Peter Webb
University Lecturer Arabic Literature and Culture
- Name
- Dr. P.A. Webb
- Telephone
- +31 71 527 1689
- p.a.webb@hum.leidenuniv.nl
- ORCID iD
- 0000-0002-6861-0767
Peter Webb specialises in the literature and culture of pre-modern Islam. His research examines community, ethnicity and social identities in the early Islamic world, with particular focus on the origins and development of Arab identity and the stories of pre-Islam recorded in Arabic poetry and prose.
More information about Peter Webb
Links
News
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Visit ambassadors to the University Library Special Collections -
Coming this fall: Al-Babtain visiting professor Geert Jan van Gelder -
New MOOC: The Cosmopolitan Medieval Arabic World -
Al-Babtain Leiden University Centre for Arabic Culture opens its doors -
Coming this fall: Al-Babtain visiting professor Wadad Kadi -
LUCIS launches Passion in Profession video series -
Peter Webb’s EPIC PASTS explores how Muslims viewed their pre-history -
Veni awards for four Leiden Humanities researchers -
Veni awards for seventeen young Leiden researches
PhD candidates
Supervision
I offer supervision for MA students investigating Arabic literature from all periods, or projects on the social history and cultures of the pre-modern Muslim world. For PhD projects, I welcome proposals on topics related to Arab identity, pre-modern Arabic literature (poetry and prose), and/or social history and cultural production in pre-modern Islam.
Research
My research focuses on the nexus between literature, memory and the construction of communal identities in Muslim societies, and the current avenues of my investigations explore the origins and evolution of Arab identity and the ways which Muslims have memorialised pre-Islam (al-Jāhiliyya).
My first book, Imagining the Arabs, reappraised conventional opinions about Arab origins by applying anthropological theories of ethnicity and identity to read early Arabic literature’s portrayal of the Arabs. Arabic poetry and prose present a remarkably varied picture of the changes and functions of ‘being Arab’ over time, and I examined the extent to which early Muslims invented the very sense of Arab identity. Currently, my interests concern how populations in the early and medieval Muslim world organised their communities, and how we can interpret the ethnic and social labels such as ‘Arab’, ‘tribe’, ‘Turk’, ‘Persian’ and others commonly encountered across pre-modern Arabic literature.
Muslim lore about pre-Islam is also a key source to explore how Muslims construct their communities and imagine their identities. From the earliest generations to the present day, Muslims have recorded pre-Islamic lore across manifold genres of literature in a wide variety of guises and with a range of different functions, and their approaches to pre-Islam have developed in step with changes in the Muslim world. I am interested in this plurality of ways in which Muslims memorialised the ancient past and how they have used pre-Islam as origin stories. My research is exploring the theoretical approaches we can employ to interpret the literature, with the aim of understanding why Muslims reconstructed the past in the ways they did and how different Muslim communities have defined themselves through negotiating legacies and memories of pre-Islam.
Curriculum vitae
Peter Webb studied Arabic at SOAS, University of London and at the University of Damascus. He then qualified as a solicitor in the insolvency and restructuring law practice at Clifford Chance LLP in London before returning to academia and a Ph.D. at SOAS in Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East. Following his Ph.D., he was awarded an Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices Fellowship 2014-15 by the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin, and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2015, hosted at SOAS. He joined Leiden University in 2017.
Key publications
Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the
Rise of 
Islam
The Excellence of the Arabs (edited and translated with James Montgomery and Sarah Savant)
“Pre-Islamic al-Shām in Classical Arabic Literature: Spatial narratives and history-telling.” Studia Islamica, 110.2 (2015), 135-164.
“Al-Jāhiliyya: Uncertain Times of Uncertain Meanings.” Der Islam, 91.1 (2014), 69-94.
University Lecturer Arabic Literature and Culture
- Faculty of Humanities
- Leiden Institute for Area Studies
- SMES APT
- Webb P.A. (2024), The History and Significance of the Meccan Hajj : from Pre-Islam to the Rise of the Abbasids. In: Khan Q.M. (Ed.), Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage : Essays in Honour of Nasser David Khalili. London: Gingko. 28-46.
