Conference

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Our library contains around 23,000 books, journals and historical documents under the care of a specialized librarian.

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.’

Persian stories with beautiful miniatures, letters on papyrus from Egyptian traders and medicinal manuscripts translated from Greek and edited in Arabic. Studium Generale organizes a lecture series on the world-famous manuscripts from the Middle East collection of Leiden University Libraries (UBL).…

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.

Radhika Gupta has received a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council to study how transnational Islamic charitable networks are entangled with Western humanitarianism and neoliberal welfare frameworks.

Two books that recently appeared in the Debates on Islam and Society series at Leiden University Press are now available in Open Access through the Knowledge Unlatched initiative.

Situated on the west coast of modern Turkey, the site of Ephesus is one of the largest excavations in Turkey and one of the most visited tourist attractions. Only one tenth of the city has been exposed until now although the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Vienna (ÖAI) has been excavating here…

In this section we will be sharing numerous resources with you on the project and the broader topics of Ai and Islam.

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

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

Bart Barendregt receives a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros from the NWO for his research project 'One between the Zeros, an Anthropology of Artificial Intelligence in Islam'.

A better understanding of Morocco and the Arab world is crucial for international relations and for Dutch society. This was the key message of Minister of Education, Culture and Science Jet Bussemaker and Ahmed Aboutaleb, Mayor of Rotterdam, at the opening of the renewed Netherlands Institute in Morocco…

The chief aim of this study is to explore how classical Persian poetry and the Persian mysticism that is interwoven with the poetry have been used in the new politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially during the Iran-Iraq war.

On this page you find useful links to cooperating universities, Dutch institutes and other interesting links to information related to Arabic & Islamic studies, Egyptian Archaeology, and learning Dutch.

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.

Are you a student from Indonesia, planning to study in Leiden?

Eschatology played a central role in both politics and society throughout the early modern period. It inspired people to strive for social and political change, including sometimes by violent means, and prompted in return strong reactions against their religious activism.

Anthropology of Law in Muslim Sudan analyses the hybridity of law systems and the plurality of legal practices in rural and urban contexts of contemporary Sudan, shedding light on the complex relation between Islam and society.

Hekmat Dirbas defended his thesis on 14 February 2017

Leiden University Centre for the Study of Religion (LUCSoR) studies religion as human activity, in all its diversity.

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 World of a Mid-Eighth-Century Egyptian Official

Get the most out of your studies at Leiden University by taking part in our extracurricular activities.

Punching Back is a detailed ethnographic study that demonstrates that young Muslim women who kickbox develop agentive selves by challenging gender norms, challenging expectations, and living out their religious subjectivities.

Lecture

Serie workshops waarin mensen werkzaam op het terrein van Midden-Oosten- en islamstudies vertellen over hun ervaringen in de praktijk.