Lecture
2026 Juynboll Lecture by Robert G. Hoyland - Muhammad: a prophet for the world, a prophet for the Arabs
- Date
- Wednesday 2 December 2026
- Time
- Location
-
Academy Building
Rapenburg 73
2311 GJ Leiden - Room
- Telders Auditorium
The Juynboll Lectures
The annual Juynboll lecture commemorates the work of the Dutch Arabist and scholar of early Islam Arabist Dr. Gautier Juynboll (1935-2010). The third 2026 Juynboll lecture will be given by Robert Hoyland, Professor of Late Antique and Early Islamic Middle Eastern History at New York University. The lecture, titled Muhammad: a prophet for the world, a prophet for the Arabs: new perspectives on his mission, is organized by the Arabic Studies department at Leiden University and is sponsored by the Juynboll Foundation.
Abstract
Exactly one hundred years ago the Danish Orientalist and theologian Frants Buhl published an article entitled “Did Muhammad conceive of his message as a universal religion that was intended also for non-Arabs?” He began by noting that this was a contentious question in his day, with famous scholars like Theodor Nöldeke, Ignaz Goldziher and Thomas Arnold arguing that Muhammad’s mission was to all mankind, while Henri Lammens, Hubert Grimme and Snouck Hurgronje considered that he only had his own homeland and its inhabitants in his sight.
The debate has reignited in the last few years with scholars arguing either that Muhammad was preaching to all in a bid to establish God's rule on earth before the fast approaching Judgement Day or that he was bringing a new covenant from God that was restricted to those descended from Abraham's son Ishmael. This lecture will reassess this debate in the light of recent advances in our understanding of the Qur'an and the spread of monotheism in late antique Arabia.
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About the speaker
Professor Robert Hoyland studied Oriental Studies at Oxford University, where he completed a doctoral thesis on non-Muslim views of the rise of Islam (published as Seeing Islam as Others Saw It, 1997). His research focuses on the emergence of Islamic civilization and early Islamic history, explored in works such as In God’s Path (2014) Theophilus of Edessa’s Chronicle, 2011 and The 'History of the Kings of the Persians', 2018. His scholarship spans pre-Islamic Arabia, epigraphy, papyrology, the transmission of knowledge between the Greco-Syriac and Islamic worlds, and historiography. He has also participated in archaeological excavations across the Middle East and Caucasus. More recently, his research has turned to the social history of the early Islamic Middle East, particularly the lives of unfree and dependent populations.