Shelomo Dov Goitein (April 3, 1900 – February 6, 1985) was a German-Jewish ethnographer, historian and Arabist known for his research on Jewish life in the Islamic Middle Ages, and particularly on the Cairo Geniza.

[3] He died on February 6, 1985, the day his last volume of the series A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (vol.

The first delivery of The Individual: Portrait of a Mediterranean Personality of the High Middle Ages as Reflected in the Cairo Geniza had been sent to the University of California Press on December 26, 1984.

In 1938-1948, he served as a senior education officer in Mandatory Palestine—responsible for Jewish and Arab schools—and published books on methods of teaching the Bible and Hebrew.

An especially rich geniza with a large volume of correspondence was discovered in Old Cairo containing thousands of documents dating from the 9th to the 13th centuries.

As many Jews began letters and documents with the words "With the help of God," the papers reflected all aspects of everyday life in the countries of North Africa and bordering the Mediterranean.

The documents included many letters from Jewish traders en route from Tunisia and Egypt to Yemen and ultimately to India.

After deciphering the documents, and during his time as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania (1955-71),[3] Goitein vividly reconstructed many aspects of Jewish life in the Middle Ages, publishing them in a six-volume monumental series, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (1967–1993).

[2] Although the documents were written by Jews, they reflect the surrounding Muslim and Christian environments not only in countries bordering the Mediterranean but all the way to India.

Goitein consulted extensively the Haskell Isaacs's catalogue of the Wellcome Collection[8] and the Cairo Geniza material,[9] of which he was considered the preeminent scholar.

A Bibliography of the writings of Prof. Shelomo Dov Goitein, Israel Oriental society and the Institute of Asian and African Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1975.