The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo is an academic centre providing services for scholars and students from the supporting universities.

This study addresses and explains the issue of negative descriptions of the Arab Other in modern Iranian thought.

Since 2017, NVIC offers an interdisciplinary semester in Middle East Studies for students of Dutch and Flemish universities, primarily in the fields of International Studies. Half the semester (15 ects) is devoted to Arabic language acquisition, both Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Colloquial…

To reach a larger audience beyond the academy, a number of activities in the cultural realm have been programmed over the years.

The FOI project has a number of topics it aims to investigate. These are: State, Economy, Culture and Papyri. You will find links to bibliographies on this page.

University Lecturer Ahab Bdaiwi:

The Passion in Profession series features researchers who are specialised in Islamic, Middle Eastern and Central Asian studies. With the series, LUCIS aims to show what inspires them in their work by highlighting an object or concept that they feel passionate about.

The NVIC has published a series of scholarly publications in Arabic and several European languages.

How did institutions and structures operate throughout the Muslim world from the earliest history of Islam into the early modern period?

Leiden University is awarding an honorary doctorate to virologist Marc van Ranst. Van Ranst has been one of the main advisers of the Belgian government during the Covid pandemic. German Arabist Beatrice Gründler will also receive an honorary doctorate for her work in the field of Oriental Manuscript…

This master’s programme combines advanced levels of philosophical analysis with the study of non-Western sources, in particular Chinese, Indian, and Arabic sources.

The NVIC library is a public, academic reference library. Entrance is free—no membership needed—and offers access to our book collection and two reading rooms, which have a WiFi connection. It is not possible to borrow books from our library.

This research studies the authenticity of the texts and tries to find an accurate dating to them using other parallel texts (Sahidic and Arabic), and aims to find out how the people of this age viewed their hero, the founder of orthodoxy, Athanasius.

The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (the NVIC) was founded in 1971. Nine universities in the Netherlands and Flanders participate in the institute with an aim to stimulating internationalisation of their teaching and research activities in the Middle East.

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…

For Arabic and Islamic Studies and Middle East Studies

For Arabic and Islamic Studies and Middle East Studies

Lecture, Applied African Linguistics

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.

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

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 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…

Islam at 250: Studies in Memory of G.H.A. Juynboll is a collection of original articles on the state of Islamic sciences and Arabic culture in the early phases of their crystallization.

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

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…

The present monograph, spanning a wide range of world and local literatures represents a high academic standard of both literary criticism and philological analysis. By demonstrating her expertise as an Africanist conversant with the Arabic canon, Raia reveals how the narrative of Joseph has been re-narrated…

This film will be screened on Sunday, 28 September 2025 at 7:00 pm.

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 >

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

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

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

On 13 September 2023 Eline Scheerlinck 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.

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…

Associates of Leiden University Center for Intercultural Philosophy

A living language?

The Centre is the proud home of several research programmes.

Debate

Lecture

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.