Honorary membership is awarded by the Board of Directors of MEM to a few senior medievalists who have distinguished themselves in their teaching and research. Honorary membership is for life and is gratis. MEM’s honorary members are:
- Denise Aigle
- David Ayalon (d. 1998)
- Azartash Azarnoush
- Robert S. Bell, Jr.
- Clifford Edmund Bosworth (d. 2015)
- Peter Brown
- Claude Cahen (d. 1991)
- Hichem Djaït
- ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Duri (d. 2011)
- Josef van Ess
- Nina Garsoïan
- Oleg Grabar (d. 2011)
- Tarif Khalidi
- Ann K. S. Lambton (d. 2008)
- Bernard Lewis (d. 2018)
- Wilferd Madelung
- George A. Makdisi (d. 2002)
- Angelika Neuwirth
- Christophe Picard
- Franz Rosenthal (d. 2003)
- Ayman Fu’ad Sayyid
- Dominique Sourdel (d. 2014)
- William Zieske (Zieske Law, Chicago)