolia (8th-14th centuries). Together with Prof. Yuri Pines, she is also conducting a project on comparative study of Eurasian empires. Her multiple publications also deal with the history of Central Asia in the Mongol and pre-Mongol period (mainly 10th-14th centuries), focusing on mobility and migration, historical memory, nomad culture, as well as the Ilkhan state in Iran and Baghdad under Mongol rule. In the Department, she teaches seminars and advanced courses on Islam in the Middle Ages, the Silk Roads, Central Asia and the Mongol Empire, as well as a writing workshop for graduate research students of the Institute of Asian and African studies, which she headed until 2025-26. In addition, she guides academic tours to Mongolia and China, and next summer to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan as well (with Michael Shenkar).
Courses taught:
The Silk Roads: Academic Tour in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan (Summer 20260; Between China and the Middle east: Issues in Central Asian History (BA seminar); the Mongols in the Islamic World (BA seminar); The Ilkhan State (MA Seminar); Intercultural Contacts in the Medieval Islamic World (BA & MA seminar); The Mongol Empire from a Biographic Perspective (textual course, MA); Eurasian Nomads in World History (MA seminar); Eurasian Empires from a Comparative Perspective (MA seminar); Writing Workshops for Graduate Research Students.
Recent publications:
Biran, Michal and Yuri Pines. 2023. All Under Heaven, Vol 3: Late Imperial China. Raanana: Open University (Hebrew). Michal Biran and Kim Hodong, ed. 2023. The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316337424 Rüpke, Jörg, Michal Biran and Yuri Pines. 2024. Empires and Gods: The Role of Religions in Imperial History. Berlin: De Gruyter, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111342009 Amir, Or, Michal Biran, and Jonathan Brack, eds. 2024. "Mamluks and Mongols: Studies in Honor of Reuven Amitai". Mamluk Studies Review 27. https://knowledge.uchicago.edu/search?cc=Maml%C5%ABk+Studies+Review%2C+V... Biran, Michal and Ishayahu Landa, eds. 2025. "The 14th century Chinggisid Crisis". Special Issue of Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 35(1). https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-royal-asiatic-soc... Biran, Michal. 2023. "Mongol Central Asia: The Chaghadaids and the Ögödeids.” In The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire: Vol. 1, edited by Michal Biran and Kim Hodong, 319–396. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Amitai, Reuven, and Michal Biran. 2023. "Arabic Sources." In The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire, edited by Michal Biran and Kim Hodong, 131–169. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Biran, Michal. “Religions in the Mongol Empire Revisited: Exchange, Conversion, Consequences.” In Empires and Gods: The Role of Religions in Imperial History, edited by Jörg Rüpke, Michal Biran, and Yuri Pines, 232–262. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111342009-011. Biran, Michal. “Islamic Expansion into Central Asia and Muslim-Buddhist Encounters.” 2024. In Buddhism in Central Asia III, edited by Lewis Doney, Carmen Meinert, Henrik H. Sørensen, and Yukiyo Kasai, 13–64. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004687288_003. Biran, Michal, Michael Shenkar, Kubatbek Tabaldiev, Kunbolot Akmatov, and Valery Kolchenko. 2023. “The Kök-Tash Underground Mausoleum in North-Eastern Kyrgyzstan: The First-ever Identified Qara Khitai Elite Tomb.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 23(3): 1–33. Brack, Jonathan, Michal Biran, and Reuven Amitai. 2024. “Plague and the Mongol Conquest of Baghdad (1258)? A Reevaluation of the Sources.” Medical History. https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2023.38. Biran, Michal. 2024. “Asaf b. Berakhya in the Mongol and Mamluk Realms: Between Vizier and Magic.” Mamluk Studies Review 27: 1-27. https://doi.org/10.6082/W2BH-4P45 Biran, Michal, and Ishayahu Landa. 2025. “The Chinggisid Crisis of the Mid-Fourteenth Century: Reasons and Consequences.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 35 (1): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186324000294.
Born in Jerusalem. Living since in the city, I am interested in Jews, Arabs and Jewish-Arab relations. My fields of research and teaching include Palestinian society and politics; Zionist perspectives on the war of 1948; Palestinian refugees and the Nakba; Religion (Judaism, Islam and Christianity) and the Jewish-Arab encounter; Israeli security agencies; Palestinian collaborators; justice and reconciliation; Palestinian and Hebrew literature.
Course taught:
The Zionist-Palestinian Conflict; Local Palestinian History; Reading Arabic Texts
Recent publications:
2025. Enemies, Love Story: Mizrahi-Arab-Ashkenazi Relations Since the Dawn of Zionism. Penn State University Press;
Between the Jordan and the Sea: My Memories Between the Two Nations. Tel Aviv: Altneuland (Hebrew).
Dr. Da'adli is an art historian, archeologist, and historian of Israel/Palestine. As an archeologist, he excavated several sites, many of them in the Jerusalem area (Mamluk Cotton Market, Khan Al-Zait Market, and Nebi Musa). Using art-historical tools, he examined the painting school in Herat (in today's Afghanistan) in the second half of the 15th century, in the days of Sultan Hussain, the last Timur ruler. Da'adli's current studies focus on the cities of the Palestine coastal area - Lydda, Ramla and Jaffa, and their surrounding villages - in an attempt to understand urbanism from the late Ottoman period to 1948 through the written word.
Courses taught:
The Human Figure in Islamic Art; India Under Islam; Methods for the Study of Local History
Recent publications:
Tawfiq Da'adli. 2024. "Something Old, Something New: Conducting Community Archaeology at the Wrong Site". In Community Archaeology in Israel/Palestine, edited by R. Kletter, L. Kolska Horwitz, and E. Pfoh. Equinox, 93-110. Tawfiq Daʿadli. 2024. "Walking with Ghosts along the Bazar: Urban life in Ludd, Palestine". Palestine/Israel Review 1: 1-30. Tawfiq Daʿadli. 2022. “The Waqfs of Hajja Sitt Ikhwitha and Khalil Dahmash in the City of al-Lid, Local Agents of Urban Changes”. In From the Household to the Wider World: Urban Governance in Late Ottoman Bilad al-Sham, edited by in J. Büssow and Y. Ben-Bassat . Tübingen: Tübingen University Press, 111-???
