Irfan Shahid, also written Shahîd (born 1926 in Nazareth

Nazareth

Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...

) in Arabic: عرفان شهيد, is Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University

Georgetown University

Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...

. Since 1982 he has been the Oman Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies.

Irfan Shahid was born to a Christian Arab family in Palestine. He received his B.A. from Oxford University in Classics and Graeco-Roman History and his Ph. D. from Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

in Arabic and Islamic Studies. He mainly published on the Arabs and the Greco-Roman world in the late antique and medieval times, classical and medieval Arabic poetry and the Koran.

On March 20, 2010 Irfan Shahid was inducted as Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. Fellows are the most distinguished scholars of medieval studies and are elected for advancing the field.

Works

• Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, Volume 2, Part 1, 2002
• Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, Volume 1, 1995
• Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fifth Century, 1989
• Byzantium and the Semitic Orient Before the Rise of Islam (Collected Studies Series: No.Cs270), 1988
• Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, 1984
• Rome and the Arabs: A Prolegomenon to the Study of Byzantium and the Arabs, 1984
• Omar Khayyam, the philosopher-poet of medieval Islam, 1982