July 9

Julius (Jules) Oppert, one of the four scholars whose 1857 readings confirmed the decipherment of Akkadian cuneiform, was born in Hamburg.

Franz Boas, often called the father of American anthropology and an early opponent of scientific racism, was born in Minden, Westphalia.

Muhsin Mahdi, the Iraqi-American historian of Arabic and Islamic philosophy who edited al-Farabi's works and the Arabic Thousand and One Nights, died at 81.