At one time, the railway from Kimberley to Kambove in Southern Africa symbolised prosperity and progress. Today, the exhausted mining towns along its route are marked by decay and pollution. Professor Jan-Bart Gewald has been awarded an NWO L grant to investigate the long-term global consequences.

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.

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.

Links to related organisations, institutes, journals and archives.

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…

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.

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

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,…

A selected group of unpublished amulets from various collections in the world will be studied and edited.

Ömer Koçyigit defended his thesis on 7 July 2020

Shifting the Compass: Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature

Research on the global field of museums, heritage, commemoration, consumption and material culture

Dr. Bakhtiyar Babadjanov is the first Erasmus Fellow within the Erasmus Mobility Plus Project between Leiden University and the Tashkent State Institute of Oriental Studies, in particular the Al-Biruni Centre of Oriental Manuscripts. The two-year project (2016-2018) envisages exchange of teaching staff…

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

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…

It is with great sadness that we have learned of the passing of our former colleague dr. Karin Willemse, who passed away on Saturday 18 March 2023.

On Tuesday, September 17th, the Dutch king, Willem-Alexander, will present the plans of the new government of the Netherlands. This government’s aspirations, led by the party (PVV) of right-wing nationalist Geert Wilders, are mostly defined by budget cuts. One of the sectors receiving such budget cuts…

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'.

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

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

Lecture

Our library contains around 23,000 books, journals and historical documents under the care of a specialized librarian.

Lecture, Leiden Yemeni Studies Lecture Series

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…

Our researchers are experts in the fields of languages, cultures, history, arts, societies and philosophy. Together we cover almost all continents and time periods. Knowledge of these disciplines contributes to a humane, safe and sustainable world.

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.

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.

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…

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

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

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

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.

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…

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.

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.

Welcome to the 2024-2025 academic year! I hope this finds you feeling refreshed following an enjoyable and restful summer holiday season. As we start the autumn semester, I want to look back briefly by highlighting 10 significant milestones at LUCSoR from this past year (some of which I referenced in…

On Saturday, May 4, Dr. Verena Meyer delivered opening remarks at the International Webinar 'Santri, Literacy, and Indonesia', organized by the Bali Santri Literacy Community (Sanubari) Nurul Ikhlas Islamic Boarding School in Jembrana, Bali, Indonesia.

Lecture

Leiden University Centre for the Study of Religion (LUCSoR), Thursday 10 and Friday 11 November 2016

Apply now for the LUCIS Summer School on Philology and Manuscripts from the Muslim world, which will take place from Tuesday 15 August until Friday 25 August 2017 in Leiden. The deadline for applications is Friday 16 June 2017.

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

From Monday 15 until Thursday 18 October 2018, the eighth annual NISIS Autumn School will take place at the University of Groningen. This year’s Autumn School is organised by NISIS and the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen in cooperation with the Netherlands Organisation…

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…