Dr. Ebstein focuses on the study of Islamic mysticism in the Middle Ages, particularly in Andalus (Islamic Spain), as well as on the links between Shiite tradition and Suni mysticism. He is also interested in the relations between Islamic mysticism and the Kabbalah and takes an active part in studying this subject together with researchers from Jewish studies. Ebstein won the Alon Scholarship for 2015-18. In 2012, he received the Blumfeld Award for his doctoral dissertation. He also won honors scholarships during his BA and MA studies.
Courses taught:
Introduction to Islam; Andalus and Spain: Contacts Between Islamic and Jewish Mysticisms in the Iberian Peninsula
Recent publications:
Ebstein, Michael. 2025. “Intellectualist Mysticism in al-Andalus: Baḥya b. Paqūda and Ibn Khamīs al-Yāburī”. Jewish Quarterly Review 115 (2): 197-231; “God-Perfecting Man: Theurgical Elements in the Mysticism of Muḥyī l-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī (560/1165-638/1240) and Their Historical Significance,” Religions 16 (234): 1-36.
Teaching in the department since 1992. He also coordinates Arabic Language instruction for the M.A. program in Middle Eastern Studies at the Rothberg International School for Overseas Students at the Hebrew University. He serves as a didactic mentor and a lecturer at the David Yellin Academic College of Education (since 2000), as well as the coordinator of the Arabic Language division at the Hebrew University High School.
Currently Mr. Efrati is studying towards a Ph.D. degree in the Dept. of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The subject of his thesis is "Scholars and Centers of Scholarship in Tiberias Capital of Jund al-Urdunn during the Early Islamic Period (634-1099)".
Ofer Efrati has appeared in the Hebrew University’s list of outstanding lecturers according to the students' teaching evaluation of academic staff, in every single since he began teaching 1992 up to the current year, 2016. He is also the recipient of The Hebrew University’s Michael Milken Prize for long-standing excellence in teaching.
Simon Wolfgang Fuchs is interested in global Islamic connections, in particular between South Asia and the Middle East. His second book, In a Pure Muslim Land. Shi‘ism between Pakistan and the Middle East, was published with the University of North Carolina Press in 2019 (https://uncpress.org/9781469649795/in-a-pure-muslim-land/) and received the Inaugural Book Award of the South Asian Muslim Studies Association in 2021 (https://faculty.thecollege.asu.edu/samsa/announcements). He is currently working on a global history of the Iranian Revolution of 1978/79 for Princeton University Press. After obtaining his PhD from the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University in 2015, Prof. Fuchs was elected a Junior Research Fellow in Islamic Studies at Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge. From 2017-2023, he was a lecturer in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Freiburg. He is an alumnus of the German Young Academy. He is a frequent contributor to German and Swiss media (https://www.simonwolfgangfuchs.com/media-contributions/)
Courses taught:
The Puzzle of Iran: Intellectual History and Society in the 20th and 21st Centuries; The Mughal Empire: Muslim Power and Coexistence in South Asia; Little Ice Ages and Mighty Microbes: Environmental History and the Middle East; The Muslim Sea: Ideas Networks and Trade in the Indian Ocean; Where Empires Come to Die? Afghanistan, History, and Islam in the 20th and 21st Centuries; Creating the First Islamic Republic: Religion and State in Pakistan; Shaykh Google and Halal Dating: the Digital Transformation of Islam; Sectarian Separation: Sunnis and Shi‘is in the Modern Period; Toward Another Revolution? Contemporary Iran and Its Challenges; Muslims and Others: Lived Realities and Normative Ambiguity; Suspicious Citizens: Muslims in India after 1947; How South Asia Came Apart: India Pakistan and the Consequences of Partition; Mainstream Mystics : The Surprising Relevance of Sufi Islam in South Asia Today
Recent publications:
2025. “The ‘Discovery’ of Modern Islam in East Germany after 1979: Iran, the Resurgence of Religion, and the Coming Crisis of Dependent Capitalism” Die Welt des Islam https://doi.org/10.1163/15700607-20250007 2025. Together with Thomas Pierret (eds), Utopianism in the Middle East and North Africa. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781399537759. Pierret, Thomas, and Simon Wolfgang Fuchs. 2025. “Introduction: The Three Ages of Utopianism in the Modern Middle East and North Africa. In Utopianism in the Middle East and North Africa. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1-29, https://doi.org/10.1515/9781399537759-004 2024. “Searching for Friends Across the Global South: Classified Documents, Iran, and the Export of the Revolution in 1983”. In Iran, Palestine, 1979, 1982: The Fate of Third Worldism in the Middle East, edited by Rasmus Christian Elling and Sune Haugbølle. London: Oneworld, 70-95. https://oneworld-publications.com/work/the-fate-of-third-worldism-in-the... 2023. “The Islamist International in Lahore: The Jamaat-i Islami, the Middle East, and the Quest for an Islamic state”. In South Asia Unbound: New International Histories of the Subcontinent, edited by Bérénice Guyot-Réchard and Elisabeth Leake. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 203-221, https://doi.org/10.1017/9789400604544.013 2022. With Alexander E. Balistreri, "Reflektierte Führer in der Allianz der Toleranz: 9/11 und die Suche nach dem 'gemäßigten Islam'" [Thoughtful Leader in the Tolerance Alliance: 9/11 and the Quest for a 'Moderate Islam']. Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques 76 (2): 247-280. "A Direct Flight to Revolution: Maududi, Divine Sovereignty, and the 1979-Moment in Iran". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 32 (2): 333-354
Prof. Eyal Ginio researches the sociocultural and environmental history of the Ottoman state, with emphasis on Turkish-speaking provinces; Islam in the Balkans; secular writing in Ladino in the 19th and 20th century; and modern Turkey. Ginio has completed his three degrees at the Hebrew University. A Rothschild Scholarship enabled him to complete postdoctoral studies at St. Antony's College, Oxford University, in 1999-2000. Upon his return to Israel in 2001, he became a faculty member.
