Ihsan Abbas (December 2, 1920 – July 29, 2003) was a Palestinian professor at the American University of Beirut,[1] and was considered a premier figure of Arabic and Islamic studies in the East and West during the 20th century.

As a child, the only books in his family's impoverished home were the Qur'an and a famous 15th-century Arabic encyclopedia known as Al-Mustatraf; Abbas would often sadden at the mention of the latter due to the memories it brought him.

[7] Abbas then spent the next four years teaching at a college in Safed and went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in Arabic literature from Cairo University in 1950; for the next ten years, Abbas traveled between his study at Cairo where he earned a Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy, and his work at Gordon Memorial College or, as it became known during his tenure, the University of Khartoum.

[5] At the end of his tenure in Sudan, he was appointed to a professorship position in the Arabic literature department at the American University of Beirut, a post which he held until his retirement in 1985.

[11] Abbas was also a defender of Kahlil Gibran's maligned Al-Mawakib, considering it a measuring stick for the literature produced by the Arabic renaissance in the United States.

[18][19] From 1951 to 1952, Abbas assisted fellow scholar Ahmad Amin and his student Shawqi Daif in editing and republishing an anthology of Egyptian contributions to Arabic poetry during the Middle Ages,[20] which had previously been thought to be minimal or non-existent.