Claude Cahen was a 20th-century French Marxistorientalist and historian. He specialized in the studies of the IslamicMiddle Ages, Muslim sources about the Crusades, and social history of the medieval Islamic society. Claude Cahen was born in Paris to a French Jewish family. After studying at the École Normale Supérieure on the rue d'Ulm, he attended the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales, receiving a doctorate in 1940. He was a professor at the University of Strasbourg from 1945 to 1959 and then at the Sorbonne; in 1967 he was invited to teach at the University of Michigan, and in 1973, he was elected to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Cahen was married and had six children, including the historian Michel Cahen, who wrote a biography of his father. Cahen was a member of the French Communist Party from the 1930s until 1960, and remained an active Marxist afterwards. Despite his origins, he neither self-identified as Jewish nor supported the State of Israel. In 1954 he published "An Introduction to the First Crusade" in the OxfordjournalPast and Present. Cahen has been called "the doyen of Islamic social history and one of the most influential Islamic historians of century," and "the best historian of the Middle East in the twentieth century." Mark Cohen describes him as a distinguished Islamic historian. He was a prisoner of war in World War II. The Festschrift Itineraires d'Orient: Hommages a Claude Cahen, edited by Raoul Curiel and Rika Gyselen, appeared in 1995 as an honor to his "distinguished career", and an issue of the journal Arabica was dedicated to him. That issue also includes a nearly complete bibliography of his works.
Works
, thèse de doctorat es-Lettres, Université de Paris, éditions P. Geuthner. ASIN : B001D5E1AQ ASIN : B0018H4LZO
Le régime féodal de l'Italie Normande, 145 pages, thèse complémentaire de l'Université de Paris, éditions P. Geuthner. LCCN 42034209
« L'histoire économique et sociale de l'Orient musulman médiéval », revue Studia Islamica, Paris.
« Les facteurs économiques et sociaux dans l'ankylose culturelle de l'Islam », in Classicisme et déclin culturel dans l'histoire de l'Islam, , 396 pages, éditions Besson et Chantemerle.
« Mouvements populaires et autonomismes urbains dans l'Asie musulmane du Moyen Âge », revue Arabica, Brill Academic Publishers. Tiré à part de 91 pages, Part II, Arabica VI, , Part III, Arabica VI, LC DS223 C24 1959
« La changeante portée sociale de quelques doctrines religieuses », in L'élaboration de l'Islam, compte rendu du , 127 pages éditions PUF.
« Points de vue sur la Révolution abbaside », dans Revue historique.
Douanes et commerce dans les ports méditerranéens de l'Égypte médiévale, 314 pages, éditions E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1964.
