Sheikh Ahmed Aref El-Zein (10 July 1884 – 13 October 1960)[1][2] (Arabic: شيخ أحمد عارف الزين) was a Shi'a intellectual from the Jabal Amil (جبل عامل) area of South Lebanon.

Disappointed by the lack of education and prosperity of his community under Ottoman rule, he collaborated with other local scholars on interaction with reform movements underway in Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo.

He spent his professional life fighting for the rights of the under-privileged in his community and exposing Lebanon's Shi'a to the brewing reformist ideas of the era and the latest innovations in science and technology.

El-Zein worked as a correspondent for several newspapers published in the Lebanese capital Beirut including Thamarat Al-Funoon, Al-Ittihad Al-Othmani, and Hadikat Al-Akhbar.

In his publication for the Center for Lebanese Studies at Oxford "Aspects of Shi’i Thought From the South of Lebanon,"[3] Chibli Mallat says the magazine "epitomized an era and an area," taking advantage of the 1908 Ottoman constitutional revolution and a "new atmosphere of freedom of expression started in Istanbul."

He posited that the contributors to the magazine and the debates played out within its pages "reflected, and to an extent shaped, history to come," as Al-Irfan became the "point of convergence" for the Shi'a writers on politics and social affairs.