Hitti, Philip K(huri) (1886–1978)

US educator, historian, and author born in Lebanon (then part of Syria), a US citizen from 1920. He founded the Syrian Education Society in 1916 and taught Arabic literature at Princeton 1926–54. He wrote widely acclaimed books, including History of the Arabs 1937 and A Short History of the Near East 1966.

Born in Shimlan, he graduated from the American University of Beirut in 1908 and went to the USA in 1913. He earned a PhD from Columbia University in 1915.