Richard L. Chambers was a professor of Turkish language and history at the University of Chicago. Finding material for this essay on his life was extraordinarily difficult; for a long time it was impossible even to find a copy of his CV. He never published his own book, that advertisement for scholarship that is characteristic of academics. There is not even a gravestone, as he declined to be buried in the family cemetery plot, nor was there a memorial service. He used to complain that he received no recognition for what he had done, but he did not seek recognition or parade his accomplishments. Yet his life and academic career parallel and intertwine with the development of Middle Eastern and Turkish studies in America, to which he made important contributions. This essay was put together through Google searches, speeches that he himself gave on the development of Turkish Studies, contributions from those who knew him, and at long last, a rather skimpy CV. The result is only a sketch, a mere outline, of his many activities and contributions.

Anna Arkadievna Iskoz-Dolinina, a Russian and Soviet Arabist with a list of over 200 publications, passed away on 16 April 2017. She was born on 12 March 1923 in Petrograd (later Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, Russia). Her father was a Leningrad University professor, a specialist on Dostoyevsky. Anna's original plan was to study German literature, but during WWII the family were evacuated with parts of the University to Tashkent. There, she became fascinated by the Orient and developed an interest in Arabic literature. The choice of Arabic vs. other languages was made easier by the publication in 1945 of the book Among Arabic Manuscripts (“Nad arabskimi rukopisiami”) by the leading Russian Arabist of the time Ignatii Iulianovich Krachkovskii (Ignaty Krachkovsky, 1883–1951).

Dr. Don Peretz, a leading scholar on the Arab-Israel conflict and Palestinian refugees at SUNY-Binghamton, died on April 29 in Mitchellville, Maryland. He was 94.

Pierre Cachia slipped away peacefully on 1 April 2017, a few days shy of his ninety-sixth birthday, surrounded by his children and grandchildren. With the passing of this key architect of Arabic studies, those of us who have studied and worked with him will not only mourn the loss of a friend, teacher, and mentor, but also the irretrievable era in which a first generation of postwar American and European Arabists and Orientalists made tremendous strides in fashioning academic studies of modern Arabic literature into what it is today: grounded in native fluency of the Arabic language, informed by real experiences lived in close proximity with Arab writers and storytellers, and took seriously the concerns and priorities of Arab scholars, critics, and intellectuals.