St Cross College, Oxford

Samir Shamma died at his home in Amman, Jordan, on 14 August 2001, at the age of 90.

He was the first Domus Fellow of the College, and had for many years been a generous friend and benefactor of the University.

He was born at Safad, in Palestine, and qualified as a lawyer in Jerusalem. Obliged to leave in 1948, he emigrated with his wife to Saudi Arabia where he built up a career as the first non-Shari'a lawyer there. Working initially in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and later in the Ministry of Petroleum, he was closely involved with the preparation of treaties between Saudi Arabia and other nations pertaining to the oil industry, and knew many figures prominent on the world stage. He introduced Company Law and Shipping Law to Saudi Arabia, and until 1996 administered the Patent and Trade Mark office.

But it is as an Islamic numismatist that Oxford chiefly knew him - as patron, scholar and collector. His passionate interest in the subject and his desire to foster the academic study of coins as a tool for the historian led him to sponsor the research of many young scholars, to found and edit a journal of numismatics at Yarmuk University, and to finance the publication of several major catalogues and works of scholarship. Oxford has especial cause to be grateful for the endowment of a University Lecturership in Islamic Numismatics (at present held, in association with a Fellowship at St Cross, by Dr Luke Treadwell); the endowment also of a Visiting Fellowship at St Cross, which has annually brought scholars of great distinction to the college; and the loan of his collection to the Ashmolean Museum, where the coins are being studied and are in course of publication.

His own publications were numerous, and include a Catalogue of Abbasid Copper Coins, an account of the coins of Filastin, and an important report on the Asir hoard. The publication, in ten volumes, of his own collection in conjunction with the Ashmolean's collection, will stand as a further splendid memorial to this generous-hearted man.

Helen Brown