Courses taught:
Istanbul - A Sociocultural History; Social History of WWI; The Turkish Republic under Erdogan; Readings in Ottoman Turkish; Thessaloniki between the Ottoman Empire and Greek Nation-State
Recent publications:
Ginio, Eyal. 2023. “From Cisr-i Mustafa Paşa to Svilengrad: The Ethnic Homogenization of a Thracian Town in the Balkan Wars.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 55: 275-298. Ginio, Eyal. 2022. “Challenging Communal Boundaries in Late Ottoman Thrace: Jews and Muslims in Dimetoka (Didymoteicho).” Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society 27 (3): 88-122. Ginio, Eyal. 2022. Osmanlı Yenilgi Kültürü: Balkan Savaşları ve Sonrası. Istanbul: İletişim (translated into Turkish by Cumhur Atay). Ginio, Eyal. 2024. “From Military Downfall to Rejuvenation: The Balkan Wars and the Vision of the Ottoman Nation’s Rebirth.” In Transforming Southeast Europe during the Long 19th Century: Persons and Personalities as Agents of Modernization in the Ottoman and the Post-Ottoman Space, edited by Boriana Antonova-Goleva and Ivelina Masheva. Leiden: Brill, 245-268. Ginio, Eyal. 2022. “Les communautés locales et leurs lieux sacrés: lieux de culte de quartier (mahalle) dans la Salonique ottomane” [Local Communities and their Sacred Sites: Places of Worship in Ottoman Salonica; translated to French by Clément Hazan]. In Déchiffrer le passé d'un Empire. Hommage à Nicolas Vatin et aux humanités ottomans [Deciphering the Past of an Empire. Tribute to Nicolas Vatin and the Ottoman Humanities], edited by Elisabetta Borromeo, Frćdćric Hitzel et Benjamin Lellouch. Paris: Peeters, 415-426.
Deals with the history of ideas and politics in the Middle East in the 19th and 20th centuries from a comparative perspective, especially in relation to Western and Jewish thought, and with an emphasis on Islamic politics, an increasingly relevant field of scholarship today. His published work has dealt with topics such as ‘ulama, Sufism, fatwas, martyrdom, Islamic protest movements, liberal discourse, modern Egypt, and Palestinian politics.
Landau Mifal Hapais Prise for the Art and Sciences in the field of Comparative Religion, 2023
Courses taught:
Readings in Modern Arab Thought; Historical Myths and Modern Politics; Social Justice in Islam; Religion, Nationalism, and Communism in Islam and Judaism; Autobiographies as Historical Documents; A Liberal Middle East: An Alternative Perspective on Politics and Society in the Middle East
Recent Publications:
Hatina, Meir. 2022. The Silenced Voice: Liberal Thought in the Arab Middle East. Tel Aviv: Resling (Hebrew). Hatina, Meir, and Orit Bashkin (eds.). 2024. The Sphinx in an Era of Transitions: Revisiting Modern Egyptian History. Tel Aviv: Resling. (Hebrew) Hatina, Meir. 2025. Islamic Enlightenment in a Radical Age: Mustafa al-Sibaʿi and the Muslim Brothers in Syria, 1946-1964. Jerusalem: Magness. (Hebrew)
Abigail Jacobson is an associate professor in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University, and the Academic Director of the MA Honors Program at the Mandel School of Advanced Studies in the Humanities. She deals with the social and urban history of Palestine/Land of Israel and the eastern Mediterranean in the late Ottoman and Mandate periods, as well is in the first years of the State of Israel. Her main interests are the histories of ethnonationally mixed communities and spaces, particularly in times of war and transformation and the history of Oriental Jews. Jacobson’s first book is titled From Empire to Empire: Jerusalem Between Ottoman and British Rule (Syracuse University Press, 2011). She wrote the second, Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine (Brandeis/New England University Press, 2016) together with Dr. Moshe Naor of Haifa University. The book won the 2016 Yehonatan Shapiro Best Book Award on behalf of the Association for Israel Studies (AIS); the 2017 Best Book Award by the Center for the Study of Relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims (Open University, Israel); and the Polonsky Prize on behalf of the Hebrew University. In 2021, it was published in Hebrew by Magnes. Jacobson completed her doctoral studies at the University of Chicago. Prior to joining the Hebrew University, she was a department head at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. She also edited the Journal of Levantine Studies. Her academic positions included a research fellow at the Crown Center for Middle east Studies, Brandeis University; lecturer at the Department of History, MIT; and guest lecturer at the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Boston University.
Selected courses taught:
Cities in the Middle East: History, Culture and Society; Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Dilemmas of a National Minority; The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict; The Middle-East Beyond Academia: a specialization course
Recent Publications:
Naor, Moshe, and Abigail Jacobson. 2024. “Trapped Neighborhoods, Trapped Identities: Musrara and Wadi Salib Compared, 1949-1967.” Journal of Urban History 52(1).
Naor, Moshe, and Abigail Jacobson. 2023. “Between the Border of Despair and the 'Circle of Tears': Musrara on the Margins of Jewish-Arab Existence in Jerusalem.” Jewish Social Studies 28 (2): 75-98.
Jacobson, Abigail. 2022. “Contested Public Space in 'Downtown Jerusalem': The Jaffa Gate and Municipal Garden in Late Ottoman Jerusalem”. In From the Household to the Wider World: Local Perspectives on Urban Institutions in Ottoman Bilad al-Sham during the Transformations of the Long Nineteenth-Century, edited by Yuval Ben Bassat and Johann Bussow, 195-206. Tübingen: Tübingen University Press.
Prof. Liat Kozma is a researcher of the modern Middle East. Her studies address the history of women in the margins and of women's movements; of medical knowledge of sexology, as applied in the Jewish community in Palestine as well as in Egypt; and of global movements of people, ideas and commodities in the Middle East at the turn of the 20th century. In recent years, she has focused on the history of physicians and medicine in the Middle East; in 2017-2023 she coordinated a research group on this subject funded by the EU Research Council. Kozma's first book, Policing Egyptian Women (2011) addressed precolonial Edypg's coping with women in the margins - mainly women slaves and women in prostitution. Her second book, Global Women, Colonial Ports (2017) was about prostitution and women trafficking in the Middle East, and the global oversight on women trafficking by the League of Nations. Kozma's third book, Palestinian Doctors (2025), coauthored with Dr. Yoni Furas, addressed the development of the Palestinian doctor community in the Mandate era.