- Webb P.A. (2024), Al cuore dell’Islam. Gli Arabi: religione, legge e struttura sociale [At the Heart of Islam. The Arabs: Religion, Language and Society]. In: Bernardini M. & Tottoli R. (Eds.), Mondi Islamici. Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore. 139-176.
- Webb P.A. (2023), Making war ethnic: Arab-Persian identities and conflict on the Euphrates frontier. In: Stouraitis Y. (Ed.), War and collective identities in the Middle Ages: east, west, and beyond. Yorkshire: ARC Humanities Press. 33-63.
- Webb P.A. (2023), The Hajj before Muhammad: the early evidence in poetry and hadith, Millennium 20(1): 33-63.
- Webb P.A. (2022), Light in the tunnel: Arab stories of endurance through suffering Review of: Bray J. Stories of piety and prayer, Library of Arabic Literature, TLS: The Times Literary Supplement (6198): .
- Webb P.A. (2022), Bedouin, bandits and caliphal disappearance: a reappraisal of the Qaramita and their success in Arabia. In: Berkel M. van & Osti L. (Eds.), The historian of Islam at work. Leiden: Brill. 254-282.
- Webb P.A. (2021), From the sublime to the ridiculous: Yemeni Arab identity in Abbasid Iraq. In: Pohl W. & Kramer R. (Eds.), Empires and Community in the Post-Roman and Islamic World, C. 400-1000 CE. Oxford Studies in Early Empires. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 283-328.
- Webb P.A. (2021), Fragmentation and integration: a response to the contributions of Hugh Kennedy and Walter Pohl. In: Pohl W. & Kramer R. (Eds.), Empires and Community in the Post-Roman and Islamic World, c. 400-1000 CE. Oxford Studies in Early Empires. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 76-88.
- Webb P.A. (2021), Protection granted by women: between law and literature, Annales Islamologiques 54: 31-56.
- Webb P.A. (2021), Review of: Ramzi Rouighi (2019), Inventing the Berbers: History and Ideology in the Maghrib: University of Pennsylvania Press. International Journal of Middle East Studies 53(4): 714-716.
- Webb P.A. (2021), Continuity and change: elite responses to the founding of the caliphate. In: Bent J. van den, Eijnde F. van den & Weststeijn J. (Eds.), Late antique responses to the Arab conquests. Cultural Interactions in the Mediterranean no. 5. Leiden: Brill. 120-170.
- Webb P.A. (2020) The hand’s tongue: The emotional significance of artistry and writing in Islam. Review of: Blair Sheila, Bloom Jonathan, Osborne J.R. & Mozzati Luca, By the Pen and What They Write | Letters of Light | Islamic Art. TLS: The Times Literary Supplement (6106): 28-29.
- Webb P.A. (2020), Cry me a Jāhiliyya: muslim reconstructions of pre-Islamic Arabian culture - a case study. In: Sijpesteijn P. & Adang C. (Eds.), Islam at 250: Studies in Memory of G.H.A. Juynboll. Leiden: Brill. 235-280.
- Webb P.A. (2020), al-Azd. In: , Encyclopaedia of Islam 3: Brill. 1-5.
- Webb P.A. (2020), Bakr b. Wā'il. In: , Encyclopaedia of Islam 3: Brill. 6-9.
- Webb P.A. (2020), Ka'b ibn Mālik. In: , Encyclopaedia of Islam 3: Brill. 73-74.
- Webb P.A. (2020), Kalb ibn Wabara. In: , Encyclopaedia of Islam 3: Brill. 75-76.
- Webb P.A (2020), Review of: Ulrich Brian (2019), Arabs in the Early Islamic Empire: Exploring al-Azd Tribal Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 83(2): 345-347.
- Webb P.A. (2020), Ethnicity, power and Umayyad Society: the rise and fall of the people of Maʿadd. In: Marsham A. (Ed.), The Umayyad World. London: Routledge. 65-102.
- Webb P.A. (2020), "The Spread of Islam in Arabia: expressing conversion in poetry". In: Hurvitz N., Sahner C., Simonsohn U. & Yarbrough L. (Eds.), Conversion to Islam in the Pre-Modern Age. Oakland: University of California Press. 63-68.
- Webb P.A. (2020), Desert places: toponyms in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, Semitica et Classica 13: 251-265.
