Farewell to David Abulafia, a life between the Middle Ages and the Mediterranean

British historian David Abulafia died at his home in Oxford at the age of 76. One of the foremost scholars of medieval Mediterranean history. He was Professor Emeritus of History of the Mediterranean at Cambridge University and a Fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society, as well as a member of the Academia Europaea.

The announcement of his passing was made by Professor Richard Gilberson, Dean of Gonville & Caius College in Cambrige, where Abulafia had joined in 1974 as a Research Fellow, after completing his undergraduate degree at King's College, Cambridge, where he had also earned his PhD. "There is a sense of shock and great sadness on learning of David's sudden passing on Saturday evening. We all knew David as an extraordinary colleague and friend," Gilberson wrote in a message, expressing condolences to his wife Anna Brechta Sapir Abulafia - also a historian - who worked on Christian-Jewish relations.

There are many books in the Italian edition by David Abulafia. Among the most famous are 'Federicus II. Un imperatore medievale' (Einaudi, 1990) - in which he proposes a decidedly countercultural reading of the legendary sovereign - 'I regni del Mediterraneo occidentale dal 1200 al 1500. La lotta per il dominio" (Laterza, 1999), "La scoperta dell'umanità. Incontri atlantici nell'età di Colombo" (Il Mulino, 2010), the monumental work "Il grande mare. Storia del Mediterraneo' (Mondadori, 2013). The most recent publication, 'Maritime history of the world. Four millennia of discoveries, men and routes' (Mondadori, 2020) - which emphasises the role of maritime policy in the political, cultural and economic history of mankind - won the prestigious Wolfson History Prize, awarded annually to works intended for the general public that promote and encourage standards of excellence in history, and the Mountbatten Award.

David Abulafia was awarded the prestigious British Academy Medal in 2013 for his historiographical masterpiece The Great Sea. He was awarded the title of Commandeur of the Order of the British Empire in 2023 and the title of Commandeur of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity in 2004, 'for his writings on Italian history, Sicily and the Mezzogiorno in particular'. In this latter field of study, the books 'Le due Italie. Relazioni economiche fra il Regno normanno di Sicilia e i comuni settentrionali' (Guida Editori, 1991) and 'Il Duomo di Monreale. Lo splendore dei mosaici' (with Massimo Naro, Ithaca, 2009). He also edited the fifth volume of the New Cambridge Medieval History and the volume on Italy in the Middle Ages for the Oxford Short History of Italy.

He was born in Twickenham, a suburb of London, on 12 December 1949, as David Samuel Harvard Abulafia. His family, of ancient Sephardic Jewish ancestry, left Spain in 1492 and moved to Galilee, where he lived for centuries in Tiberias. Since his arrival at Gonville & Caius College at the age of 24, Abulafia has focused his research on the history of the medieval Mediterranean, in particular on the Kingdom of Sicily, Naples and the Aragonese dominions. The main focus of his attention has been the economic history and the encounter in the Mediterranean of the three great monotheistic faiths.