Michael Ursinus


Michael Ursinus is a German scholar of Islam.

Biography and works

From 1973 to 1980 he studied Islamic studies, Turkish studies, African studies and social and economic history at the University of Hamburg. After receiving his doctorate in 1981 on reform efforts in Ottoman Rumelia before the commencement of Tanzimat. He was an assistant at the Institute for History and Culture of the Near East and Turkology in Munich from 1981 to 1984. From 1984 to 1989 he was a University Lecturer in Ottoman Studies at the Center for Byzantine Studies and Modern Greek at the University of Birmingham; there development of the Ottoman studies ; since 1989 Honorary Research Fellow there.
From 1989 to 1992 he taught as a professor for Islamic and Turkish Studies at the Oriental Seminary at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. From 1992 to 2016 he was Professor for Islamic Studies at the Seminar for Languages and Cultures of the Middle East at Heidelberg University. Since 2006 he has been serving as the President of the CIEPO.