Christian Lange (PhD Harvard, 2006) is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Utrecht, a fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Art and Sciences, and a former fellow of the Dutch Young Academy. From 2024 to 2028, he is President of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants.
Lange's research focuses on premodern intellectual and cultural history, particularly in the areas of Islamic eschatology, Islamic law and legal theory, Islamic mysticism, and the history of the senses in the Islamic world. Since joining Utrecht University in 2011, he has been the Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant project "The here and the hereafter in Islamic traditions" (HHIT, 2011-2015) and of the ERC Consolidator Grant project "The senses of Islam" (SENSIS, 2017-2023). Since 2023, he is the Principal Investigator of the NWO Vici Grant project "Rosewater, nightingale and gunpowder: A sensory history of the Islamic world, 1500-1900" (RONIGU, 2023-2028).
Lange's Justice, punishment and the medieval Muslim imagination (Cambridge 2008, Arab. tr. 2016) is a study of state violence and conceptions of justice under the Seljuq dynasty (11th-13th c. CE). Lange is also the author of Paradise and hell in Islamic traditions (Cambridge 2016), winner of the 2016 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Bookprize and the joint winner of the 2016 World Award for Book of the Year in Iran. His most recent monograph is Mohammed. Perspectieven op de Profeet (Amsterdam 2017, 2nd ed. 2025). Currently, he is working on a multi-author handbook entitled Islamic Sensory History, to appear in three volumes (Leiden-Boston, 2024-).
He welcomes inquiries about Research Master and PhD supervision, particularly in regard to projects straddling Islamic Studies and the Study of Religion.
ed. (with Adam Bursi), Islamic Sensory History, vol. 2: 600-1500. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2024.
ed. (with Alexander Knysh), Handbook of Sufi Cosmology. 412 pp. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2022
ed. (with Bruce Fudge, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, and Sarah Bowen Savant), Non Sola Scriptura: Essays on the Qur'an and Islam in Honour of William A. Graham. 325 pp. London-New York: Routledge, 2022
ed. (with Bart Jaski, Anna Pytlowany and Henk van Rinsum), The Orient in Utrecht: Adriaan Reland (1676-1718), Arabist, Cartographer, Antiquarian and Scholar of Comparative Religion. 515 pp. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2021
ed. (with Wolfgang P. Müller and Christoph K. Neumann), Islamische und westliche Jurisprudenz des Mittelalters im Vergleich. 242 pp. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018.
Mohammed. Perspectieven op de Profeet. 166 pp. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017.
Al-'adala wa-l-'iqab fi l-mutakhayyil al-islami khilal al-'asr al-wasit. Tr. Riyad al-Miladi, with a new foreword. 458 pp. Beirut: Dar al-Madar al-Islami, 2016.
Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions. 365 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
ed., Locating Hell in Islamic Traditions. 369 pp. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
The Discovery of Paradise in Islam. Inaugural Lecture, University of Utrecht, 2012. 25pp. Utrecht: Utrecht University, 2012.
ed. (with Songül Mecit), The Seljuqs: Politics, Society and Culture. 315 pp. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.
ed. (with Maribel Fierro), Public Violence in Islamic Societies: Power, Discipline and the Construction of the Public Sphere, 7th-19th Centuries. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009.
Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination. 290 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Der geheime Name Gottes. 467 pp. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern Verlag, 2008.
Einmal Islam und zurück. Ein west-östliches Tagebuch aus dem Jahr des dritten Golfkriegs. 224 pp. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2005.
Chair
Arabic and Islamic Studies
Inaugural lecture date
16.04.2012