David Jacoby (1928–2018) was one of the leading historians of Byzantium and the Mediterranean world. His scholarship has deeply transformed the field of Byzantine studies and challenged the way it was perceived. Prof. Jacoby was a member of the international board of the Mediterranean Historical Review until his death, and contributed to it in numerous ways. We dedicate this issue in homage to his memory, and to the historical perspective his scholarship has defined.
David Jacoby was born in Antwerp in 1928. He escaped occupied Belgium with his family to Switzerland during the Second World War and migrated to Israel in 1947. He received his first two academic degrees at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before moving to Paris for his PhD dissertation, which he defended at the Sorbonne in 1958. He returned to Jerusalem and taught history at the Hebrew University until his retirement in 1996.
Jacoby dedicated a great part of his academic career to the study of Byzantium, its society, economy, demography, and international dynamics. His numerous books and articles placed Byzantium at the centre of the Mediterranean world, and made it pivotal to our understanding of Mediterranean historical processes. Focusing on the history of social and economic structures in commercial exchanges, currency, international trade, the silk industry, diplomacy, treaties and conquests, cross-cultural constructions, and questions of minorities, to state just a few examples, Prof. Jacoby’s scholarship reveals Byzantium as a Mediterranean superpower with a socioeconomic framework that connected the Balkans, the Black Sea, Latin Europe and the Middle East. Thanks to Jacoby’s scholarship, Byzantium is no longer studied as a world apart, disconnected from the global socioeconomic Mediterranean framework. In turn, the global Mediterranean framework and its forms of connectivity can no longer be studied without Byzantium as a leading player in their operation.
David Jacoby passed away on 4 October 2018. To commemorate his lifelong achievements in the field of Byzantine history, the MHR offers this special issue on “Byzantium between East and West” in his honour. Each in its own way, the four articles that compose the issue illuminate the influential perspective of Jacoby’s legacy and its importance to both Byzantine studies and Mediterranean history.