Literatureשאול שקד

Shaul Shaked

Shaul Shaked was an Israeli scholar of Iranian studies and comparative religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a winner of the Israel Prize for linguistics in 2000.

1933 to 2021Research on ZoroastrianismPre-Islamic Iranian cultureStudy of Jewish magicJudeo-Persian studies

Born: 5 March 1933, Debrecen
Died: 27 October 2021
Occupation: writer, historian, linguist, orientalist
Education: University of London, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Shaul Shaked was born in 1933 in Debrecen

Shaul Shaked was born on March 5, 1933, in Debrecen, Hungary, to a religious Zionist family. He moved to the Land of Israel with his parents as a small child. He attended the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa, where he studied in the Oriental studies track.

He began studying Arabic and Semitic linguistics at the Hebrew University in 1952 and completed a master's degree in Arabic and religious studies in 1959. He earned his doctorate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, with a thesis on pre-Islamic Persian wisdom literature submitted in 1964. His first book, a bibliography of Cairo Geniza documents, appeared in 1964.

He taught at the Hebrew University from 1965 and became a full professor in 1980. His research covered pre-Islamic Iran, Zoroastrianism, Jewish magic, Aramaic documents and Judeo-Persian. He was a visiting scholar at many universities, including Harvard and Berkeley.

He was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1985 and chaired its humanities division from 1995 to 2001. He headed the Ben-Zvi Institute and served as president of the Union Académique Internationale from 2001 to 2004, later becoming its honorary president. He died on October 27, 2021.