I remember my sister and cousin dragging me to see Dr. Zhivago when I was a kid (my mom made them take me with them and to get me to go, they told me it was a sequel to Dr. No!) I actually ended up liking the movie quite a bit and watching it half a dozen times in the interim, he does a fantastic job in that role.
I knew a guy from Iran, who once told me that when he was a kid Sharif filmed a movie in his home town. The town built a monument to him a month or so after he left even though he was only there for about 4-5 days. He said that it's hard to explain just how popular he was in the M.E. and with Muslim audiences.
And yes, that is perhaps the greatest character to audience introduction in cinematic history.