Do you want to discover a language and culture that is completely different from the Netherlands? In the Bachelor's programme Middle Eastern Studies you will study the connections between the different cultures in the Middle-East in the past and present. You will be able to choose from the languages…

Lecture, Applied African Linguistics

For Arabic and Islamic Studies and Middle East Studies

For Arabic and Islamic Studies and Middle East Studies

Arabist and papyrologist Petra Sijpesteijn has received a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council for her research on the early Islamic Empire. The five-year ERC grant will fund the research project

An overview of our exhibition catalogues and research monographs on the Middle Eastern collections.

Leiden’s expertise on the Middle East spans from ancient history to contemporary tensions in the region. By studying languages, cultures, religions, literature, art, and philosophy in in conjunction, we create an indispensable, in-depth understanding.

In this dissertation a large corpus of letter signs and texts gathered during fieldwork in Niger, and to a lesser extent Mali and Burkina Faso is used to show the graphemic diversity of the traditional script of the Tuaregs, tifinagh, and to analyze the orthographic system.

Jews and Christians in the Middle East

At Leiden University you can study Islam and Muslim societies within two Dutch-language BA and various MA programmes and specializations.

This film will be screened on Sunday, 23 November 2025 at 7:00 pm.

My NVICairo Experience - Marie Costers (MA student, University of Antwerp, NVIC student Spring 2025)

This summer school is for graduate (MA and PhD) students and researchers who have an interest in handwritten materials, editing, and the tradition of editing in the Muslim world. It offers theoretical lectures as well as hands-on practice with samples from the world-famous collections of the Leiden…

On 16 November 2022 ms. Eftychia Mylona successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

LUCIS produces various video series and MOOCs to showcase the variety of expertise available at Leiden University.

This paper aims to understand the most common underlying problems causing strategic surprise in the context of the European Union.

The NVIC offers academic courses in Arabic & Islamic studies and in the study of Ancient Egypt, in the framework of study programmes at the Dutch and Flemish universities that support the institute. NVIC also puts its teaching experience at the disposal of companies, embassies, international organisations…

Islamic Thought in History (ITH) is a peer-reviewed book series that publishes new approaches to Islamic thought and the history of ideas in the Islamic civilisation.

Do you have questions or remarks? Please contact the core team of the Centre for Islamic Thought and History.

LIAS is comprised of three research schools with expertise in different areas:

The Academic Language Centre Leiden offers Arabic language courses at various levels, an intensive summer course and tailor-made Japanese language training. The courses are practical in nature: focusing on the use of the language. More information can be found here >

On the 1st of December Marcela A. Garcia Probert successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

In recent years, and especially since the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011, a growing body of research, media reporting, and scholarly literature has focused on the role of ‘Arab youth’ as the drivers of social and political movements across the Middle East and North Africa.

On Thursday 21 November 2024 Jake Benson successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Combining approaches from intellectual history, philology and the study of Arabic manuscripts, this study places the Bornu scholar Muḥammad al-Wālī within his intellectual environment on the one hand, and it portrays him as someone who responded to the concerns of ordinary Muslims around him on the…

What is the state of access to justice in real property grievances in today’s Libya, and how should it be improved?

Lecture

A living language?

The Centre is the proud home of several research programmes.

At our regular panel discussions we bring together scholars and other experts to discuss a current topic that captures the interest of the general public as well as academics.

Understanding the history of Islam and Muslim societies sheds a clear light on the complex and changing social structures of the Middle East, including the current trouble spots whose effect spreads all the way to Western Europe.

Our institutes abroad are instrumental for Leiden’s internationalisation activities.

The new Middle Eastern Library (MEL) will bring together the UBL's own Middle Eastern collections and the collections of the library of The Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO), which has been part of the Leiden University Libraries since 1st January 2018.

You can find an overview of events organized by the Platform for Post-Colonial Readings below.

LUCIS works with Science ON AIR to put its researchers in the spotlight. For that purpose, several online videos of LUCIS members have been produced.

The Role of Law in Libya’s National Reconciliation (RoLLNaR) was a research project that ran from 2017 to 2020. It identified and assessed the role of law – both actual and potential, enabling and constraining – with regard to major challenges of reconciliation in Libya. The project was led by Dr. Suliman…

This book argues that Armenians around the world – in the face of the Genocide, and despite the absence of an independent nation-state after World War I – developed dynamic socio-political, cultural, ideological and ecclesiastical centres. And it focuses on one such centre, Beirut, in the postcolonial…