The Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University invites applications for PhD candidates in Middle East History (Arabic and Persian) and Papyrology (Coptic and Greek).

The 3 PhD candidates will carry out research in the framework of the ERC-funded project, “Embedding Conquest: Naturalising Muslim Rule in the Early Islamic Empire (600-1000)” headed by Prof. Dr. Petra Sijpesteijn (PI). This project is to understand the success of the early Islamic empire (600-1000 CE) using the vastly important but largely neglected documentary evidence from the Muslim world. Examining all written expressions of social hierarchical relations, the goal of this project is to uncover the deeper social structures that underlay the Arab-Islamic empire and to reconstruct the system of shared expectations, assumptions and codes that underwrote its cohesion, and how these changed over time.

The three PhD candidates will each write a dissertation within one of three specified topics within the project focusing on different linguistic sources and concentrating on specific geographical areas. They will also identify and prepare materials from their respective source base for the project’s online database of linguistic expressions describing social hierarchical relations. They will participate in regular team meetings and present their research findings at scholarly venues.