Scienceגבריאל בר

Gabriel Baer

Gabriel Baer was a German-born Israeli historian and orientalist who studied the social history of the modern Middle East, especially Egypt, and received the Israel Prize in 1976.

1919 to 1982Social history of modern EgyptFounding Asian and African Studies journalIsrael Prize for Arabic linguistics

Born: 13 January 1919, Berlin
Died: 22 September 1982, Jerusalem
Occupation: historian, orientalist
Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, American University of Beirut, Hebrew Reali School

Gabriel Baer was born in 1919 in Berlin

Baer was born in Berlin on 13 January 1919. As a young man he was a Trotskyist activist in the German section of the Fourth International. In 1933 he moved to Mandatory Palestine and attended the Reali School in Haifa.

In 1937 he and Tony Cliff founded the Revolutionary Communist League in Palestine. In the late 1940s he moved to Britain and wrote for left-wing papers, also publishing articles on the Middle East under the name S. Munir.

He studied at the American University of Beirut and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning a master's degree in 1952 and a doctorate in 1957. His doctorate dealt with landownership in modern Egypt from 1800 to 1950.

From 1954 he taught at the Hebrew University and headed its Institute of Asian and African Studies. He edited the journal Hamizrah Hehadash from 1953 to 1966 and founded Asian and African Studies in 1965. After the peace treaty with Egypt he initiated the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo.

In 1976 he received the Israel Prize for Arabic linguistics. He died in Jerusalem on 22 September 1982.