Schimon Schamir

Schimon Schamir was born in 1933 in Satu Mare

Schimon Schamir was born in 1933 in Satu Mare, Transylvania, Romania. In 1940 he came to the Land of Israel with his family on the immigrant ship Sakarya and was held in the Atlit detention camp. He attended religious schools in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and finished high school in the Oriental studies track of Ironi Bet in Tel Aviv.

He served in the Nahal from 1951 to 1954. He studied Arabic and the modern Middle East at the Hebrew University from 1954 to 1958 and worked as a research assistant to Shlomo Dov Goitein. He earned a doctorate at Princeton University in 1960, writing on the Al-Azm governors of Syria.

In 1966 he moved to Tel Aviv University, where he founded the Department of Middle Eastern and African History and the Shiloah Institute, which he headed until 1973. He became a full professor in 1979 and held the Kaplan Chair in the history of Egypt and Israel from 1980 to 2004. He also founded the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research and an institute for diplomacy and regional cooperation.

In 1982 he founded the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo and was its first director. He served as ambassador to Egypt from 1988 to 1990 and to Jordan from 1994 to 1997. He retired as professor emeritus in 2002 and received the Israel Prize in 2022.