Yohanan Friedmann


Yohanan Friedmann is an Israeli scholar of Islamic studies.

Biography

Friedmann was born in Zákamenné, Czechoslovakia and immigrated to Israel with his parents in 1949. He attended high school at the Reali School in Haifa. In 1956 he began his undergraduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Arabic Language and Literature, receiving his BA in 1959. In 1962 he finished a master's degree in Arabic literature; his thesis was on the Arab poet Al-Ma'arri. After this, Friedman went to McGill University in Montreal to study for his doctorate. He learned Urdu and focused on the history of Islam in India. His dissertation on Muslim religious thinker Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi was approved in 1966. In the same year, Friedman joined the Hebrew University and was appointed lecturer in Islamic studies.
He is now Max Schloessinger Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and, since 1999, a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He held several offices with the University: Chair of the Institute of Asian Studies and African Studies from 1975-1978; Chair of the Graduate School from 1980-1983; Dean of Humanities from 1985-1988; Chair of the Department of Arabic language and literature from 2002-2004. In 2003 he was the Sternberg Distinguished Lecturer. In 2007 he has been elected Chair of the Humanities Division of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
In 2002 Friedmann was member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2003 he received the Landau Prize in the Humanities. Since 1993, he has been the editor of Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam. Friedmann served several times as visiting Professor at New York University and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1997 he was scholar in residence with the Rockefeller Foundation.

Research interests

Friedmann's studies center on Islamic religious thought, mainly in the Indian subcontinent. He assays the historical record for evidence of both tolerance and intolerance of other religious faiths in the Islamic tradition in his most recent work, "Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition".

Works