Irfan Shahîd


Irfan Arif Shahîd, also known as Erfan Arif Kawar, was an American professor and scholar in the field of Oriental studies. Between 1982 and 2016, he was the Oman Professor of Arabic and Islamic Literature at Georgetown University. Shahîd also became a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 2012.

Biography

Shahîd was born in Nazareth, Mandatory Palestine, to a family of Palestinian Christians. He left in 1946 to attend St John's College, Oxford, where he studied classics and Greco-Roman history under the renowned British historian A. N. Sherwin-White.
He received his PhD from Princeton University in Arabic and Islamic Studies. His doctorate thesis was "Early Islam and Poetry" and his 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.

Selected works