Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq[a] (Arabic: أحمد فارس الشدياق, ALA-LC: Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq; born Faris ibn Yusuf al-Shidyaq;[1] born 1805 or 1806;[1] died 20 September 1887) was an Ottoman scholar, writer and journalist who grew up in what is now present-day Lebanon.

In 1857, with Evangelist American missionaries, he participated in the publishing of a novel Protestant Arabic translation of the Bible in Great Britain where Faris lived and worked for 7 years, becoming a British citizen.

Moving to Istanbul later that year to work as a translator at the request of the Ottoman government, Faris also founded an Arabic-language newspaper.

Faris continued to promote Arabic language and culture, resisting the 19th-century "Turkization" pushed by the Ottomans based in present-day Turkey.

Shidyaq is considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern Arabic literature; he wrote most of his fiction in his younger years.

While he has numerous autobiographical references in his writings, scholars have found it difficult to distinguish between romanticizing and reality.

Ahmad Faris Shidyaq was born in 1804 in Ashqout, a mountain village of the Keserwan District in the modern Mount Lebanon Governorate.

In 1805, the family was forced to leave Ashqout following a conflict with a local governor; Butrus al-Shidyaq, the paternal grandfather of Faris, was killed because of the politics.

Again, a family conflict, in which the Shidyaq were at odds with the Prince Bashir Shihab II, obliged their father Youssef Ash-Shidyaq to take refuge in Damascus, where he died in 1820.

He never forgave his brother Tannous and his cousin Boulos Massaad (who later became the Maronite Patriarch (1854–1890)) for what he considered their role in the events that led to the death of Assaad.

In 1826, Faris married Marie As-Souly, daughter of a wealthy Christian family, who were originally from Syria.

Faris is believed to have converted to Protestantism during this period in Egypt, an extended time of relative solitude and study.

In 1848 he was invited to Cambridge, England, by the Orientalist Samuel Lee (1783–1852) to participate in the Arabic translation of the Bible.

At the end of his English stay, he moved to Oxford, where he became naturalized as a British citizen, but tried in vain to secure a teaching post.

A keen admirer of Shakespeare, Faris argued that Othello suggests a detailed knowledge of Arabic culture.