Eliyahu Ashtor

Eliyahu Ashtor (born Eduard Strauss 1914–1984) was an Austrian-Israeli historian He was from a Zionist family. Studying at Vienna University, he completed a doctorate in Oriental studies in 1936. He emigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1938, following the Anschluss to Nazi Germany, and worked in the National Libtary of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Completing another doctorate at Jerusalem University in 1944, he at first specialized on the history of the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain but soon moved to the medieval history of the Near East, and especially social and economic history medieval Egypt, drawing from the manuscripts of the Cairo Geniza. He was professor at the University of Jerusalem from 1969.