Abdolreza Alamdar Baghini defended his thesis on 5 December 2019.

Behrouz Karoubi defended his thesis on 15 June 2016

Saeedeh Shahnahpur defended her thesis on 13 September 2016.

Turkic nomadic rulers established large empires in the Middle East and Asia between the 11th and 14th centuries. This project will explore the link between their political ideology and the production of art and literature, via the cultural heritage of five cities along the Silk Road: Kashgar, Samarkand,…

This study addresses and explains the issue of negative descriptions of the Arab Other in modern Iranian thought.

The primary aim of this project is to recover, order, and assess Persian Epic Cycle material in order to provide the field of Iranian studies with the first comprehensive and balanced analysis of the form and contents of the epics within the Persian Epic Cycle.

Ideology and Actions

This dissertation studies the formation of the wage laboring class in the Iranian oil industry during the first decades of the 20th century.

LIAS aims to advance the globally conscious vision of area studies, both within and outside the academic community. Focusing on Asia and the Middle East, the institute is a meeting place of multiple fields of inquiry, theories and methods, historical periods, and areas.

Area studies is an approach to knowledge that starts from the study of places in the human world from antiquity to the present, through the relevant source languages, with central regard for issues of positionality.

This PhD research sets out to unravel and explain the socio-structural and cultural impacts of oil-industrialization on the local Bakhtiari community in general and the industrial laborers it provided in specific.

The Layered Heart : Essays on Persian Poetry is published in celebration of the poet and scholar Dick Davis, dubbed “our pre-eminent translator from Persian” by The Washington Post.

The Academic Language Centre Leiden offers Persian language courses at different levels. The courses are practical in nature: focusing on the use of the language. More information can be found here >

The socio-political and cultural memory of the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire played a very important role in Antiquity and later ages. This book is the first to systematically chart these multiform ideas and associations over time and to define them in relation to one another, as Persianism.

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.

This research investigates everyday lives and workplace experiences of Iranian workers employed at textile industry, which was the second biggest industry after oil following the latter’s discovery in 1908.

On 8 December, Leiden University Press will present a new international series on Persian poetry and literature. The series will be edited by Asghar Seyed Gohrab (Middle Eastern Studies).

This thesis seeks to examine the emergence of Persian novels and short stories during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).

The Persian Empire (539-330 BCE) was the first world empire in history. At its height, it united a territory stretching from present-day India to Libya - and it would take 2,000 years before significantly larger empires emerged in early modern Eurasia. Its size and power was revered by some, feared…

An interdisciplinary study of the Persian Period

On April 4th, Zohreh Shiamizadeh succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Zohreh on this great result.

A linguistic test of hypotheses rooted in genetics and archaeology.

This is the first reference work to describe the history of embroidery throughout Central Asia, the Iranian Plateau and the Indian Subcontinent from the medieval period through to the present. It offers an authoritative guide to all the major embroidery traditions of the region and a detailed examination…

This book presents an in-depth grammatical description of Kumzari, a mixed language spoken in remote villages on the Musandam Peninsula in northern Oman.

Promotor: E. Gittenberger, Co-promotores: B.W. Hoeksema; L.P. van Ofwegen

In the study of West-East relations, difference often takes centre stage. This holds for both culturalist and postcolonial perspectives. By contrast, in my investigation of Netherlands-Iran political relations in the 1960s and 1970s, I will focus on the role of SIMILARITY. What lay at the root of the…

On the 20th of April, Chams Benoît Bernard successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Chams on this achievement!

Peyman Jafari defended his thesis on 11 October 2018

The Persian language and its poetry are intertwined with the history of Central Asia. Although some mediaeval poets were later claimed by an individual state, their influence knew no frontiers. This is what Gabrielle van den Berg, Professor of Cultural History of Iran and Central Asia, argues in her…

Serhan Afacan defended his thesis on 23 June 2015

Maral Jefroudi defended her thesis on 11 October 2017

This project intends to provide an integrated linguistic assessment of the hypothesised migration route of the Tocharians.

Women behind the front play an important role in a large proportion of Iranian novels, written on the Iran and Iraq-war (1980-1988). But their martyrdom is an uncommon theme. Saeedeh Shahnahpur will give a lecture on this subject on 16 February.

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,…

On Thursday 28 March 2024 Said Reza Huseini successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Conference, Workshop

Protests have been raging in Iran for two months since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. The role of social media in the protests against the Iranian regime should not be underestimated, says Senior Assistant Professor and Iranian Babak RezaeeDaryakenari.

Neither technology, nor Pan-Islamism, but only the codification of law could prevent Iran from falling even further behind the Western world. So wrote the 19th century intellectual Mustashar ad-Dowla in his tract Yak Kaleme. The translation of this work was presented in Amsterdam on 8 December.

The purpose of the initiative is to establish Central Asian Studies at Leiden University. Central Asia is a region with fluid borders stretching into present-day Afghanistan, Russia, China, Mongolia, Iran and the Caucasus; a premodern highway of global interaction and today increasingly important as…

On 29 February there appeared a column by Maaike Warnaar in the Volkskrant on the Iranian elections.