Claude Cahen (26 February 1909 – 18 November 1991) was a 20th-century French

Marxist Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialecti ...

orientalist and

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

. He specialized in the studies of the

Islamic Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the ma ...

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

sources about the

Crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were ...

, and

social history Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...

of the medieval Islamic society (works on Futuwa orders). Claude Cahen was born in Paris to a French

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family.Ira M. Lapidus, review of Curiel and Gyselen (1995), ''Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient'' 39.2 (1996), pp. 189-90 After studying at the

École Normale Supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, S ...

on the rue d'Ulm, he attended the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales, receiving a doctorate in 1940. He was a professor at the

University of Strasbourg The University of Strasbourg (french: Université de Strasbourg, Unistra) is a public research university located in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, with over 52,000 students and 3,300 researchers. The French university traces its history to the ea ...

from 1945 to 1959 and then at the Sorbonne; in 1967 he was invited to teach at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, and in 1973, he was elected to the

Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres () is a French learned society devoted to history, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the Institut de France. The academy's scope was the study of ancient inscriptions (epigr ...

. He was later elected to the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

in 1983. Cahen was married and had six children, including the historian Michel Cahen, who wrote a biography of his father. Cahen was a member of the

French Communist Party The French Communist Party (french: Parti communiste français, ''PCF'' ; ) is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its MEPs sit in the European ...

from the 1930s until 1960, and remained an active

afterwards. Despite his origins, he neither self-identified as Jewish nor supported the

State of Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

. In 1954 he published "An Introduction to the First Crusade" in the

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

journal '' Past and Present''. Cahen has been called "the ''doyen'' of Islamic social history and one of the most influential Islamic historians of iscentury," and "the best historian of the Middle East in the twentieth century." Mark Cohen describes him as a distinguished Islamic historian. He was a prisoner of war in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. The Festschrift ''Itineraires d'Orient: Hommages a Claude Cahen'', edited by Raoul Curiel and Rika Gyselen, appeared in 1995 as an honor to his "distinguished career",''Journal of the American Oriental Society'', October 1998 and an issue of the journal ''Arabica'' (43/1 (1996)) was dedicated to him. That issue also includes a nearly complete bibliography of his works.

Works

''La Syrie du Nord à l'époque des Croisades et la principauté franque d'Antioche''
thèse de doctorat es-Lettres, Université de Paris, éditions P. Geuthner (1940). ASIN : B001D5E1AQ ASIN : B0018H4LZO * ''Le régime féodal de l'Italie Normande'', 145 pages, thèse complémentaire de l'Université de Paris, éditions P. Geuthner (1940). LCCN 42034209 * « L'histoire économique et sociale de l'Orient musulman médiéval », revue ''Studia Islamica'', Paris (1955). * « Les facteurs économiques et sociaux dans l'ankylose culturelle de l'Islam », in ''Classicisme et déclin culturel dans l'histoire de l'Islam''
Symposium de Bordeaux (juin 1956)
396 pages, éditions Besson et Chantemerle (1957). * « Mouvements populaires et autonomismes urbains dans l'Asie musulmane du Moyen Âge », revue ''Arabica'', Brill Academic Publishers (1958-1959). Tiré à part de 91 pages (Part I, Arabica V, (p. 225–250), Part II, Arabica VI, (p. 25–56), Part III, Arabica VI, (p. 233–265) LC DS223 C24 1959 * « La changeante portée sociale de quelques doctrines religieuses », in ''L'élaboration de l'Islam'', compte rendu d
Colloque de Strasbourg sur l'Islam (juin 1959)
127 pages éditions PUF (1961). * « Points de vue sur la Révolution abbaside », dans ''Revue historique'' (1963). * ''Douanes et commerce dans les ports méditerranéens de l'Égypte médiévale'' (d'après al-Makhzumi. Minhaj), 314 pages, éditions E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1964. * '' Pre-Ottoman Turkey'', 458 pages, en anglais, éditions Sidg. & J, 1968. ** traduction française augmentée : ''La Turquie pré-ottomane'', 409 pages, Institut français d'études anatoliennes, éditions Varia Turcica (1988). * « Baba Ishaq, Baba Ilyas, Hadjdji Bektash et quelques autres », dans ''Turcica'', 1 (1969), (p. 53–64). * ''Turco-Byzantina et Oriens Christianus'', Londres, Variorum Reprints, 1974. * ''Les Peuples musulmans dans l'histoire médiévale'', 496 pages, éditions Institut français de Damas (1977). ASIN : B0000E8UM0 * ''Makhzûmiyyât : Études sur l'histoire économique et financière de l'Égypte médiévale'' (1977), 225 pages, Brill Academic Publishers (1 August 1997). * ''Introduction à l'histoire du monde musulman médiéval : VIIe–XVe'', 216 pages, éditions Maisonneuve (nouv. éd, 1983). * « djaych » (armée) et « hisba » (police des mœurs et des marchés), contributions à lEncyclopédie de l'Islam'', ''E.I.2'', Brill Academic Publishers, respectivement : volume II (1986), (p. 517–524) et volume III (1991), (p. 503–510). * ''Orient et Occident au temps des croisades'', 302 pages (1983) (restitue les croisades dans le contexte d'une histoire méditerranéenne), éditions Aubier Montaigne (24 septembre 1992). * ''L'Islam, des origines au début de l'Empire ottoman'', poche, 413 pages (réédition mise à jour ), éditions Hachette Littérature (17 September 1997). Références : « Claude Cahen : histoire et engagement politique. Entretien avec Maxime Rodinson » (propos recueillis par D. Gazagnadou et F. Micheau, bibliographie exhaustive des ouvrages, articles et comptes-rendus de Claude Cahen), ''Arabica'' (Brill éditeur), vol. 43, n°1 (1996), (p. 7–27)
Revue ''Arabica''

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cahen, Claude 1909 births 1991 deaths École Normale Supérieure alumni French Communist Party members 20th-century French Jews French Marxist historians French Marxists French Arabists French prisoners of war in World War II Historians of the Crusades Jewish socialists Members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres University of Strasbourg faculty University of Paris faculty University of Michigan faculty Writers from Paris 20th-century French historians Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur Members of the American Philosophical Society