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Shmuel Moreh

Shmuel Moreh was an Iraqi-born Israeli scholar of Arabic language and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a recipient of the 1999 Israel Prize in Middle Eastern studies.

1932 to 2017Research on modern Arabic poetryArabic literature of Iraqi JewsIsrael Prize in Middle Eastern studies

Born: 22 December 1932, Baghdad
Died: 22 September 2017, Mevaseret Zion
Occupation: literary theorist, orientalist, poet, literary scholar
Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of London

Shmuel Moreh was born in 1932 in Baghdad

Moreh was born Sami Moallem in Baghdad in 1932 and grew up there. His mother taught French at an Alliance school, and his father was a chief accountant and later a land dealer and contractor. His grandfather, a rabbi, had a strong influence on him.

He studied at the Jewish Shamash high school in Baghdad from 1948 to 1950 and began publishing poems in Baghdad newspapers as a teenager. He immigrated to Israel in 1951 and first worked in construction with his brother. He earned a BA in 1958 and an MA in 1961 at the Hebrew University, then a doctorate at the University of London in 1965.

From 1966 he taught Arabic language and literature at the Hebrew University, and he headed the department from 1979 to 1982. In 1983 he became a full professor. He also taught part time at the University of Haifa and Bar-Ilan University.

He wrote in Arabic, Hebrew and English, with attention to Arabic writing by Iraqi Jews. His books include studies of modern Arabic poetry and medieval Arab theater and a book on the 1941 Farhud in Iraq. He received the Israel Prize in 1999 and died in 2017.