Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

How did the Arabs manage to maintain an empire based on Islamic principles for three hundred years? Arab expert Petra Sijpesteijn and her team will be examining this question over the coming five years, focusing on the correspondence of ordinary people. The research is being funded by an ERC Consolidator…

Our public programme includes lecture series, conferences, visiting fellowships, panel discussions and many other interesting events. Have a look at what we've organised in the past years.

The Centre is the proud home of several research programmes.

On young Muslims seeking to understand their place and make their way in a transformed world.

The project seeks to come to an understanding of the archaeology of the desert and the ways in which its inhabitants engaged with their constraint, marginal environments through time. It compares and interprets site distribution and community organisation over a long time scale and across several different…

'In Perspective' is the quarterly publication of the Faculty of Humanities in which we bundle some of our most high-profile stories. In Perspective is printed in limited quantities (currently only available in Dutch), spread amongst relations and partners and offered on coffeetables within our buildings.…

Vol. V, Sections 1-2

A Jurist's Travelogue

From the rise and fall of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, to Islamic State’s attempts to create its own currency, to the dramatic return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, this edited volume from two leading scholars of contemporary terrorism assembles an enviable array of international experts to explore these…

An overview of Professional Associations and Journals

This 25th volume in the series 'Islam in Africa', edited by Annachiara Raia, is a pioneering collection of poetry by the outstanding Kenyan poet, intellectual and imam Ustadh Mahmmoud Mau (born 1952) from Lamu island, once an Indian Ocean hub, now on the edge of the nation state.

Diede Farhosh-van Loon defended her thesis on 18 October 2016

On the 24th of June Hossein Pourbagheri successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

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…

Philology and Manuscripts from the Muslim World

Humanities are needed to make sense of social issues. Watch or listen to the stories of our experts who tell about their research and the impact on society. Get to know the world at Humanities!

Our library contains around 23,000 books, journals and historical documents under the care of a specialized librarian.

Together with internationally esteemed colleagues, Léon Buskens has been awarded a HERA Joint Research Programme Grant for a research project entitled

Mosques with limited opening hours, fewer family visits and fewer events: for the second time, Ramadan was different due to Covid. Islamologist and deputy director of the Leiden Islam Academie Fatiha Azzarhouni looks back on a special month.

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.

Academic staff and students blog about their research and teaching.

Migration imposes special pressures on the meaning, experience and organization of lifecycle rituals. These pressures are felt most strongly by Muslim migrants to Western Europe. In this innovative study, Nathal M. Dessing examines the effects of migration on the life cycle rituals of Moroccan, Turkish…

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.

LUCSoR has chairs in Comparative Religion, Islam in the West, Christianity, and Judaism. Main areas of expertise include ancient Mesopotamian religions, the Enlightenment, Islam in the West, and new spiritual movements.

Links to related organisations, institutes, journals and archives.

Welcome to the |0100| blog where our team will be sharing insights from the field and contributing to the various discussions and debates around AI, Islam and scripting futures.

To complement scholarly knowledge with journalistic insights, LUCIS regularly invites journalists to share their perspective on current events.

What's New is a lecture series organised by LUCIS and the department of Middle Eastern Studies. The lectures focus on current research on Islam and the Middle East.

With regard to governance, policies and law, many Muslims and Muslim countries recognise the possibility that Islam has something important to say about the way society is to be ordered, governed, and regulated.

Dating back more than 400 years, Leiden University has the oldest continuous chair of Arabic outside the Arabic-speaking world. Today the MENA region is studied at Leiden from before the coming of Islam up to today from a wide array of disciplines. And Arabic is studied within the diverse linguistic,…

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…

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

Imami Shiʿism was a key part of the turbulent thesis and antithesis which formed Islam, and it remains greatly influential today. The aim of the ImBod project is to write the first comprehensive social history of the Imamate.

Leiden University is famous for its library’s large collection of Oriental manuscripts. Part of this collection is a group of 104 Arabic documents written on papyrus and paper (Or. 8264 and 12885). These documents date from the 7th through 10th century CE and cover a wide range of subjects (private…

Ömer Koçyigit defended his thesis on 7 July 2020

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

Meet Bart, Reza, Weiyan, James, Daphne and Yasmin.

Lecture