JERUSALEM — David Ayalon, a major force in Middle Eastern scholarship in Israel, died on June 25 in Jerusalem at the age of 84. One of his last projects was a study of the moshav where he was born in 1914 in Rosh Pina.
He is known not only for the quality of his scholarship, but also for its impact on Israeli public life.
Ayalon devoted himself for almost half a century to the study of the Mamluks, slave-soldiers who ruled huge areas of the central Islamic empire. They were based in Egypt until the early 19th century.
Ayalon published a number of books and a string of articles on many different aspects of Mamluk culture, studies that virtually created a new field of research and provided many of the answers to the fundamental questions that they raised.
With its detailed study of original sources, many of them still in manuscript, Ayalon’s work not only offered a model for younger scholars to emulate, but also made available huge amounts of new information and suggested radical new interpretations of the enduring social institutions and forms of government the Mamluks created.
Ayalon worked in the political department of the Jewish Agency in Mandate Palestine. Later he worked in the new Israeli Foreign Ministry. In 1947, together with Pesach Shinar, he produced a modern Arabic-Hebrew dictionary, known to generations of Israeli readers simply as Ayalon-Shinar.
Ayalon-Shinar is still unsurpassed for the range and richness of its coverage, its absolute accuracy, and its high standards. It is not just a dictionary of Arabic for users of Hebrew, but a basic working tool for all who use modern Arabic far beyond the geographic borders of the Middle East.
In 1950 Ayalon moved to the Hebrew University, focusing not only on medieval, but also modern and contemporary Middle Eastern studies. He believed that only through sustained and detached scientific investigation of the surrounding world could Israel come to find its place in the Middle East, and reach accommodation with its neighbors.
The award of the Israel Prize for Humanities in 1972 was as much a recognition of the importance of his historical work on the medieval Middle East as an acknowledgment of his immense contribution to the advancement of understanding between Israel and the Arabs.