Sarah Stroumsa

Sarah Stroumsa was born in 1950 in Haifa

Sarah Stroumsa was born in Haifa in 1950. Her parents came from Eastern Europe and settled in the Land of Israel before World War II. She grew up in Kiryat Bialik and moved with her family to Jerusalem in 1963.

She studied Arabic language and literature and Middle Eastern studies at the Hebrew University, graduating in 1977. In 1976 and 1977 she also studied religious studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. She earned her doctorate at the Hebrew University in 1984, with a thesis on the medieval thinker Dawud al-Muqammis written under Haggai Ben-Shammai.

She taught in the departments of Arabic and Jewish thought at the Hebrew University and became a full professor in 1999. She was vice-rector from 2003 to 2006 and rector from 2008 to 2012. Her research deals with philosophical and theological thought in Arabic in the early Islamic Middle Ages and with Judeo-Arabic culture.

Her books include works on freethinkers of medieval Islam, on Maimonides, and on philosophy in Islamic Spain. She is a member of several academies, including the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. She is married to Guy Stroumsa, and they have two daughters.