D Gershon Lewental is a cultural historian of the Middle East, focusing on how societies use religion, memory, and conflict to define and maintain their identities. He is Senior Lecturer in Iranian and Persianate history in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and teaches also at the University of Oklahoma (since 2012) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He earned his bachelor of arts degree (magna cum laude) from Cornell University and his doctorate in Middle Eastern history from Brandeis University. His dissertation, on the changing perceptions of the Arab-Islamic conquest of Iran through time, received the Foundation of Iranian Studies Best Dissertation Award and the Brandeis University Glatzer Dissertation Prize. His fields of specialisation include Iranian and Persianate history, early Islamic historiography, the history of the Bahaʾi community in Israel, modern Central Asian identities, and Middle East minorities.


His professional website is located at DGLnotes.com.

'Derafsh-e kaviyan' (History & Memory, 2024); 'Death of Rostam' (Iranian Studies, 2017); 'Saddam's Qadisiyyah' (Middle Eastern Studies, 2014); 'Qadesiya', 'Rostam Farrokhzad' (Encyc. Iranica, 2013); etc.

—Elaboration of Islamic Iranian identity
—Islamic historiography
—Nationalism, memory, and religious identity in the Middle East
—Baha’i history in Mandatory Palestine and Israel
—Israeli society and history
etc.

Senior Lecturer, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev