Uri Rubin

Uri Rubin was born in 1944 in Kiryat Ono

Uri Rubin was born in 1944 and grew up in Kiryat Ono. His parents were among the founders of the town. He attended Tichon Hadash high school in Tel Aviv and graduated in the first class of its new Oriental studies track.

He earned a bachelor's degree in Middle East history and Bible at Tel Aviv University. He then studied in the new Department of Arabic Language and Literature founded by Meir Yaakov Kister. He went on directly to a doctorate, submitted in 1975 under Kister's guidance, on the figure of Muhammad in early Islamic tradition.

Rubin taught in the Arabic department at Tel Aviv University and later headed it. He held the Irene Halmos Chair of Arabic Literature from 2009 to 2014 and retired as a full professor in 2012. He served on the advisory board of the Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an, published by Brill.

His research examined how early Muslims saw their past, religion and culture through the Qur'an and Islamic tradition. In articles on the religion of Abraham, he argued that the link between Abraham and the Kaaba existed before Islam. He published a Hebrew translation of the Qur'an in 2005 and died on October 26, 2021.