Reuven Amitai

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Reuven Amitai is professor emeritus of Middle Eastern History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, formerly holding the Eliyahu Elath Chair in the History of the Islamic Countries. He studies the history of the medieval Middle East, Central Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean, and is particularly interested in the pre-modern history of the Turks and Mongols, especially the history of the Ilkhanate (the Mongol state in Iran and neighboring counties - 13th-14th centuries); the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria (1250-1517); the Crusades in the Levant and Middle Eastern responses; the military history of the medieval Middle East World; conversion to Islam; late medieval Arabic epigraphy; and, Palestine in the late medieval period. Beginning around 2014, he has been intermittently engaged in a study of Gaza under Mamluk rule (1260-1516). On 1 January 2026, Reuven began serving as director of the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of the Jewish Communities of the East, located in Jerusalem.