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.

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…

After an initial suggestion of a move toward Israel, India’s Prime Minister Modi has signaled a significant recalibration of his government’s engagement with the Middle East region. Now, India seems to be prioritising strong ties with the Gulf states.

Special Issue in: Visual Anthropology, Volume 29, Issue 3, 2016

The Issues beneath the Surface

The Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) is devoted to the study of places in the human world from antiquity to the present time in a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective.

The project re-examines the role of the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox missionaries in the cultural and social developments of the Middle East and their interactions with the indigenous communities, from the nineteenth century until today. It seeks to discover and retrace such ‘entangled histories’…

This anthology contributes to a historically grounded understanding of the complex relationship between Christian missions and the roots of humanitarianism and its contemporary uses in a Middle Eastern context.

Political Islam is not new to the Middle East, but the appearance of ISIS has stretched the phenomenon to the extreme.

From the mid-19th century until the 1970’s, the Middle East witnessed the presence of various European missionaries who played a fundamental role in the birth and the development of humanitarianism. Since these Christian missionaries were well integrated in the local Middle Eastern societies via their…

This project aims to revisit the ways in which religious minorities in the Middle East participated in, contributed to, and opposed the Arab nationalism of the post-war years, when the British and French ruled the region via the Mandates. Research question: How did religious minorities in the Middle…

On Friday 2 October journalist Sander van Hoorn starts his lecture series ‘The Middle East doesn't exist’, which was organised by the Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society (LUCIS). ‘If all goes well, people will understand the Middle East that bit less after my lectures.’

This book bij Hasan Çolak is based on rigorous research on unpublished and unexplored Ottoman correspondence between the Ottoman central administration and the Eastern Patriarchates, published Greek patriarchal documents, and French missionary and diplomatic sources.

From Persia and Arabia to North Africa: as early as the nineteenth century, there were Dutch people who used the camera themselves in various regions of the Middle East.

This NWO project, which is being be carried out in close cooperation with the universities of Oxford (contact: Prof. Robert Hoyland) and Princeton (contact: Prof. John F. Haldon) and the UMR 8167 (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS, University Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV, University Panthéon-Sorbonne,…

The perception of the Middle East is riddled with stereotypes that have had dire consequences on its people. What is myth and what is reality? How did these stereotypes come about? What consequences have they had? All of these questions and more are answered within this reading list.

Who assembled the collections of museums? The answer to this question seems to point to men as collectors. Apart from for rare exceptions, female collectors hardly seem to exist. Yet there were indeed women collectors. For the project Museums, Collections and Society, researcher Holly O'Farrell will…

Five questions for James Shires, assistant professor at ISGA, about his new book, The Politics of Cybersecurity in the Middle East. The book is available to order now.

The Middle East has a rich literary tradition, which is steadily gaining a foothold in the West. Modern literary works deal with contemporary issues, such as the legacy of colonialism, the struggles between traditionalism and modernity, the place of women in society and the war in Israel/Palestine.

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…

Leiden University’s Master’s in Middle Eastern Studies programme is a one-year, full-time Master’s programme that is taught completely in English. Building on a tradition of more than four centuries of studying the Middle East, we offer highly relevant and up to date insights into a wide variety of…

On Thursday, May 16, Leiden University Libraries is organizing a workshop on early photography of the Middle East. In the workshop, curator Maartje van den Heuvel shows photos of three adventurous Dutch nineteenth-century travel and photography pioneers. They created beautiful photos and photo albums…

Designed for high-achieving students, Leiden University's master's in Middle Eastern Studies (Research) offers you unmatched resources and expertise.

Huda Abi-Fares defended her thesis on 10 January 2017.

Finding solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the not-inconsiderable task of the new Peace Academy in The Hague. Professor Maurits Berger and twelve students from different conflict zones are starting a creative thinking process that aims to discover the basic conditions for peace in the…

Political scientist Kevin Köhler (Leiden University) has been awarded a Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). This prestigious grant enables him to set up a research group in the coming five years. Köhler and his team will examine how elite conflict affects processes of regime change…

Two open letters are currently circulating among civil servants in the Netherlands calling for the Dutch government to take a different stance towards Israel. Wim Voermans, Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law in Leiden, says in a national radio broadcast that this is an unusual and unique…

How have Muslims imagined the world before Muhammad? Stories about pre-Islamic times feature across all genres and periods of Arabic literature, and while many writers have derided the pre-Islamic past as disorderly paganism, others celebrate its memory as a time of Arab nobility and fine literature.…

In the study of West-East relations, difference often takes centre stage. This holds for both culturalist and postcolonial perspectives. By contrast, in my investigation of Netherlands-Iran political relations in the 1960s and 1970s, I will focus on the role of SIMILARITY. What lay at the root of the…

Political scientist Nicolas Blarel (Leiden University) analyses the background and implications of India’s prime minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel.

India’s prime minister Narendra Modi admires Israel’s achievements, but structural differences between Indian and Israeli national security situations, differences in the leaders’ worldviews and the absence of a common enemy inhibits stronger strategic rapprochement, argues political scientist Nicolas…

In this book, Vanessa Newby provides the first detailed examination of credibility’s essential place in peacekeeping.

A selected group of unpublished amulets from various collections in the world will be studied and edited.

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

Over 200 people paid their first visit to the new Middle Eastern Library on a special open evening. As well as exploring the library, they got to see exhibitions, speed lectures and premieres about Leiden University’s Middle Eastern collections.