Irfan Shahid

Irfan Arif Shahîd ( ; January 15, 1926 – November 9, 2016), 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.

Selected works Rome and the Arabs: A Prolegomenon to the Study of Byzantium and the Arabs, 1984

Byzantium and the Arabs in The Fourth Century, 1984

Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fifth Century, 1989

Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, Volume 1, part 1, 1995 Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, Volume 1, part 2, 1995

Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, Volume 2, Part 1, 2002 Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, Volume 2, Part 2, 2010

Byzantium and the Semitic Orient Before the Rise of Islam (Collected Studies Series: No.Cs270), 1988

Omar Khayyám, the Philosopher-Poet of Medieval Islam, 1982