By examining the impact of Islam on the daily life of those living under its rule, the goal of this project is to understand the striking newness of Islamic society and its debt to the diverse cultures it superseded. Questions will be the extent, character, and ambition of Muslim state competency at…

The Leiden Papyrological Institute is the only papyrological institute in the Netherlands, and one of the few institutes in the world where study of Greek and Demotic Egyptian is combined. This is reflected in both teaching and research. Members of the Institute are active in publishing texts from various…

Leiden University has a rich history in the domain of Papyrology. Papyrology+, founded in 2014, is a collaboration of Leiden scholars studying (Abnormal) Hieratic, Demotic, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Arabic papyri from a socio-historical, economic and linguistic perspective.

What made the early Islamic empire so successful and have we missed the story by neglecting crucial evidence? The 7th-century Arab conquests changed the socio-political configurations in the Mediterranean and Eurasia forever. Yet we do not really know how the Arabs managed to gain dominance of this…

The 'Leids Papyrologisch Instituut' is the only Dutch institute that studies both Greek (and Latin) and Demotic and Abnormal-Hieratic papyri. The members of our staff publish texts from collections all over the world, including our own collection.

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.”

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

Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam

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.

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

The World of a Mid-Eighth-Century Egyptian Official

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,…

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.

This volume contains the first edition of 66 papyri and ostraca in the collection of the Leiden Papyrological Institute.

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 >

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

Anybody can imagine how difficult it is to read a 2000 years old text for the first time. It is almost inevitable that at first mistakes are made in deciphering and interpretation. This is why revision and correction of published texts play an important role within Papyrology.

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.

Just published:

Recontextualising the Papyri from Roman Soknopaiou Nesos / Dimê (Fayyum, Egypt)

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…

The subjects of the texts vary from Demosthenes to the delivery of camels in early Islamic Egypt, and their provenances stretch from the Eastern to the Western Desert, and from the Egyptian Nile valley to Qasr Ibrim in northern Nubia.

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?

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

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…

New Approaches to the Study of Textual Material from the Early Pharaonic to the Late Antique Period

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…

The Leiden Papyrological Institute offers several courses in papyrology, from beginners' to advanced level, BA as well as MA. The courses are taught by Dr. Koen Donker van Heel (Demotic and Abnormal Hieratic papyrology) and Dr. Cisca Hoogendijk (Greek papyrology).

The Leiden Papyrological Institute celebrated its eightieth birthday on Monday 19 January. Its collection of papyri – including paper, potsherds, pieces of wood and even lead – covers the period from 300 B.C. until after 800 A.D. and is entirely of Egyptian origin. The institute’s anniversary is being…

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…

Research on papyri has provided new insights into the history of the origins of Islam. Petra Sijpesteijns’s book,'Shaping a Muslim State', is based on these ancient Arabic letters and documents. Her new research on a Viennese collection of untranslated papyri is expected to produce more discoveries.

Tijmen Baarda defended his PhD thesis on 8 January 2020

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

Vol. V, Sections 1-2

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

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…