Courses taught:
History of Colonialism in the Middle East; Women and Gender in the History of the Middle East; The History of Medicine in the Middle East
Recent Publications:
Nuriely, Benny, and Liat Kozma. 2024. “Monopoly on Doubt: Post-Mortem Examinations in Israel, 1950s–1980s.” Social History of Medicine 37 (2024): 516–536. Kozma, Liat. 2025. “Between the Temporary and Permanent: The International Red Cross and the Palestinian Refugee Camps, 1948–1950.” Palestine/Israel Review 2: 215-244. https://doi.org/10.5325/pir.2.2.0002 בילסקי, ליאורה וליאת קוזמא. “לקראת היסטוריה משולבת של ביזה”. 2024. משפט, חברה ותרבות, 7.
Prof. Elie Podeh is a Bamberger and Fuld Chair in the History of the Muslim Peoples and former President of MEISAI: Middle East & Islamic Studies Association of Israel (2016-2021). He also serves on the board of Mitvim: Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies. His main research interests are the history of modern Egypt; the pan-Arab political system; Israel-Arab relations; Education in the Arab world; and Israel studies in the Middle East. Podeh published and edited sixteen books and over eighty articles in Hebrew, English and Arabic.
Courses taught:
The Arab World Between Unity and Disunity, 1930-2023; The Middle East in the Aftermath of the War on Gaza; Israel in the Middle East: Between the Visible and Invisible in Israeli Foreign Policy; Between Stability and Revolution: The Arab World after the Arab Spring; Could Things Be Different? Historical Missed Opportunities in the Israeli-Arab Conflict.
Recent publications:
2022. From Mistress to Known Partner: Israel's Secret Relations with States and Minorities in the Middle East, 1948-2020. Tel Aviv: Am Oved (Hebrew);
2025. Villa in the Jungle? Israel in the Middle East. Jerusalem: Karmel, Yediot Sfarim (Hebrew);
2022. “The Many Faces of Normalization – Models of Arab-Israeli Relations”. Strategic Assessment 25 (1): 47-65; 2023. "Israel and Sudan: The Origins of clandestine Relations, 1954-1964.” Israel Studies 28 (2): 1-28;
2024. “’Talking to the Enemy’: Clandestine and Public Encounters for Peace Between Israel and Syria.” Israel Studies 29 (2): 30-60;
2025. "Israel’s 2005 Disengagement from Gaza: A Multilateral Move under Unilateral Façade.” Middle Eastern Studies, 61 (5): 719-735;
2025. “Much Ado about Something: The Tiran and Sanafir Islands in International, Regional and Domestic Politics (1841–2023)”. Israel Studies 30 (1): 1-26.;
2021. Between Stability and Revolution: A Decade to the Arab Spring (edited with On Vinkler). Jerusalem: Carmel (Hebrew).
Born in Tallinn, Estonia, Julia Rubanovich spent her undergraduate years at the St-Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) university, where she studied Iranian philology.After immigration to Israel, she completed her undergraduate, graduate and PhD studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning her PhD degree in classical Persian literature in 2005. She was a post-doctoral Rothschild fellow (2004-2005) at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations of the University of Toronto. Julia Rubanovich started her teaching career while still an undergraduate student in 1993. Since then she has been teaching a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in Iranian cultural history, medieval and modern Persian literature and language.
Her research focuses on medieval Persian literature with an emphasis on epic poetry, including Shāhīn’s oeuvre in the Judeo-Persian language; on folk literature, notably prose dāstāns, and the problem of medieval orality; on the Alexander-Romance in the Islamic domain; and more recently on literary paratexts and the concepts of authorship in connection with the notion of literary canon.
Her recent publications include an edited volume Orality and Textuality in the Iranian World: Patterns of interaction across the centuries (Brill, 2015); ʻRe-Writing the Episode of Alexander and Candace in Medieval Persian Literature,ʼ in Alexander the Great in the Middle Ages: Transnational Perspectives, ed. Markus Stock (Toronto University Press, 2015); ʻWhy So Many Stories? Untangling the Versions of Iskandar’s Birth and Upbringing,ʼ in Orality and Textuality in the Iranian World: Patterns of interaction across the centuries, ed. J. Rubanovich (Brill, 2015); ʻOrality in Medieval Persian Literature,ʼ in Medieval Oral Literature, ed. Karl Reichl (De Gruyter, 2012); ʻTracking the Shahnama Tradition in Medieval Persian Folk Prose,ʼ Shahnama Studies II, ed. Charles Melville and G.R. van den Berg (Brill, 2012).
Michael Shenkar is Associate Professor of Ancient Iranian and Central Asian Studies and Director of the Kliakhandler Programme in Central Asian Studies. His specialization lies in the study of the civilizations and cultures of the pre-Islamic Iranian world through their material remains and visual representations. His research interests include the archaeology, art, and religions of pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia, with particular attention to Zoroastrianism (especially religious iconography), the culture of the Eurasian nomads, the Sogdian civilization, and the Silk Roads. He is Co-Director of the excavations at the Sogdian site of Sanjar-Shah and Academic Head of the Kafyr-Kala excavation projects in Tajikistan. In addition, he serves as Visiting Professor in the Department of History of Samarkand Civilization at Samarkand State University, Uzbekistan, and Honorary Affiliate of the Oxford Nizami Ganjavi Centre, University of Oxford.
