On Wednesday November 12 at 5 pm Ahmed El Shamsy (University of Chicago) will give the 2025 Juynboll lecture entitled “Sunni constitutional theory in light of an early hadith about obedience.”  The lecture takes place at Leiden University in Lipsius 005. In this lecture El Shamsy shows that the claim that Sunnism is politically quietist,…

Since the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, on 8 December 2024, there are notable signs of hope and change within the country.  Interim-president al-Shara, who completely abandoned the path of Jihadism, has openly expressed the importance of equal rights for men, women and young people. What are the chances for women to play…

The Annual Medieval Middle East Meeting (AMMEM) is a yearly event in the Netherlands supported by NISIS and the Dutch Research School for Medieval Studies. This initiative is a yearly forum for students, junior, middle-career and senior scholars to present work-in-progress that is related to the Medieval Middle East. The aim is to receive feedback,…

Every year, the Netherlands Interuniversity School for Islamic Studies (NISIS) organises a Spring School in collaboration with our partners from several European countries in the framework of the European Network for Islamic Studies (ENIS). This year, our Spring School took us to Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, where we were hosted at the University of…