Atiyeh, George N. 1923–2008

(George Nicholas Atiyeh)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born May 21, 1923, in Amioun, Lebanon; died of pneumonia, April 21, 2008, in Fairfax County, VA. Historian, Middle East scholar, educator, librarian, and author. Atiyeh began his career as a history professor, following brief appointments in Lebanon and Libya with more than twenty-five years at the University of Puerto Rico. Atiyeh became an American citizen and moved to the nation's capital as a librarian at the Library of Congress. He spent the rest of his career there, where he assembled a vast and highly respected collection of the publications of the Arabic-speaking world. Though his appointment was in the Near East section of the library, his acquisitions encompassed works from Turkey eastward to Afghanistan and Central Asia, and southward through the Middle East to the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa. At home in the United States, he began collecting Arabic-language periodicals published throughout the country. In the seventies Atiyeh also taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. He was active in the community of Middle East scholars, as a founding member of the Middle East Librarians Association, as an advisor to both Georgetown University and the White House, and as a member of the editorial board of the Middle East Journal. An Orthodox Christian himself, Atiyeh also served as an advisor to the al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation of England and as an expert on Christian-Muslim relations. Atiyeh was the editor of The Book in the Islamic World: The Written Word and Communication in the Middle East (1995), and wrote or edited a handful of other books in Arabic, Spanish, and English, including The Conservation and Preservation of Islamic Manuscripts: Proceedings of the Third Conference of al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation (1996).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2008, p. B5.

Washington Post, May 2, 2008, p. B7.