Reverend Father Henri Fleisch (1 January 1904 – 10 February 1985) was a French archaeologist, missionary and Orientalist, known for his work on classical Arabic language and Lebanese dialect and prehistory in Lebanon.
Fleisch was largely self-taught, specialising in oriental studies, for which he earned a doctorate at the Sorbonne in May 1943 with a thesis published on "Work and Memoirs of the Institute of Ethnology in Paris".
He was the author of two hundred forty publications, including the Eastern dialects and was a specialist in Arabic, Greek, Latin, Syriac and Hebrew.
He distinguished himself by combining research prehistory and geology, discovering the site of Naama and carrying out work at Tell Jisr and Ras Beyrouth.
Fleisch's most famous works are Introduction à l'Étude des langues sémitiques (1947),[5] L'Arabe classique (1968)[6] and Traité de philologie arabe, 1-2 (1961–79).