Scienceראובן עמיתי

Reuven Amitai

Reuven Amitai is an Israeli-American historian of the medieval Middle East who studies the Mamluks and the Mongols and served as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

born 1955History of the Mamluk stateMongols in Islamic landsDean of Hebrew University Humanities

Born: 23 August 1955, Philadelphia
Occupation: historian, orientalist, university teacher
Education: University of Pennsylvania, Central High School, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Reuven Amitai was born in 1955 in Philadelphia

Amitai was born in Philadelphia in 1955 and grew up there. He finished Central High School in 1973. In 1975 and 1976 he was secretary general of the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement in North America.

He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1976 he moved to Israel with a Hashomer Hatzair group and lived on Kibbutz Harel, where he worked as a welder. He then earned a master's degree and a doctorate at the Hebrew University, receiving the doctorate in 1990 under Professor David Ayalon.

He held a postdoctoral year at Princeton University and was a fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, in 1996 and 1997. At the Hebrew University he chaired the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies from 1997 to 2001 and directed the Institute of Asian and African Studies twice. He also headed the Nehemia Levtzion Center for Islamic Studies.

His 1995 book from Cambridge University Press covers the war between the Mamluks and the Ilkhanid Mongols. He became a full professor in 2008 and was Dean of the Faculty of Humanities from 2010 to 2014. His research also covers the conversion of the Mongols to Islam.