Voice of Arabic Network
Search
Joshua Blau
Image: Tzahy (en.wikipedia user), Attribution · Wikimedia Commons

Joshua Blau

يهوشع بلاو

Notable figure 1919–2020 · Source: PaleoJudaica, "Prof. Joshua Blau, 1919-2020" (October 2020) · Second source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, authority record: Blau, Joshua (1919-2020), Hebrew University of Jerusalem

From Hungary; worked in Palestine

Field: History of Arabic; Middle Arabic

Affiliation

Grammarian; Grammar of Mediaeval Judaeo-Arabic (1961)

Biography

Born in Kőszeg, Hungary, he lived in Palestine. Professor of Arabic language and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he founded the study of 'Middle Arabic', the non-standard Arabic of medieval texts. He wrote A Grammar of Mediaeval Judaeo-Arabic (Jerusalem, 1961), The Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judaeo-Arabic (Oxford, 1965), A Grammar of Christian Arabic (Louvain, 1966–1967) and A Dictionary of Mediaeval Judaeo-Arabic Texts (Jerusalem, 2006).