Born Mar. 16 (28), 1895, in the city of Nakhichevan. Soviet literary scholar and translator. Honored Scientist of the Azerbaijan SSR (1963).
Sharif studied at the Moscow Commercial School from 1915 to 1917 and graduated from the M. Gorky Institute of Literature in 1943. His doctoral dissertation, completed in 1956, was entitled “The Life and Work of Dzh. Mamedkulizade.” He became a professor at Moscow State University in 1962.
Sharif was first published in 1910. He is the author of many articles, pamphlets, critical-biographical studies, and monographs in Azerbaijani and in Russian dealing with classical and contemporary Azerbaijani literature, literary relations, and problems of translation. Sharif has translated works by M. F. Akhundov, A. Akhverdov, N. Vezirov, Dzh. Dzhabarly, S. Ragimov, and M. Ibragimov into Russian and works by N. V. Gogol, A. N. Ostrovskii, M. Gorky, and A. A. Fadeev into Azerbaijani.