- Webb P.A. (2019), The Arab Thieves: Al-Maqrīzī’s al-Ḫabar ʿan al-bašar, Vol. V, Sections 1-2 no. 6. Leiden: Brill.
- Webb P.A. (2019), Arabia: the land of Frankincense and myrrh. In: Whitfield S. (Ed.), Silk Roads: Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes. London: Thames and Hudson. 232-235.
- Webb P.A. (2019), Islam: a new faith on the Silk Roads. In: Whitfield S. (Ed.), Silk Roads: Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes. London: Thames and Hudson. 256-267.
- Webb P.A. (2019), Iram. In: Fleet K., Krämer G., Matringe D., Nawas J. & Rowson E. (Eds.), Encyclopaedia of Islam 3: Brill. 117-121.
- Webb P.A. (2018), Review of: Shahab Ahmed (2017), Before Orthodoxy: the Satanic Verses in Early Islam: Harvard. Journal of Arabic Literature 49: 162-167.
- Qutaybah Ibn (2017), The Excellence of the Arabs [Fadl al-'Arab wa-l-tanbih 'ala 'ulumiha] (translation: Montgomery J., Savant S. & Webb P.A.). Library of Arabic Literature. New York and Abu Dhabi: New York University Press.
- Webb P.A. (2017), Identity and Social Formation in the Early Caliphate. In: Berg H. (Ed.), Routledge Handbook on Early Islam. London: Routledge. 129-158.
- Webb P.A. (2017), Review of: Munt Harry (2014), The Holy City of Medina: Sacred Space in Early Islamic Arabia. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. The British Foundation for the Study of Arabia Bulletin 22: 43-45.
- Webb P.A. (2016), Review of: Fisher Greg, Arabs and Empires before Islam. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 79(3): 640-642.
- Webb P.A. (2016), The origin of Arabs: Middle Eastern ethnicity and myth-making, British Academy Review 27(1): 34-39.
- Webb P.A. (2016), Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Webb Peter (2016), Review of: Hirschler Konrad, Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library. TLS: The Times Literary Supplement .
- Webb P.A. (2016), Muḥammad und die gāhiliyya: Die vorislamische Zeit im prophetischen ḥadīt. In: Schmidt Nora, Schmid Nora K. & Neuwirth A. (Eds.), Denkraum Spätantike. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 447-466.
- Webb P.A. (2015), Pre-Islamic al-Shām in Classical Arabic Literature: Spatial narratives and history-telling, Studia Islamika 110(2): 1-30.
- Webb P.A. (2015), Review of: al-Azmeh Aziz (2014), The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 23: 149-153.
- Webb P.A. (2015), Review of: Hoyland Robert (2015), In God's Path: Oxford University Press. TLS: The Times Literary Supplement .
- Webb P.A. (2014), Al-Jāhiliyya: Uncertain Times of Uncertain Meanings, Der Islam: journal of the history and culture of the middle east 91(1): 69-94.
- Webb P.A. (2013), Review of: Gelder Geert Jan van (2012), Classical Arabic Literature. New York: New York University Press. TLS: The Times Literary Supplement .
- Webb P.A. (2013), The Hajj before Muhammad: Journeys to Mecca in Muslim Narratives of Pre-Islamic History. In: Saif Liana & Porter Venetia (Eds.), The Hajj: Collected Papers. London: British Museum Press. 6-14.
- Webb P.A. (2013), Poetry and the Early Islamic Historical Tradition: Poetry and narratives of the Battle of Ṣiffīn. In: Kennedy Hugh (Ed.), Poetry and Warfare in Middle Eastern Literatures. London: IB Tauris. 119-141.
- Webb P.A. (2012), Review of: Malcolm Lyons (2012), The Man of Wiles in Popular Arabic Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. TLS: The Times Literary Supplement .
- Webb P.A. (2012), ‘Foreign Books’ in Arabic Literature: discourses on books, knowlegde and ethnicity in the writings of al-Jahiz, Arabica 12(1): 16-55.
- Webb P.A. (2012), Muhammad’s ascension to the Heavenly Spheres: ‘Utopian Travel’: Fact and Fiction in making Utopias, Middle Eastern Literatures 15(3): 240-256.
- Webb P.A. (2012), Review of: Holland Tom, In the Shadow of the Sword. Evening Standard .