Position
Research Associate
Affiliation
Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies; St John’s College (emeritus fellow)
Email
gerard.vangelder@ames.ox.ac.uk
Research Interests
- Classical Arabic literature, especially history of genres, motifs, forms;
- Arabic literary theory, poetics, and stylistics.
Current Projects
- Participation in the project “Encyclopedia of Arabic Stylistics Devices” (based at the University of Münster, Germany);
- Participation in the project “Practical Guide to Classical Arabic Poetry” (initiated by Prof. Tahera Qutbuddin et al.);
- Involvement as “volume editor” of an English translation by Tim Mackintosh-Smith of the Arabic autobiography (al-Taʿrīf) by Ibn Khaldūn.
Biography
Librarian, Institute for the Modern Near East, University of Amsterdam, 1973–1975; Lecturer in Arabic, University of Groningen (the Netherlands), 1975–1998; Laudian Professor of Arabic, University of Oxford, 1998–2012; Research Associate, for replacement teaching during Prof. Qutbuddin’s research leave and employment for the project A Literary History of Medicine, University of Oxford, 2012–2017; Member of Member of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) since 1997; Fellow of the British Academy since 2005.
Educational Background
I studied Semitic Languages (Arabic as main subject) at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Leiden, 1965–1972; Doctoraal examen (equivalent of MA) Leiden, 1972 (cum laude); PhD, Leiden 1982 (cum laude); dissertation Beyond the Line: Classical Arabic Literary Critics on the Coherence and Unity of the Poem, published Leiden: Brill, 1982 (supervisor: Prof. Dr. J. Brugman).
Recent publications
- 2026 ʿAbd Allāh Ibn al-Muʿtazz, The Modern Poets (Ṭabaqāt al-shuʿarāʾ al-muḥdathīn), introduced, translated, and annotated by Geert Jan van Gelder (Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section One: The Near and Middle East, 196), Leiden: Brill, 2026, xiv, 698 pp.
- 2025 “Arabic Erotic Verses from the 8th Century: A Fragment from Dhū l-Rummah’s Bāʾiyyah with Commentary”, online Document of the Month, 16 June 2025, The Invisible East (University of Oxford) (https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/article/document-month-625-she-smells-fragrant-nose).
- 2024 Contrariness in Classical Arabic Literature: Beautifying the Ugly and Uglifying the Beautiful (Taḥsīn al-qabīḥ wa-taqbīḥ al-ḥasan) by Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1039), introduced, edited, translated, and annotated (Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures, 46), Leiden: Brill, xxi, 215 pp.
- 2024 Marlé Hammond and Geert Jan van Gelder, “Rayḥāna ‘The Mad’: Her Persona and Poetry”, Der Islam, 101:2 (2024) 409–438.
- 2024 “Al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505) on the Four Princes of Perfume”, in Christian Lange and Adam Bursi (eds.), Islamic Sensory History, vol. 2: 600–1500, Leiden: Brill, 2024 (Handbook of Oriental Studies: The Near and Middle East, 182.2), pp. 190–206.
- 2024 “Peter Philips’s Fantasia in F in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book: An intabulation of Crecquillon’s Si me tenez”, Scottish Music Review, 6 (2020–21), 70–88 [online].
- 2022 “Poetic Parodies of Islamic Discourses by Abū Nuwās”, in Roald Dijkstra and Paul van der Velde (eds.), Humour in the Beginning: Religion, Humour and Laughter in formative Stages of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2022 (Topics in Humour Research, 10), pp. 183–205.
- 2022 “He Reigned as Caliph; Then He Died: The Reigns of Caliphs Versified”, in Maaike van Berkel and Letizia Osti (eds.), The Historian of Islam at Work: Essays in Honor of Hugh N. Kennedy, Leiden: Brill, 2022 (Islamic History and Civilization, 198), pp. 46–68.
- 2022 “Al-Ibdāʿ, a Tour de Force of Rhetoric: The History of an Arabic Rhetorical Term”, in Hakan Özkan & Nefeli Papoutsakis (eds.), Doing Justice to a Wronged Literature: Essays on Arabic Literature and Rhetoric of the 12th–18th Centuries in Honour of Thomas Bauer, Leiden: Brill, 2022 Islamic History and Civilization, Studies and Texts, 194), pp. 148–168.
- 2021 “Men in Women’s Clothes: Some Curious Cases of Protection from Arabic Literary Sources”, Annales Islamologiques, 54 (2020 [2021]), 57–71 (special issue: Acts of Protection in Early Islamcate Societies, ed. by Edmund Hayes & Eline Scheerlinck).
- 2021 “In the Time of al-Fiṭaḥl When Stones were Still Moist and All Things Spoke: Very Short Arabic Animal Fables and Just-So Stories”, Journal of Abbasid Studies, 8 (2021), 12–37.
- 2021 Abū l-Muṭahhar al-Azdī (5th/11th c.), The Portrait of Abū l-Qāsim al-Baghdādī al-Tamīmī (Ḥikāyat Abī l-Qāsim al-Baghdādī al-Tamīmī), edited, translated, and annotated by Emily Selove and Geert Jan van Gelder, n.pl.: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2021, viii, 478 pp.
- 2021 Muḥammad ibn Ḥabīb (d. AH 245 / AD 860), Prominent Murder Victims of the Pre- and Early Islamic Periods, Including the Names of Murdered Poets / Asmāʾ al-mughtālīn min al-ashrāf fī l-Jāhiliyyah wa-l-Islām wa-asmāʾ man qutila min al-shuʿarāʾ, Introduced, Edited, translated from the Arabic, and annotated by Geert Jan van Gelder (Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section One: The Near and Middle East, 150), Leiden: Brill, 2021, viii, 388 pp.
