Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (8 February 1857 – 26 June 1936) was a Dutch scholar of Oriental cultures and languages and Advisor on Native Affairs to the colonial government of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Born in Oosterhout in 1857, he became a theology student at Leiden University in 1874. He received his doctorate at Leiden in 1880 with his dissertation 'Het Mekkaansche Feest' ("The Festivities of Mecca"). He became a professor at the Leiden School for Colonial Civil Servants in 1881.