Michael Lecker
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Michael Lecker (born 1951) is an Israeli scholar who is Emeritus Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...
. His work focuses on the social and political history of early Islam, with a particular emphasis on prosopography, and on the biography of the Islamic prophet
Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد;  570 – 8 June 632 Common Era, CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Muhammad in Islam, Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet Divine inspiration, di ...
. A member of the "Jerusalem School", he was a student of
Meir Jacob Kister Meir Jacob Kister ( he, מאיר יעקב קיסטר‎ 16 January 1914 in Mościska – 16 August 2010 in Jerusalem) was a Jewish Arabist from Poland who worked in Israel. Kister went to school in Sanok and Przemyśl. In 1932 he began studies i ...
.


Career

Lecker taught at the Hebrew University between 1978 and 2021. His 1978
Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...
thesis (supervised by Yehoshua Blau), titled "Jewish Settlements in Babylonia during the
Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cente ...
ic Period", traced Talmudic placenames that survived in the geographical literature. His 1983 doctoral thesis (supervised by Meir Jacob Kister), titled "On the Prophet Muhammad's Activity in Medina", analyzed the document that some scholars call the Constitution of Medina and several other topics relating to Muhammad's
Medina Medina,, ', "the radiant city"; or , ', (), "the city" officially Al Madinah Al Munawwarah (, , Turkish: Medine-i Münevvere) and also commonly simplified as Madīnah or Madinah (, ), is the Holiest sites in Islam, second-holiest city in Islam, ...
n period (622-632 CE).


Prizes and awards

* 1975: The Josef David Farhi Prize (Institute of Asian and African Studies) * 1980: The S.M. Stern Prize (Institute of Asian and African Studies) * 1983: The Mauricio Richter Fellowship (The Hebrew University) * 1984-1985: Rothschild Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Yad Hanadiv Foundation, Jerusalem. At the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of London. * 1987-1989: Yigal Alon Fellowship, Council for Higher Education, Israel


Select bibliography

Lecker's works include: * “Did Muhammad conclude Treaties with the Jewish Tribes Naḍīr, Qaynuqāʿ, and Qurayẓa,” in Uri Rubin and David Wasserstein, eds., ''Israel Oriental Studies'', Volume 17: Dhimmis and Others: Jews and Christians and the World of Classical Islam (University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 1997), pp. 29–36. * “Glimpses of Muḥammad’s Medinan Decade,” in Jonathan E. Brockopp, ed., ''The Cambridge Companion to Muḥammad'' (Cambridge, New York et al.: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 61–82. * ''Jews and Arabs in Pre- and Early Islamic Arabia'' (Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, 1998). * ''Muhammad ve-ha-yehudim'' (Hebrew: "Muhammad and the Jews") (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2014). * “Muhammad at Medina: A Geographical Approach,” ''Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam'', 6 (1985), pp. 29–62. * ''Muslims, Jews and Pagans: Studies on Early Islamic Medina'' (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2017). * “On Arabs of the Banū Kilāb Executed Together with the Jewish Banū Qurayẓa,” ''Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam'', 19 (1995), pp. 66–72. * ''People, Tribes and Society in Arabia Around the Time of Muhammad'' (Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2005). * “Sulaym,” ''Encyclopaedia of Islam'', Vol. 9, pp. 817–818. * “The Assassination of the Jewish Merchant Ibn Sunayna according to an Authentic Family Account,” in Nicolet Boekhoff-van der Voort, Kees Versteegh and Joas Wagemakers, eds., T''he Transmission and Dynamics of the Textual Sources of Islam: Essays in Honour of Harald Motzki'' (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 181–195. * ''The Banū Sulaym: A Contribution to the Study of Early Islam The Max Schloessinger Memorial Series, Monographs IV'' (Jerusalem: Institute of Asian and African Studies, The Hebrew University, 1989). * “The Death of the Prophet Muḥammad’s Father: Did Wāqidī Invent Some of the Evidence?,” ''Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft'' (145), 1995, pp. 9–27. * “The Jews of Northern Arabia in Early Islam,” in Phillip I. Lieberman, ed., ''The Cambridge History of Judaism Vol. 5: Jews in the Medieval Islamic World'' (Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 255–293. * “Ukaydir ibn ʿAbdul Malik al-Kindī,” ''Encyclopaedia of Islam'', Vol. 10, p. 784. * “ʿUyayna b. Ḥiṣn,” ''Encyclopaedia of Islam'', Vol. 10, pp. 959–960. * “Wādī ʾl-Ḳurā,” ''Encyclopaedia of Islam'', Vol. 11, pp. 18–19. * “Wāqidī (d. 822) vs. Zuhrī (d. 742): The Fate of the Jewish Banū Abī l-Ḥuqayq,” in C. J. Robin, ed., ''Le judaïsme de l'Arabie antique: Actes du Colloque de Jérusalem'' (février 2006) (Paris: Brepols, 2015), pp. 495–509. * “Wāqidī's Account on the Status of the Jews of Medina: A Study of a Combined Report,” ''Journal of Near Eastern Studies'', Vol. 54, No. 1 (January 1995), pp. 15–32. * “Were there Female Relatives of the Prophet Muḥammad among the Besieged Qurayẓa?” ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'', Vol. 136, No. 2 (April–June 2016), pp. 397–404. * “Zayd B. Thābit, ‘A Jew with Two Sidelocks’: Judaism and Literacy in Pre-Islamic Medina (Yathrib),” ''Journal of Near Eastern Studies'', Vol. 56, No. 4 (October 1997), pp. 259–273.


References


Sources


Biography of Prof. Michael Lecker
at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Bibliography of Prof. Michael Lecker
at World Catalog {{DEFAULTSORT:Lecker, Michael 1951 births Living people Israeli Arabists Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni Hebrew University of Jerusalem faculty