Prof. Arik Sadan

Middle East & Islamic Studies
Chair of the Middle East & Islamic Studies Department
Ph.D., Arabic Language and Literature, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Master’s, Arabic Language and Literature, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Bachelor’s, Arabic Linguistics, Language, and Literature, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Prof. Arik Sadan is a scholar of Arabic, and an expert in Arabic grammatical thought and classical, modern, and spoken Arabic linguistics. His book The Subjunctive Mood in Arabic Grammatical Thought is considered a standard in the field.

Prof. Sadan wrote his doctoral thesis under the supervision of Prof. Aryeh Levin, winner of the Israel Prize for linguistics, and completed his first post-doctoral project at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena and Sorbonne-Nouvelle Paris; his findings were published as A Critical Edition of the Grammatical Treatise Taḏkirat Jawāmiʿ al-ʾAdawāt by Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Mahmoud. He was also a research fellow at Biblia Arabica (see https://biblia-arabica.com), which analyzes the translation methods of manuscripts and fragments of sacred scriptures found throughout the Middle East and around the world.

Selected Publications

Books

The Arabic Translation and Commentary of Yefet ben 'Eli the Karaite on the Book of Job (Karaite Texts and Studies) (Leiden: Brill, 2020)

A Critical Edition of the Grammatical Treatise Taḏkirat Jawāmiʿ al-ʾAdawāt by Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Maḥmūd (Arabische Studien Series), Tilman Seidensticker, and Hartmut Bobzin, eds. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012).

The Subjunctive Mood in Arabic Grammatical Thought (Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics), Aaron. D. Rubin and Ahmad Al-Jallad, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

Articles

"Arab Grammarians’ Theories vs. Actual Linguistic Usage: The Naṣb (subjunctive) Mood as Used in al-Iṣfahānī’s Kitāb al-Aġānī," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 43 (2016), pp. 209-218.

"The Meaning of the Technical Term Jawāb in Arabic Grammar," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 37 (2010), pp. 129-137.

"The Technical Terms Xiffa and Ṯiqal in the Usage of the Arabic Grammarians," Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 48 (2008), pp. 58-74.

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