Irfan Shahid

Irfan Arif Shahîd (Arabic: عرفان شهيد‎‎; Nazareth, Palestine, January 15, 1926 – Washington, D.C., November 9, 2016), born as Irfan Arif Kawar (عرفان عارف قعوار), was a scholar in the field of Oriental studies. He was from 1982 until his death professor emeritus at Georgetown University, where he had been the Oman Professor of Arabic and Islamic Literature. Shahîd was also a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America since 2012.

Shahîd was born in Nazareth, Mandatory Palestine to an Arab Christian family. He left in 1946 to attend St John's College, Oxford, where he read classics and Greco-Roman history. He studied under renowned antiquities historian A. N. Sherwin-White.

He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in Arabic and Islamic Studies. His doctorate thesis was “Early Islam and Poetry.” Shahîd's research was primarily focused on three major areas: the area where the Greco-Roman world, especially the Byzantine Empire, meets the Arabic and Islamic worlds in the late antique and medieval times, Islamic studies, particularly the Quran and Arabic literature, especially classical and medieval Arabic poetry. In 2012 Irfan Shahid became a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America

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