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.

Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam

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

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.

Vol. V, Sections 1-2

The Classics Master, a specialization of the Classics and Ancient Civilizations program at Leiden University, gives you the opportunity to study the Greek and Roman world with a focus on Greek and Latin language and literature.

The Classics Research Master, a specialization of the Classics and Ancient Civilizations programme at Leiden University, gives you the opportunity to study the Greek and Roman world with a focus on Greek and Latin language and literature.

This research aims to address the connection between Sufism and modern Arabic Literature (specifically, Palestinian literature).

This project examines the intriguing relationship between Greek literary criticism and Latin literature in Rome (first centuries BC and AD).

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.

This research programme focuses on the analysis and interpretation of the formation processes and the transmission of the culture of the Graeco-Roman Period.

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.

Throughout the year, the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo organises Arabic Language courses for the general public. Please note: due to the Corona pandemic, Arabic group courses have been suspended for the time being,

If you are working or studying in Egypt, but find it hard to communicate in spoken Egyptian Arabic, then this course is perfect for you. In ten weeks’ time, you will be equipped with the communicative skills in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic needed to engage in basic social interactions. Scheduled in the…

This study aims to make a practical contribution to a new understanding and use of 3D reconstructions, namely as ‘laboratories’ to test hypotheses and visualize, evaluate and discuss alternative interpretations.

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

This research cluster aims to analyse and interpret the formation and transmission of Graeco-Roman culture by exploring the relationships between cultural products (texts, objects, practices) and their societal and historical contexts.

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.

From Tuesday 9 until Thursday 18 June 2020, 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 cognitive…

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

This project will study the cultural meaning of the mythological figure of Orestes within the ancient Greek imagination, as it emerges from various literary sources from the archaic and classical periods.

The culture and texts of the classical antiquity are still a source of inspiration for our modern world. In the Dutch-taught Bachelor's programme Greek and Latin Language and Culture you will examine all aspects of the Greek and Roman antiquity. From Homerus to Horatius. From Plato to Cicero.

Tijmen Baarda defended his PhD thesis on 8 January 2020

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.

How can classical music be restructured while still retaining the core of what we love about its repertoire and our ability to share it with audiences, while coming up with ways of making it financially viable.

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…

Caspar Reuvens, the world’s first Professor of Archaeology, was a prominent classical scholar and from his appointment in 1818 onwards Classical & Mediterranean Archaeology has been an important field of research in Leiden.

The aim of the Indonesian-Dutch Literature Collective (which is allied to the Society of Dutch Literature (MNL)) is to support research into the literature of and about the Dutch Indies, from the era of the Dutch East India Company to the present. Starting in 1986, the collective has published its own…

Hekmat Dirbas defended his thesis on 14 February 2017

The MA Classics and Ancient Civilizations at Leiden University covers the entire range of present-day research on the civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Syria and Palestine, Greece and the Roman Empire. In chronological terms, the program covers thousands of years, from the early origins…

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

Counter-Discourse in Zimbabwean Literature is a study of specific aspects of counter-discursive Zimbabwean narratives in English. In discussing the selected texts, my thesis is based on Terdiman’s (1989) the postcolonial concept of counter-discourse.

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

The center studies the many ways in which issues of law and justice are dealt with in art and literature with a focus on liminal issues and cases. These are issues and cases where law comes to the limits of what it is capable of dealing with and art and literature explore the implications of what is…

This project proposes to connect two discourses highly present in contemporary literary criticism in China, as well as on the world literary scene and academic circles: the discussion on emigration literature and the concept of ‘essayness’ derived mainly from (post)modern Western theories of the ess…