Courses taught:
The Arab Occupation of Iran and Central Asia; Civilizations and Cultures in pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia; Introduction to the Zoroastric Religion; Turks and Iranians along the Silk Roads of the 5th-8th Centuries; The Sassanid Empire as Reflected in Its Material Culture
Recent Publications:
2025 Kings of Cities and Rulers of the Steppes: Representations of Kingship in Pre-Islamic Central Asia. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 2025 (with Sharof Kurbanov and Abdurahmon Pulotov) “A Unique Scene of Fire Worship from the Late Sogdian Palace at Sanjar-Shah”. Antiquity. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2025.10180. 2024 (with Carli Peters; Kristine K. Richter; Shevan Wilkin; Sören Stark; Basira Mir-Makhamad; Ricardo Fernandes; Farhad Maksudov; Mirzaakhmedov Sirojidin; Rahmonov Husniddin; Stefanie Schirmer; Kseniia Ashastina; Alisher Begmatov; Michael Frachetti; Sharof Kurbanov; Taylor Hermes; Fiona Kidd; Andrey Omelchenko; Barbara Huber; Nicole Boivin; Shujing Wang; Pavel Lurje; Madelynn von Baeyer; Rita Dal Martello; and Robert N. Spengler) “Archaeological and Molecular Evidence for Ancient Chickens in Central Asia”. Nature Communications 15. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-46093-2. 2024 (with Mir-Makhamad, Basira, Pavel Lurje, Vikentiy Parshuto, Abdurakhmon Pulatov, Firuz Aminov, Muminkhon Saidov, Nikita Semenov, Sharof Kurbanov, Sirojidin Mirzaakhmedov, Husniddin Rahmonov, Rita Dal Martello, and Robert N. Spengler) “Agriculture Along the Upper Part of the Middle Zarafshan River During the First Millennium AD: A Multi-Site Archaeobotanical Analysis”, PLoS ONE 19(3): e0297896. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297896. 2023 “Empires Without Historiography: History, Epos and Memory in Ancient Iran”. Historia: Journal of the Historical Society of Israel 50: 95-111 (in Hebrew). 2023 (with Michal Biran, Kubatbek Tabaldiev, Kunbolot Akmatov and Valery Kolchenko) “The Kök-Tash Underground Mausoleum in North-Eastern Kyrgyzstan: The First-Ever Identified Qara Khitai Elite Tomb?” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186322000621 2022 “The So-Called Fravašis and the Heaven and Hell Paintings, and the Cult of Nana in Panjikent”. Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/05786967.2022.2037101. 2025 (with Kurbanov, Sh., Pulotov, A. and Assomiddinzoda, S.) “Archaeological Excavations of the Sanjar-Shah Palace in 2024”. Arkheologicheskie raboty v Tadzhikistane 46: 52-65 (in Russian). 2025 (with Kurbanov, Sh., Pulotov, A., Parshuto, V. and Yusufzoda, M.) “Archaeological Excavations of the Sanjar-Shah Palace in 2022-23”. Arkheologicheskie raboty v Tadzhikistane 46: 262-276 (in Russian). 2025 (with Kurbanov, Sh., Saifulloev, N., Parshuto, V. Everest-Phillips, E., Petrishcheva, D., Akulov, A., Decruyenaere, D. and Mahmudov, N.) “Research at the Kafyrkala Settlement in the Vakhsh Valley in 2024”. Arkheologicheskie raboty v Tadzhikistane 46: 65-93 (in Russian). 2025 (with Kurbanov Sh., Saifulloev N., Parshuto V., Everest-Phillips E., Bogatov D., Shamrov I. and Volokhovsky G.) “Archaeological Surveys at the Lagman Site in the Vakhsh Valley in 2024”. Arkheologicheskie raboty v Tadzhikistane 46: 93-101 (in Russian). 2025 “Sogdians in Their Homeland”. In The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, edited by D. Ludden. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.51 2024 “The ‘Eternal Fire’, Achaemenid Zoroastrianism and the Origin of the Fire Temples”. In Yahwism under the Achaemenid Empire, edited by G. Barnea, and R. G. Kratz. Professor Shaul Shaked in Memoriam. Berlin: De Gruyter, 379-390. 2023 “New Discoveries in Central Asia and the Origin of the Fire Temples”. In Takht-i Sangin as an Example of the Synthesis of the Civilizations of East and West, edited by N. K. Udaydullo. Dushanbe: Tajik Academy of Sciences, 183-199.(in Russian). 2023 (with Sharof Kurbanov, Abdurahmon Pulotov and Firuz Aminov) “Archaeological Excavations of Sanjar-Shah in 2021”. Arkheologicheskie raboty v Tadzhikistane 44: 135-152 (in Russian). 2023 (with Sharof Kurbanov, Abdurahmon Pulotov and Firuz Aminov) “Archaeological Excavations of Sanjar-Shah in 2020”. Arkheologicheskie raboty v Tadzhikistane 44: 50-64 (in Russian). 2023 (with Sharof Kurbanov, Abdurahmon Pulotov and Firuz Aminov) “Archaeological Excavations of Sanjar-Shah in 2019”, Arkheologicheskie raboty v Tadzhikistane 43: 188–209 (in Russian). 2023 (with Sharof Kurbanov, Abdurahmon Pulotov and Firuz Aminov) “Archaeological Excavations of Sanjar-Shah in 2018”. Arkheologicheskie raboty v Tadzhikistane 43: 138–187 (in Russian). 2022 (with Sharof Kurbanov, Abdurahmon Pulotov and Firuz Aminov) “Eastern Zaravshan Valley in the Early Islamic Period (8th-9th centuries): New Evidence from Sanjar-Shah Excavations (2016-2019)”. In Cultures in Contact Central Asia as Focus of Trade, Cultural Exchange and Knowledge Transmission, edited by C. Baumer and M. Novak. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 327-351. 2022 (with Sharof Kurbanov, Abdurahmon Pulotov and Firuz Aminov) “Archaeological Excavations of Sanjar-Shah in 2017”. Arkheologicheskie raboty v Tadzhikistane 42: 189-218 (in Russian). 2022 (with Sharof Kurbanov, Abdurahmon Pulotov and Firuz Aminov) “Archaeological Excavations of Sanjar-Shah in 2016”, Arkheologicheskie raboty v Tadzhikistane 42: 163-189 (in Russian). 2022 “The Arab Conquest and the Collapse of the Sogdian Civilization”. In The History and Culture of Iran and Central Asia in the First Millennium CE: From the Pre-Islamic to the Islamic Era, edited by in D. Tor and M. Inaba. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 95-125.
