| Irfan Arif Shahîd | |
| Birthname: | Irfan Arif Kawar |
| Native Name Lang: | ar |
| Birth Date: | 15 January 1926 |
| Birth Place: | Nazareth, Mandatory Palestine (now Israel) |
| Death Place: | Washington, D.C., United States |
| Citizenship: | American |
| Alma Mater: | St John's College, Oxford (BA) Princeton University (PhD) |
| Occupation: | Professor |
Irfan Arif Shahîd (ar|عرفان عارف شهيد ; January 15, 1926 – November 9, 2016),[1] also known as Erfan Arif Kawar (Arabic: عرفان عارف قعوار|rtl=yes), 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.[2] Shahîd also became a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 2012.[3] [4]
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.[2]
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.[5]