In Memoriam: Harry Stroomer (1946 – 2026)
On July 19, 2026, our colleague and friend Prof. Dr. H.J. Stroomer passed away, completely unexpectedly. Harry was 79 years old.
From 2002 until his retirement in 2011, he was the professor of Afro-Asiatic languages and cultures, with a special focus on Berber and the Semitic languages of Arabia and Ethiopia. He had been affiliated with the university since 1976. Although his research straddled the fields of Oriental studies, African studies, and general linguistics, for teaching and administrative purposes he was assigned to departments now known as Middle Eastern Studies.
Harry Stroomer worked on many different subjects. After having studied Arabic Linguistics and South-Semitic languages, he wrote his PhD Thesis about the Cushitic language Oromo as spoken in Kenya (1987, promotores A.J. Drewes en F.H.H. Kortlandt). After this, he turned his attention to another part of the Afroasiatic language family, Berber (also known as Amazigh). Since 1985, he taught and researched the Berber language Tashlhiyt, spoken in southwestern Morocco. Over the years, he contributed to the study of this language in manyfold ways. He edited a large number of manuscript texts from colonial administrators who collected their materials between the 1930s and the 1950s and published them in a long series of books. In addition to this, he also contributed to the edition of work by important specialists in the fields of Berber and South-Semitic languages, such as James Bynon, Terence F. Mitchell and, for South-Arabian, Thomas M. Johnstone. But his magnum opus is his four volume Dictionnaire berbère : tachelḥiyt–français, on which he worked for forty years and which was published earlier this year at Brill.
Harry was a highly appreciated scholar and colleague, not only in Europe, but also in Morocco. Thus, last April, he and his dictionary were honored in a special ceremony in Agadir, the cultural capital of the region where Tashlhiyt is spoken. One of his lasting legacies will be the founding of the book series Berber Studies, formerly at Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, now to be continued by Clavis Aurea. In this series, 59 volumes were published in less than 25 years. Everyone who has published there has been impressed by the precision and efficiency with which Harry handled the manuscripts.
Harry Stroomer was supervisor and co-supervisor for a large number of PhD Theses and active in many organizations, among others as the highly competent chairperson of Stichting Het Oosters Instituut and Stichting De Goeje and as a board member of the Juynboll Stichting.
He will be missed, not only for his scholarly and organizational achievements, but above all as an exceptionally convivial and hospitable person, full of humor and warmth.
Maarten Kossmann
Professor of Berber (Amazigh) Studies