David Grossman (1934 – 13 December 2023) was an Israeli historical geographer and professor of geography at Bar-Ilan University. His research focused primarily on rural geography and the historical geography of Arab settlement in Palestine, alongside comparative studies of rural settlement elsewhere. His work addressed settlement processes, demographic change, migration, sedentarization, and the relationship between rural settlement patterns and environmental and economic conditions.
Academic career Grossman immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1939. After completing undergraduate study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he moved to the United States in 1960. He completed a BSc at New York University in 1961 and subsequently earned MA and PhD degrees at Columbia University.
In 1969 Grossman was appointed a lecturer in geography at Bar-Ilan University. He was promoted to senior lecturer in December 1971. He remained at the university until his retirement as professor emeritus in 2002.
In 1983, Grossman received the Gezer Prize for his study of rural settlement in the Gezer region during the Ottoman and British Mandate periods.
Research and scholarship Grossman's earlier research included comparative work on rural settlement in Africa as well as theoretical studies of settlement geography. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, he developed an extensive research program concerning the historical development of Arab rural settlement in Palestine.
Among his studies of settlement morphology were analyses of the relationship between resource use and settlement patterns in northeastern Samaria (Jabal Nablus) and of nucleated settlement in the Hebron Hills.
Historian Roy Marom has identified Grossman's work as an important stage in the development of Israeli scholarship on the Arab rural landscape. Marom emphasizes Grossman's use of a regional, diachronic method, in which settlement patterns were compared across successive historical periods rather than treating the Arab village as a static geographical unit. This approach was developed extensively in Grossman's 1994 Hebrew-language monograph The Arab Village and Its Dependencies, which examined processes of expansion, contraction, sedentarization, and the formation of subsidiary settlements during the Ottoman period.
Grossman later concentrated on the demographic and spatial history of the Arab population during the late Ottoman and British Mandate periods. His Rural Arab Demography and Early Jewish Settlement in Palestine: Distribution and Population Density during the Late Ottoman and Early Mandate Periods examined population distribution, migration, population density, and settlement patterns, making extensive use of Ottoman statistical material.
Selected works
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