Irfan Arif Shahîd was born on January 15, 1926, and died on November 9, 2016.

He was born as Irfan Arif Kawar .

He was a scholar in the field of Oriental studies.

Irfan was from 1982 until his death professor emeritus at Georgetown University, where he had been the Oman Professor of Arabic and Islamic Literature.

He was also a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America since 2012.

He was born in Nazareth, Mandatory Palestine to an Arab Christian family.

Shahîd left in 1946 to attend St John’s College, Oxford, where he read classics and Greco-Roman history.

Shahîd studied under renowned antiquities historian A. N. Sherwin-White.

He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in Arabic and Islamic Studies.

Shahîd’s 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.

Irfan Shahîd passed away at 90 years old.