Levi Billig
anglo-Jewish orientalist (1897–1936)
Levi (Lewis) Billig (Hebrew: לוי ביליג; 1897 – 22 August 1936) was an Anglo-Jewish orientalist and scholar of Arabic. One of the pioneers of Arabic education in the Yishuv in Mandatory Palestine, Billig co-edited the first Arabic textbook for Hebrew-speaking students and was the first lecturer in Arabic language and literature at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Billig was murdered in 1936 by an Arab assassin in his home in the early months of the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.
Early life
Billig was born in London, England, in 1897. He earned two master's degrees, in classics from London University in 1920 and in Oriental Studies from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1925. At Cambridge, his professors included Edward Granville Browne, Anthony Ashley Bevan, and Reynold A. Nicholson. He also studied at Jews' College London.
Academic career
In 1926, Hebrew University administrator Judah L. Magnes appointed German scholar Josef Horovitz as the inaugural Visiting Director of the university's School of Oriental Studies. Billig was appointed the first lecturer in Arabic Language and Literature and oversaw the new department's research work. Billig was the only one of the eight founders of the School of Oriental Studies not to graduate from a German university.
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This entry incorporates text from “Levi Billig” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.