Dr Annemarie Schimmel, SI, HI, (April 7, 1922 – January 26, 2003) was a well known and very influential German Orientalist and Iqbal scholar, who wrote extensively on Islam and Sufism. She was a professor at Harvard University from 1967 to 1992.
Early life and education
Annemarie Schimmel was born to a Protestant and highly cultured middle-class parents in Erfurt,Germany on 7 April 1922. Her father, Paul, was a postal worker and her mother, Anna belonged to a family with connections to seafaring and international trade. Schimmel remembered her father as “a wonderful playmate full of fun”, her mother made her feel she was the child of her dreams and her home as full of poetry and literature, though her family was not an academic one.
After working voluntarily for half a year in the Reich Labour Service she began studying at the University of Berlin in 1939 at the age of 17, during the period of Nazi Germany. In November 1941 she received a doctorate with the thesis “The position of the Caliph and the Qadi in Late Medieval Egypt” (Die Stellung des Kalifen und der Qadis im spätmittelalterlichen Ägypten). Following this, she was drafted by the German Foreign Office while continuing with her scholarly work in her free time.From May to September 1945 she was detained by US authorities. At the age of 23, she became a professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Marburg, Germany in 1946, where she earned a second doctorate in the history of religions in 1954.
She was deeply influenced by her teacher Hans Heinrich Schaeder when she was pursuing undergraduate studies at the University of Berlin. He suggested her to study the Divan of Jalaluddin Rumi.
Work
A turning point in her life came in 1954 when she was appointed Professor of the History of Religion at the University of Ankara(Turkey). There she spent five years teaching in Turkish and immersing herself in the culture and mystical tradition of the country.
She was a faculty member at Harvard University from 1967 to 1992 and became Professor Emerita of Indo-Muslim Culture upon her retirement. In 1954, Schimmel began to work as a Professor of the History of Religions at Ankara University, Turkey. She was also an honorary professor at the University of Bonn. She published more than 50 books on Islamic literature, mysticism and culture, and translated Persian, Urdu, Arabic, Sindhi and Turkish poetry and literature into English and German.
For her work on Islam, Sufism or mysticism and Muhammad Iqbal, the government of Pakistan honored her with its highest civil awards known as Sitara-e-Imtiaz or ‘Star of Excellence’, and Hilal-e-Imtiaz or ‘Crescent of Excellence’ She was conferred with many other awards from many countries of the world, including the Leopold Lucas Prize of the Evangelisch-Theologische Faculty of the University of Tübingen and the 1995 prestigious Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. This award caused a controversy in Germany, as she had defended the outrage of the Islamic world against Salman Rushdie in a television interview. Schimmel’s award speech is available here in translation entitled, A Good Word is like a Good Tree.
A Poem by Annemarie Schimmel
I walk,
And the blood of my feet
Transforms the stones into roses.
I walk
And the tears of my eyes
Water the desert shrubs,
Everyday the same sun,
scorching, merciless, white,
And at nightfall the wind, cutting my heart and my hope.
I walk out of myself
and the desert is you.
the paths are throbbing like veins,
and tenderly touches my hand
your skin, soft as sand.
I wander through you,
drinking the salty water that flows from your eyes,
sleeping at night in your arms
when you cover my weary limbs with your garment of stars.
And I am
one with the beats of your heart,
one with your breath, with the wind.
Resources:
- Metropolitan Museum of Arts Publications
- New York Times Obituary – 2003
- At Institute of Ismaili Studies
- At Ismailimail Archives
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