Professor of Islamology and Semitic Studies at the University of Mainz (Germany)
Manfred Kropp, born in Ludwigshafen, Federal Republic of Germany, in 1947, was Director of the German Institute for Oriental Studies in Beirut from 1999 to 2007. He studied Islamology, Medieval History and Semitic Studies at the Universities of Heidelberg and Paris.
In 1975, he obtained his doctorate with a thesis on pre-Islamic Arab history according to Muslim historians (edition and commentary of a text by a13th-century Andalusian author). In 1984, he defended his doctoral thesis with a study of Ethiopian historiography and its manuscript tradition.
He was Professor of Semitic Studies at the University of Heidelberg from 1985 to 1989. At Lund University (Sweden), he held the Chair of Semitic Studies from 1990 to 1991.
Since 1991, he has been Professor of Islamology and Semitic Studies at Mainz University.
He has published in the field of Semitic studies, notably in pre-Islamic Arabic epigraphy, and in medieval Ethiopian history.