Becker was born in Amsterdam, the son of a banker. 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. After his habilitation in 1908, he was appointed Professor of History and Culture of the Orient at the newly founded Hamburg Colonial Institute and Director of the Seminar for History and Culture of the Orient in Hamburg. In 1910 he founded Der Islam, a journal for the history and culture of the Middle East, and was its first editor. In 1913 he accepted an offer from Bonn University, where he was Professor of Oriental Philology.

Becker and his colleague Martin Hartmann were among the first to combine modern sociological thinking with Islamic studies. He was an opponent of the Kulturkreistheorie (theory of cultural circles) of Ernst Troeltsch.

During the First World War, Becker began his work with the Prussian Ministry of Culture. In 1921 and 1925–1930 he served as Minister for Culture in Prussia (independent). He died in Berlin.

• Ibn Gauzi's Manaqib Omar Ibn' Abdelaziz (Dissertation, 1899)
• Beitrage zur Geschichte Agyptens unter dem Islam (2 vols., 1902- 1903)
• Papyri Schott-Reinhardt: Veroffentlichungen aus der Heidelberger Papyrus‐ Sammlung, Vol. 1 ( 1906)
• Der Kanzel im Kultus des alten Islam (1906)
• Christentum und Islam (1907)
• L'Islam et la Colonisation de l'Afrique (1910)
• Gedanken zur Hochschulreform (1919)
• Kulturpolitische Aufgaben des Reichs (1919)
• Kant und die Bildungskrise der Gegenwart (1924)
• Islamstudien: Vom Werden und Wesen der islamischen Welt (2 vols., 1924- 1932)
• Vom Wesen der deutschen Universitaet (1925)
• Die preussische Kunstpolitik und der Fall Schilling (1925)
• Die Paedagogische Akademie im Aufbau unseres nationalen Bildungswesens (1926)
• Zu Beethovens 100. Todestag (1927)

• Haridi, Alexander. Das Paradigma der “islamischen Zivilisation”—oder die Begründung der deutschen Islamwissenschaft durch Carl Heinrich Becker (1876–1933). (MISK—Mitteilungen zur Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte der islamischen Welt, 19.) 204 pp. Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2005.

• Works by Carl Heinrich Becker at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Carl Heinrich Becker at Internet Archive
• Christianity and Islam at Project Gutenberg (trans. Rev. H. J. Chaytor)
• Newspaper clippings about Carl Heinrich Becker in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW