Daud Rahbar (1926 – 5 October 2013)[1] was a Pakistani scholar of comparative religions, Arabic, Persian, Urdu literature and Indian classical music.
[3] After a teaching career in England, Canada, Turkey and the United States, he retired as Professor Emeritus of Comparative religions from Boston University in 1991.
"[4] His childhood was spent writing poetry (he took the pen name 'Rahbar' at the age of eight), gardening and walking with his father while discussing Arabic and Persian literature.
He received the McLeod Research Scholarship and was employed to teach Arabic literature at Oriental College, Lahore, where his father was President.
In 1949, Rahbar went to Cambridge University and completed his PhD dissertation entitled Studies in the Ethical Doctrine of the Qur'an under the supervision of Reuben Levy.
After a short time in Lahore, Rahbar accepted the position of Senior Teaching Fellow at McGill University, Canada, in 1954, at the invitation of Wilfred Cantwell Smith.
In 1967, Rahbar joined the faculty of Boston University where he taught until his retirement in 1991: initially at the School of Theology and from 1975 onwards at the Department of Religion in the College of Liberal Arts.
He records in his memoir that he was baptised as a Christian by a Protestant United States Air Force Chaplain, Meredith Smith, in Ankara, on 6 July 1959.
Khaled Ahmed, a Pakistani political and cultural analyst, stated that Rahbar's supposed conversion to Christianity was nothing more than a "myth created in Lahore"[10] by those who did not fully understand "what he really stood for.
[13] His published works in the field of Urdu literature include: Daud Rahbar died at a nursing home in Deerfield Beach, Florida on 5 October 2013.