Stefan Leder is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Martin-Luther-University in Halle/Germany and was the director of the Orient-Institut Beirut from October 2007 to September 2017, including the institute's Istanbul branch (Orient-Institut Istanbul) till 2010.
Prior to his engagement with the OIB, he was chairman of interdisciplinary research institutions funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation) and by his home university. His research topics combine history, literature & textuality, applying text criticism, discourse analysis and intertextual analysis. His published work covers Arabic historiography, with particular attention given to narrativity; Islamic Tradition under the perspectives of authority of knowledge, transmission and moral politics; and the Bedouin patrimony in Arabic thought and discourse. He also writes on the history of Oriental Studies in Europe. His current research projects concern medieval political literature, and the intellectual and political role of the Ayyubid chancery exemplified by the critical edition of al-Qadi al-Fadil’s correspondence.
Political thought in the Middle East, nourished by the traditions of Antiquity and of Asiatic, mainly Iranian, Indian and of Arabic origins, elaborated a variety of conceptual frameworks. Political philosophy, teachings of wisdom, ethics, Islamic law and examples from history play an important part, but authors also discuss particular political matters.
As head of Saladin's chancellery, al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil (1135-1200) designed and carried out diplomatic correspondence, engaged in the organization of state finances and politics, and entertained an extensive literary communication with most of the conspicuous intellectuals of his time.
Book
[Editor] Crossroads between Latin Europe and the Near East: Corollaries of the Frankish Presence in the Eastern Mediterranean (12th – 14th centuries). Istanbuler Texte und Studien 24. Würzburg 2011.
Episteme der Theologie Interreligiös. Religion und Offenbarung Dogma. Hrsg. von Stefan Leder. Beirut: Orient-Institut Beirut 2013
Episteme der Theologie Interreligiös. Schrift, Tradition und Dogma. Hrsg. von Stefan Leder. Beirut: Orient-Institut Beirut 2012
Journal Article
Sultanic rule in the mirror of medieval political literature. In: Neguin Yavari, Regula Forster (eds.): Global Medieval: Mirrors for princes revisited, Harvard: Harvard University Press (Ilex Foundation) 2015, 93-111.
Nasab as Idiom and Discourse. In: The Arab East and the Bedouin Component. From the Ottoman Period to the 20th Century = Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 58 (2015), 56-74.
Towards a historical semantic of the Bedouin, 7th to 15th centuries: A survey. In: The Arab East and the Bedouin Component. From Late Antiquity to the Ottoman Period = Der Islam 92 (2015), 85-123.
Max Weber in der arabischen Welt, in: Max Weber Stiftung (Hrsg.): Max Weber in der Welt. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2013, 24-31.
Religious texts and the Islamic purity regime. In: Matthias Bley, Nikolas Jaspert, Stefan Köck (eds.): Discourses of purity in transcultural perspective (300–1600). Leiden: Brill 2015 (Dynamics in the history of religion 5), 285-296.
Gewalt der Ordnungen: Religiöses Recht, politische Herrschaft, tribale Ordnung. In: Jörg Rogge, Martin Kintzinger (Hg.), Gewalt und Widerstand in der politischen Kultur des späten Mittelalters. Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke 2014 (= Vorträge und Forschungen 80), 83-98.
Sunni Resurgence, Jihād Discourse and the Impact of the Frankish Presence in the Near East. In: Crossroads between Latin Europe and the Near East. Würzburg 2011, p. 81-101.