Maxime Rodinson

Maxime Rodinson was a French historian and sociologist. Ideologically a Marxist, Rodinson was a prominent authority in oriental studies. He was the son of a Russian-Belarusian clothing trader and his wife, who both were murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp. After studying oriental languages, he became a professor of Ge'ez at the École pratique des hautes études. He was the author of a body of work, including the book Muhammad, a biography of the prophet of Islam.