Prof. Silverstein specializes in the history of the Middle East, from Late Antiquity until the Middle Ages. Most of his research is comparative, focusing on Islamic cultures within broad historical contexts. Prof. Silverstein studied at the University of Cambridge (Ph.D. 2002). Following a British Academy post-doctoral fellowship (2002-2005), he was a lecturer at the University of Oxford (2005-2010), and as Reader in Abrahamic Religions at King's College London, until his arrival in Israel in 2012. Prof. Silverstein joined the department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies in 2021.
His publications include:
- Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic World (Cambridge, 2007)
- Islamic History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2010)
- Veiling Esther, Unveiling Her Story: The Reception of a Biblical Book in Islamic Lands (Oxford, 2018)
In 2012, I immigrated from Iran. I have an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from Bar-Ilan University. Since 2014, I have been teaching Persian at the Shalem Academic Center.
Dr. Eliyahu Stern is a teacher, researcher, poet and translator. He has earned three academic degrees - B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. - from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Egypt under Nasser and Sadat; Islam and Violent Struggle in the Palestinian Arena
Recent publications:
Cohen, Dikla. "The Story of Muhammad Al-Masri: A Lens into the Operations of the "Tank Hunters' in the 1973 War". JIMES 9 (1) (in Hebrew). Https://doi.org/10.26351/JIMES/9-1/6
Shlomi Daskal is a researcher of communication, language and culture in Arab society in Israel. He serves as an academic consultant at Minerva Publishing House.
Courses taught:
Not Only Al-Jazeera: Issues in the Development of Arabic Media in Israel and worldwide; Foundations of Spoken Arabic; Popular Arabic Culture: First Steps in Spoken Arabic
Yogev Elbaz is a postdoctoral researcher at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. He has a BA from the Hebrew Universities in Jewish History and Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, and an MA from that university in an individual program in Israel Studies. His doctoral dissertation, titled "Israel's Involvement in Lebanon (1969-1982) as a Test Case of Its Middle-Eastern Policy", examined Israeli policy in Lebanon in the aforementioned years from the broad perspective of its policy in the Middle East in general. His studies address Israel's clandestine relations in the region, in the Middle-Eastern system and in the Israeli mythology. Elbaz has founded and coordinated the Israel Studies Forum at the Hebrew University, and serves as the editor of Basics: Journal of the IDF Department of History.
Courses taught:
Lebanon: Between Ethnic and Pan-Arab Politics
Recent publications:
Elbaz, Yogev. 2025. "An Unknown Crossroads: Israel, the Palestinians and the Christians in Lebanon (1968-1970)". Middle Eastern Studies 61 (5): 682-693..
Elbaz, Yogev. 2022. "Beyond the Periphery: Israel's Intervention in the Yemen Civil War in 1960s". Israel Studies, 27 (1): 84-107.
Elbaz, Yogev. 2021. "Letters Flying in the Air: The Book Such were Our Fighters as Reflecting and Shaping Israeli Commemoration in Its Infancy". In Deceptive Past: Myth, History and Memory in Islamic Societies and in Israeli Society, edited by Israel Gershoni and Mair Hatina, 397-441. Tel Aviv: Resling (in Hebrew).
Has a BA in Armenian Studies and Communications (2000) and an MA (2002) in Comparative Religion from the Hebrew University (2002), specializing in Armenian amulet scrolls from the late Middle Ages. Yoav was a member of the team that discovered a medieval Jewish cemetery in Eghegis, Armenia, together with Professor Michael Stone and the late archaeologist David Amit.
After his studies, Yoav began working in human rights organizations and in the field of applied social research, while keeping up his active interest in Armenian culture and literature in less official ways, as well as publishing articles about Armenian topics. Yoav returned to the Hebrew University in 2012, where he now teaches Classical Armenian language and courses in Armenian history and culture.
I have studied cultural, social and religious aspects of ancient Islam and the way they are expressed in the lives of contemporary Islamic societies. For me these subjects, and particularly the tracing of their ancient sources and exposing how they have changed throughout history, is fascinating, particularly the way past and present are intertwined and manifested in symbols and customs. My PhD deals with the reshaping of Islamic collective memory regarding the Ottoman Empire. Over the years, together with my research, I have led programs and held lectures both within and outside academia, particularly in areas of enrichment and culture.
Courses taught:
Symbols, Customs, and Rituals in Islam; The Shi'a: Culture and History
Recent Publications:
The Struggle for the Figure of the Sultan: Abdelhamid II from the Perspective of Arabic Historiography in the 20th Century
In 2012, I immigrated from Iran. I have an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from Bar-Ilan University. Since 2014, I have been teaching Persian at the Shalem Academic Center. In 2018, I did so at Bar-Ilan University, and in 2021 also at the Hebrew University (Advanced Persian) and in high schools in the Jerusalem Municipality.
Dr. Rosen completed his studies in the Department of Israel Studies at the University of Haifa. Both his thesis and his dissertation dealt with the Baháʼí presence in Palestine/Israel in 1868-1968, from a holistic point of view combining history, geography, religion science, international relations and more. He works with the Baháʼí World Centre on raising the awareness of the Baháʼí community in the Israeli public and serves as a consultant to government ministries on issues related to the Baháʼí World Centre.
Daphna Sharef-Davidovic is a researcher and lecturer on material culture, the history of art, and the history of Islam and the Middle East. Her doctoral dissertation addresses the imperial palaces in Istanbul from 1856-1901. In recent years, her research focuses on object culture in Islam and other cultures.
Zeina Shihabi specializes in the study of medical discourse in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. She lectures on Turkish at the Hebrew University and serves as a TA in Arabic at the Shalem Academic Center. Shihabi has a BA in Arabic Language and Literature and in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, as well as an MA from the Hebrew University. Her thesis is titled "Modernity and Development in the Medical Discourse in the Ottoman Press under the Rule of Sultan Abdelhamid II (1876-1909) through the Journal Truti Funoon. Shihabi intends to proceed to doctoral studies focused on the impact of the war in Syria on Syrian refugees in Turkey, examining the social and medical aspects of refugeehood.
