About

Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies was established in 1980 following the amalgamation of the Departments of Arabic, Turkish and Persian (established respectively in 1912, 1950 and 1951). However, the teaching of the Middle East, its languages and cultures at the University of Edinburgh goes back much earlier. Arabic was first taught here in the 1760s when it was offered by James Robertson, Professor of Hebrew (1751-92), to students of Hebrew. Since that time generations of scholars have contributed to the University’s reputation for academic achievement and teaching excellence in the study of Islam and the Middle East.

Taught by churchmen, Arabic primarily attracted theological students during the 18th and 19th centuries because of its importance in Semitic philology and religious studies. However, Arabic (continuously taught since 1859) and Persian also appealed to students seeking employment in the East India Company and in other arms of the expanding British Empire. These two strands, religious scholarship and imperial service, came together in the person of Sir William Muir, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University from 1885 to 1903. In addition to a long administrative career in British India, Muir produced some distinguished scholarship: his Life of Mahomet (1858) went into several editions and long remained the standard biography of the Prophet in English. For medievalists Muir’s work, The Caliphate, first published in 1881, remained essential reading for many years.

By the end of the 19th century the study of Arabic and Islam was becoming less a secondary element in a Christian curriculum and more independent subjects of study. An important step in this direction came with the appointment of Dr Richard Bell MA, BD in 1912 as the first full-time Lecturer in Arabic. Although replaced by Dr Edward Robertson the following year, Bell resumed the post in 1920 and taught until 1947 when he was succeeded by William Montgomery Watt. Watt would go on to make an outstanding contribution to Islamic scholarship at Edinburgh and internationally. His Free Will and Predestination in Early Islam (1948) was the first of more than twenty books on Islamic topics. Notable among these were his Muhammad at Mecca (1953) and Muhammad at Medina (1956), abridged in the single-volume Muhammad, Prophet and Statesman (1961). The appointment of John Walsh in Turkish and Ottoman Studies and Laurence Elwell-Sutton in the field of Persian studies at the beginning of the 1950s spoke to the widening remit of Middle Eastern Studies at Edinburgh that was now housed in the newly-named Muir Institute in Buccleuch Place.

Over this long period, our graduates have included some celebrated scholars. The first Arabic class following Bell’s appointment included HAR (later Sir Hamilton) Gibb (MA 1919), who was to achieve international renown as an Islamic scholar. He later became Laudian Professor of Arabic at Oxford and authored important works on Islam and Islamic civilisation, among them Modern Trends in Islam (1947). Other Edinburgh graduates included Robert Serjeant (MA Semitic Languages 1936), a native of Edinburgh and later the Adams Professor of Arabic at Cambridge who established himself as an authority on the Arabian Peninsula and traditional Arabian life. Like Watt, Serjeant later donated his library to the University of Edinburgh, where they are still maintained as discrete collections. With the expansion of university education in Britain after 1945, increasing numbers of students from the Middle East also came to Edinburgh for postgraduate study on Islam and the Middle East, initially from Egypt but later notably from other parts of the Arab world, Turkey and Malaysia.

In 1980 expertise on Islam and the Middle East was concentrated by the merging of three smaller departments to constitute the department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. The Department’s international reputation continued to be tied to the name of Montgomery Watt but more recent developments have witnessed an expansion in expertise and scope of teaching not only in the field of classical Islamic Studies but also in the history, literatures, languages (Arabic, Persian and Turkish) and cultures of the modern Middle East. This has been made possible by an expanded and increasingly international staff and burgeoning student body. The contribution of Carole Hillenbrand, IMES colleague from 1979 until 2008, should be noted here for the quality of her scholarship that was recognised internationally with the award of the King Faisal Prize for Islamic Studies (2005). In time IMES moved to 19 George Square where it continues to be located.

This growth has been assisted by significant external funding. Following the Iraq Endowment (see below), a generous donation was made in 2001 by Sheikh Dr Sultan Al Qasimi, Ruler of Sharjah. In 2007 IMES was successful in winning the bid for British government funding, along with the Universities of Durham and Manchester, to set up Language-based Area Studies postgraduate degrees, under the auspices of CASAW (Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World). Following the end of the initial funding period, IMES launched its own innovative postgraduate Arabic programme that established an international reputation for excellence in the field of intensive Arabic learning based on the integrated approach. The Alwaleed Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World, established in 2010 thanks to a generous gift from Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, operates alongside IMES and has expanded the scope of course offerings and greatly increased outreach activities.

Following the retirement of Montgomery Watt in 1979, a short period of uncertainty, born of economic rather than academic considerations, surrounded the future of Islamic studies at Edinburgh. This was soon dispelled when the University of Baghdad provided a handsome endowment to establish a permanent professorial chair. For the goodwill behind this generous gesture the University doubtless owed much to the esteem and respect in which Watt was held in the Muslim world as well as to its own traditions of fostering good relations and cultural ties with other nations.

In 1982 the new post, designated the Iraq Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies, was filled by J Derek Latham, a well-known expert on Islamic Spain. Following Latham's retirement in 1988, M Yasir Suleiman, a specialist in Arabic social linguistics, occupied the post which he held until his departure in 2007. He was succeeded by Marilyn Booth, a historian and noted translator (2009 to 2015), and Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, who was appointed in 2016 and held the chair until his untimely death in December 2023. The post is currently vacant. 

Visit our blog on the history of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh

Browse our directory of PhD theses in IMES from 1921 until the present day