Carl Heinrich Becker

Carl Heinrich Becker (12 April 1876 – 10 February 1933) was a German orientalist and politician in Prussia.

He was one of the founders of the study of the contemporary Middle East and a reformer of the system of higher education in the Weimar Republic.

He attended universities at Lausanne, Heidelberg, and Berlin, and travelled in Spain, Sudan, Greece, and Turkey, before earning his doctorate in 1899.

In 1902, Becker became a privatdozent for semitic philology at the University of Heidelberg, where he came into contact with Max Weber.

Becker and his colleague Martin Hartmann were among the first to combine modern sociological thinking with Islamic studies.