Teaches Modern Standard Arabic and has been teaching in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Sudies since 1989. In the course of his work he has been nominated more than 15 times for the list of best teachers in the Faculty of Humanities. Dan has written three textbooks for teaching literary Arabic. These books are used by hundreds of students throughout Israel.
Nadav Salomonovich is a teaching fellow in the Department of Islamic and Middle East Studies. He is a sociocultural historian of the Middle East and his research and teaching areas include the sociocultural history of modern Turkey and its roots in the late Ottoman Empire; Islam in modern Turkey; Nationalism and nation-building processes in the Middle East; and memory studies. After completing his doctoral studies, Solomonovich won the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship (ESKAS), enabling him to study as a postdoctoral fellow at Basel University in 2019-2020. In 2020-2021 he served as a postdoctoral fellow at Haifa University. In 2021-2022 he served as a fellow in the Institute for Advanced Study at the New Europe College in Bucharest. In 2022-2024, he won a research scholarship from the German Gerda Henkel Foundation. His first book, The Korean War in Turkish Culture and Society, was published by Palgrave-Macmillan in 2021.
Courses taught:
Basic Chapters in the History of the Modern Middle East; Nationalism, Memory and Commemoration in the Modern Middle East
“From ‘Atomic Spies’ to Turkish-American Relations: The Cold War in Turkish Children’s Magazines in the 1950s,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 55.4 (2023), pp. 693-714.
“‘A strange country’: representations of the nascent state of Israel in the Turkish press,” Israel Affairs 28.5 (2022), pp. 680-694.
“‘I am a Turk!’ The Construction of Turkish Nationalism in Ömer Seyfettin’s War Stories,” Hamizrah Hehadash 61 (2022), pp. 137-166. [in Hebrew].
“Marrying the Enemy? Turkish Nationalism, Citizenship, and the Public Debate over Mixed Marriages in the 1940s Turkish Press,” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 24.4 (2022), pp. 663-681.
Dr. Eliyahu Stern is a teacher, researcher, poet and translator. He has earned three academic degrees - B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. - from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he now teaches Arabic and Islam. Since 1993 he has taught at the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. He has taught also at the Rothberg International School for overseas students at the Hebrew University (Graduate Studies- 2000, 2008-2013, Undergraduate Studies 2009-2010), the Arabic Language & Literature Department (1999-2005), the Amirim program for outstanding students at the Hebrew University (2004), and the Hebrew Ulpan (1987-1989).
Dr. Stern has gained vast experience in many different methods of teaching, especially in teaching various levels of Arabic as a foreign language, in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in a variety of academic and non-academic institutions including colleges, high schools and MEMRI – The Middle East Media Research Institute. His academic disciplines are religious studies, Islamic and Middle Eastern history, and Arabic language and literature. His fields of teaching and research are Arabic language and literature, Islamic mysticism, theology, and law, and the relationship between Islam and Judaism.
In his Ph.D. dissertation (“Protection from Sin in al-Qushayri’s Thought”, 2010, under the supervision of Prof. Etan Kohlberg) and in his published research, Dr. Stern has studied Islamic mysticism and its interrelations with theology and law, as well as the special poetics of Sufi literature.
He was awarded The Harry Hershon Prize for Fine Literature (1998) for his book of poetry, Crucified Cantor, and he has published poems and translations of Arabic poetry in several books and journals. His academic awards and distinctions include: The Rotenstreich Ph.D. scholarship, Council for Higher Education in Israel; the S.D. Goitein Award; the Z. Stern Award; a scholarship from B'nai B'rith Jerusalem; the Liebes Award; The Hebrew University’s list of outstanding teachers.
Larisa Tregubova is a lecturer on and translator into Turkish. She has an MA from the State University of Moscow in linguistics and translation studies. At the Hebrew University, she teaches advanced Turkish.
Hila Zemer has been teaching Arabic at the Hebrew University since 2004. She has a BA in Arabic Language and History and Middle Eastern History, and an MA and PhD in Middle Eastern History, all from the Hebrew University. Her doctoral dissertation addressed the weak verb class in modern Arabic dialects.
Or Amir studies the social history of Islam in the late Middle Ages, with emphasis on the Mamluk period. His research focuses on the social role of Sufi sheikhs and saint rituals in Islam, as well as questions related to religious, spiritual and social authority. Amir obtained his PhD from the Hebrew University in 2020. His dissertation examined the relations between Sufi saints and the Mamluk government. In addition to these areas, Amir also studies the history of Palestine in the Mamulk period; his articles on Safed and Gaza were published in leading journals. From 2014-2028, Amir was a fellow in an ERC research group led by Prof. Michal Biran focused on mobility and intercultural contacts in the Mongol Empire. This research produced several articles on the movements of Islamic scholars between the Mongol Empire and the Mamluk Sultanate.
Courses taught:
Sufism and Saint Rituals in Islam; Religion, Society and State from the Seljuks to the Ottomans; Premodern Islamic Historiography
Recent Publications:
2021. “From Saint to Eponymous Founder: Abū Bakr al-Mawṣilī (d. 797/1394) and his Ṭarīqa Mawṣiliyya.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 143(1): 1-20. 2024. “The Dual Meaning of Shafāʽa and the Social Function of the Saints in Mamluk Society.” 2024. Arabica 71(4-5): 430-73. 2025. “'Is Fiqh Now Determined Based on Dreams?!' The Debate Over the Legal Value of Dreams and the Question of Religious Authority in Sunni Islam.” Islamic Law and Society 32(3): 173-202.
Born in Jerusalem. Living since in the city, I am interested in Jews, Arabs and Jewish-Arab relations. My fields of research and teaching include Palestinian society and politics; Zionist perspectives on the war of 1948; Palestinian refugees and the Nakba; Religion (Judaism, Islam and Christianity) and the Jewish-Arab encounter; Israeli security agencies; Palestinian collaborators; justice and reconciliation; Palestinian and Hebrew literature.
Course taught:
The Zionist-Palestinian Conflict; Local Palestinian History; Reading Arabic Texts
Recent publications:
2025. Enemies, Love Story: Mizrahi-Arab-Ashkenazi Relations Since the Dawn of Zionism. Penn State University Press;
Between the Jordan and the Sea: My Memories Between the Two Nations. Tel Aviv: Altneuland (Hebrew).
