Eliyahu Ashtor

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Eliyahu Ashtor (Hebrew: אליהו אשתור; born Eduard Strauss, 1914–1984) was an Austrian Jewish-Israeli historian from a Zionist family. He studied at the University of Vienna, earning a doctorate in Oriental studies in 1936. After the Anschluss in 1938, he moved to Mandate Palestine and worked at the National Library of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He earned a second doctorate at the Hebrew University in 1944. He initially studied the Golden Age of Jewish culture in Spain, but later focused on medieval Near East history, especially the social and economic history of medieval Egypt, drawing on Cairo Geniza manuscripts. He became a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1969.