Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam

Library of Arabic Literature: Critical Edition and Translation of Ibn Qutaybah’s Faḍl al-ʿArab.

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.…

What is the cost of visual complexity? This dissertation sets out to determine the effect of the complexity of word formation on the legibility of Arabic and the role that vocalization plays in reading.

In August 2006 a young American called Raed Jarrar discovered Arabic’s potency. Detained by four guards at New York’s Kennedy Airport for wearing a T-shirt with “We will not be silent” on it in Arabic, he was told that he may as well be entering a bank with a T-shirt announcing “I am a robber.”

We offer General Language Courses and custom-made language training.

This book contains the first three Leiden-Aramco Lectures on Arabic Language and Culture delivered by Petra Sijpesteijn, James E. Montgomery and Geert Jan van Gelder.

Arabic and its Alternatives discusses the complicated relationships between language, religion and communal identities in the Middle East in the period following the First World War.

Tijmen Baarda defended his PhD thesis on 8 January 2020

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,…

Vol. V, Sections 1-2

This project investigates generational dialogues about the legacies and memories of labour, student and communist movements in the Arab world. The research focuses in particular on video and installation art by young makers born in the 1980s that address the generation of their parents and the events…

The institute offers private Arabic tutoring to the general public, taught by the NVIC staff teachers. We offer classes in both Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, on all levels.

The Academic Language Centre Leiden offers Arabic language courses at many different levels, an intensive summer course and customised Arabic language training. The courses are practical in nature: focusing on the use of the language. More information can be found here >

Research projects which are assisted by the NVIC in the field of Arabic studies.

The Institute organises Arabic courses for universities, but also for companies, international organisations and individuals.

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

Did you know that Arabic was for centuries the lingua franca in an area stretching from the south of Spain to the Chinese border? And that the Middle East under Muslim rule was the world’s beating heart of trade, but also of science and scholarship?

What issues arise in the changing landscape of privacy, identity and data protection?

This open access book investigates the transnationally connected history of Arab Christian communities in Palestine during the British Mandate (1918-1948) through the lens of the birth of cultural diplomacy.

The edited volume 'Arabic in context: celebrating 400 years of Arabic at Leiden University' edited by Ahmad Al-Jallad is out. The volume contains the contributions to the 2013 conference with the same title, held at Leiden University and was published as part of Brill's the Studies in Semitics Language…

In my research I am concerned with the possibility of a politics of sexuality without reverting to identitarian conceptions of sexuality. In a reading of the work of the American author James Purdy, I propose to move towards a politicizing of the concept of narrative identity as developed by the French…

The Albabtain Leiden University Centre for Arabic Culture organises public and scholarly events to promote the rich Arabic culture and to celebrate the long Leiden tradition of studying it in all its diverse expressions.

From Sunday 23 June till Wednesday 3 July 2024, NVIC organizes a new edition of the TAFL course. This intensive, interactive course is developed for (future) teachers of Arabic. It addresses both the practical aspects of teaching Arabic as a foreign language as well as the underlying linguistic and…

This project aims to revisit the relationship between the European cultural agenda and the local identity formation process, and social and religious transformations of Arab Christian communities in Palestine, when the British ruled via the Mandate. What was the role of culture in European policies…

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…

In this course, we will focus on the fascinating history of the Arabic Medieval World. We will take you on a journey through the Middle Ages. All along, we will present you with historiographical debates and dilemmas and travel back and forth in time explaining to you how events of the past affected…

How does the religious identity of islamic primary schools in the Netherlands relate to the social demands?

The research group Politics, Culture and National Identities 1789-present investigates a wide range of national political cultures in Europe and the Americas in the 19th and 20th centuries. Instead of only analyzing high politics (the acts of governments and political parties), the research group focuses…

This project investigates the influence that Arabic (esp. dialectal Arabic) has had on the Berber languages of Northern Africa.

Memory and Identity is one of the six research themes of the LUCAS Modern and Contemporary cluster.

To what extent and how do identity processes influence health behavior?

A new paper written by Jolien van Breen, Soledad de Lemus, Russell Spears & Toon Kuppens in the British Journal of Social Pscychology examines the impact of the 2008-2012 financial crisis on national identity in Spain.

Honorata Mazepus and Jaroslaw Kantorowicz are assistant professors at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs. Mazepus and Kantorowicz are one of the authors of this article in Nature on the role of national identity on public health support during global pandemics.

This PhD research aims to trace the impact of the Arab conquest, both immediate and long-term, on the material and social organization of Central Asia from 651 to 821 through an “urban change” perspective in four cities: Merv, Paikent, Balkh and Samarkand.

Mr. Sujadi defended his thesis on 29 June 2017

Hekmat Dirbas defended his thesis on 14 February 2017

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…

Ramesh Ganohariti will examine legal identity in three post-Soviet aspirant states and outline four common scenarios in this article.

Before the modern nation-state became a stable, widespread phenomenon throughout northern Europe, multilingualism-the use of multiple languages in one geographical area-was common throughout the region.