Abigail Jacobson is an associate professor in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University, and the Academic Director of the MA Honors Program at the Mandel School of Advanced Studies in the Humanities. She deals with the social and urban history of Palestine/Land of Israel and the eastern Mediterranean in the late Ottoman and Mandate periods, as well is in the first years of the State of Israel. Her main interests are the histories of ethnonationally mixed communities and spaces, particularly in times of war and transformation and the history of Oriental Jews. Jacobson’s first book is titled From Empire to Empire: Jerusalem Between Ottoman and British Rule (Syracuse University Press, 2011). She wrote the second, Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine (Brandeis/New England University Press, 2016) together with Dr. Moshe Naor of Haifa University. The book won the 2016 Yehonatan Shapiro Best Book Award on behalf of the Association for Israel Studies (AIS); the 2017 Best Book Award by the Center for the Study of Relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims (Open University, Israel); and the Polonsky Prize on behalf of the Hebrew University. In 2021, it was published in Hebrew by Magnes. Jacobson completed her doctoral studies at the University of Chicago. Prior to joining the Hebrew University, she was a department head at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. She also edited the Journal of Levantine Studies. Her academic positions included a research fellow at the Crown Center for Middle east Studies, Brandeis University; lecturer at the Department of History, MIT; and guest lecturer at the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Boston University.
Selected courses taught:
Cities in the Middle East: History, Culture and Society; Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Dilemmas of a National Minority; The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict; The Middle-East Beyond Academia: a specialization course
Recent Publications:
Naor, Moshe, and Abigail Jacobson. 2024. “Trapped Neighborhoods, Trapped Identities: Musrara and Wadi Salib Compared, 1949-1967.” Journal of Urban History 52(1).
Naor, Moshe, and Abigail Jacobson. 2023. “Between the Border of Despair and the 'Circle of Tears': Musrara on the Margins of Jewish-Arab Existence in Jerusalem.” Jewish Social Studies 28 (2): 75-98.
Jacobson, Abigail. 2022. “Contested Public Space in 'Downtown Jerusalem': The Jaffa Gate and Municipal Garden in Late Ottoman Jerusalem”. In From the Household to the Wider World: Local Perspectives on Urban Institutions in Ottoman Bilad al-Sham during the Transformations of the Long Nineteenth-Century, edited by Yuval Ben Bassat and Johann Bussow, 195-206. Tübingen: Tübingen University Press.
Born in Tallinn, Estonia, Julia Rubanovich spent her undergraduate years at the St-Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) university, where she studied Iranian philology.After immigration to Israel, she completed her undergraduate, graduate and PhD studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning her PhD degree in classical Persian literature in 2005. She was a post-doctoral Rothschild fellow (2004-2005) at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations of the University of Toronto. Julia Rubanovich started her teaching career while still an undergraduate student in 1993. Since then she has been teaching a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in Iranian cultural history, medieval and modern Persian literature and language.
Her research focuses on medieval Persian literature with an emphasis on epic poetry, including Shāhīn’s oeuvre in the Judeo-Persian language; on folk literature, notably prose dāstāns, and the problem of medieval orality; on the Alexander-Romance in the Islamic domain; and more recently on literary paratexts and the concepts of authorship in connection with the notion of literary canon.
Her recent publications include an edited volume Orality and Textuality in the Iranian World: Patterns of interaction across the centuries (Brill, 2015); ʻRe-Writing the Episode of Alexander and Candace in Medieval Persian Literature,ʼ in Alexander the Great in the Middle Ages: Transnational Perspectives, ed. Markus Stock (Toronto University Press, 2015); ʻWhy So Many Stories? Untangling the Versions of Iskandar’s Birth and Upbringing,ʼ in Orality and Textuality in the Iranian World: Patterns of interaction across the centuries, ed. J. Rubanovich (Brill, 2015); ʻOrality in Medieval Persian Literature,ʼ in Medieval Oral Literature, ed. Karl Reichl (De Gruyter, 2012); ʻTracking the Shahnama Tradition in Medieval Persian Folk Prose,ʼ Shahnama Studies II, ed. Charles Melville and G.R. van den Berg (Brill, 2012).
Specializes in the history of the pre-modern Islamic world and the adjacent areas. Most of his publications have centered on the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria, the Mongol Ilkhanate of Iran and the surrounding countries, and the history of medieval Palestine. From 2010 to 2014, Reuven Amitai was dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University. From 2014 to 2016 he was a senior fellow at the University of Bonn, at the "Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg: History and Society during the Mamluk Era (1250-1517)".
He is currently the chairperson of the Library Authority at the Hebrew University. His recent publications include Holy War and Rapprochement: Studies in the Relations between the Mamluk Sultanate and the Mongol Ilkhanate (1260-1335) (Brepols, 2013); co-edited with Michal Biran: Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change: The Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors (University of Hawaii Press, 2015); and co-edited with Christoph Cluse: Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean, 11th to 15th Centuries, forthcoming at Brepols.
Ron Shaham (Ph.D. in Islamic Studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1992; post-doc at Cornell University on a Fulbright scholarship, 1993-1994) is an associate professorat the Hebrew University. He was a visiting scholar at Princeton University (1999-2000) and at the University of Washington in Seattle (2006-2007). He served as the Director of the Levtzion Center for Islamic Studies (2008-2010) and as the Chair of the Dept. of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University (2012-2015).
Prof. Shaham’s main fields of research are family law reform and its application in the shariʿa courts (especially in Egypt); the legal status of non-Muslims in modern Islamic societies; expert witnesses at the shariʿa courts; the modern discourse on the renewal of Islamic law. His main publications are: Family and the Courts in Modern Egypt (Brill, 1997); (editor); Law, Custom and Statute in the Muslim World: Studies in Honor of Aharon Layish (Brill, 2007); The Expert Witness in Islamic Courts: Medicine and Crafts in the Service of Law (University of Chicago Press, 2010) . He is currently working on a book-length study of the juristic theory and legal opinions of Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
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