Évariste Lévi-Provençal

Évariste Lévi-Provençal (4 January 1894 – 27 March 1956) was a French medievalist, orientalist, Arabist, and historian of Islam.

The scholar who would take the name Lévi-Provençal was born 4 January 1894 in Constantine, French Algeria, as Makhlóuf Evariste Levi (Arabic: مخلوف إفاريست ليفي),[1][2] his second name revealing that his North-African Jewish family was already somewhat Gallicized.

[2] By the age of nineteen when he published his first paper he had rechristened himself Évariste Lévi-Provençal.

[2] He studied at the Lycée in Constantine, and served in the French army during World War I, being wounded in the Dardanelles in 1917.

[1] He worked on editing and translating the Arabic sources for the medieval history of Spain, often with Spanish Arabist Emilio García Gómez.