Reuven Amitai is Eliyahu Elath Professor for Muslim History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and studies the history of the medieval Islamic world, Central Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean. He is interested in the pre-modern history of the Turks and Mongols, especially the history of the Ilkhanate; the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria; the Crusades in the Levant and Muslim responses; the military history of the medieval Middle East World; conversion to Islam; late medieval Arabic epigraphy; and, Palestine in the late medieval period. He is currently engaged in a study of Gaza under Mamluk rule (1260-1516).
He has been a visiting researcher or professor at Princeton University (1990-91), St. Antony’s College at Oxford University (1996-97), (2004); l’EcolePratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris (2007), l’Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (2016), Center for the Studies of the Christian East (Faculty of Theology) at Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg (2018), Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies at the University of Heidelberg (2019), and Villa I Tatti (2019, Robert Lehman Visiting Professor). From 2014 to 2016 he was a senior fellow at the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg: History and Society during the Mamluk Era (1250-1517), at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.
His publications include Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Ilkhanid War, 1260-1281 (Cambridge University Press, 1995); The Mongols in the Islamic Lands: Studies in the History of the Ilkhanate (Ashgate, 2007); and Holy War and Rapprochement: Studies in the Relations between the Mamluk Sultanate and the Mongol Ilkhanate (1260-1335) (Brepols, 2013). He has co-edited The Mongol Empire and its Legacy (with David Morgan, Brill, 1999); Mongols, Turks and Others: Eurasian Nomads and Their Sedentary Neighbors (with Michal Biran, Brill, 2005); Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change: The Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors (with Michal Biran, University of Hawaii Press, 2015; Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean, 11th to 15th Centuries (with Christoph Cluse, Brepols, 2017); and, The Mamluk Sultanate from the Perspective of Regional and World History: Economic, Social and Cultural Developments in an Era of Increasing International Interaction and Competition (with Stephan Conermann, V&R Unipress and University of Bonn Press, 2019). He has also published over a hundred scholarly articles, along with many dozens of shorter pieces, encyclopedia entries and book reviews.
Reuven Amitai has also served in various administrative positions at the Hebrew University. He has been chairman of the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies (1997-2001) and director of the Institute of Asian and African Studies (2001-4, 2008-2010). In 2004 he became the founding director of the Nehemia Levtzion Center for Islamic Studies, a position that he held until 2007. From 2010 to 2014, Reuven Amitai was dean of the Faculty of Humanites at the Hebrew University. From 2017-2023, he was Chairperson of the Library Authority at the Hebrew University, with responsibility for the University's library system. He started as director of the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of the Jewish Communities of the East in January 2026.