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Israel Wolfensohn (Ben-Zeev)

إسرائيل ولفنسون (بن زئيف)

Notable figure 1899–1980 · Source: Najib al-Aqiqi, al-Mustashriqun, 3rd ed. (Cairo: Dar al-Maʿarif, 1964), vol. 2, p. 762; Yahya Murad, Muʿjam asmaʾ al-mustashriqin, p. 1115 · Second source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, authority record: Ben-Zeev, Israel (1899-1980)

From Palestine; worked in Egypt

Field: Philology and Semitics

Affiliation

Author of Tarikh al-lughat al-samiyya in Arabic (1930)

Biography

Born in Jerusalem, he taught Semitic languages at Dar al-ʿUlum and then at the Egyptian University in Cairo (1933–1939). He wrote, in Arabic, Tarikh al-lughat al-samiyya (Cairo, 1930), a survey of the language family to which Arabic belongs, and before it a history of the Jews in Arabia before and in early Islam (1927), with a preface by Taha Husayn.