Waghmar, Burzine

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Burzine K. Waghmar

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Professor Annemarie Schimmel (April 7, 1922 to January 26, 2003)

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Professor Annemarie Schimmel1(April 7, 1922 to January 26, 2003)Annemarie Brigitte Schimmel, who died aged 80 on 26th January 2003, was the West’s mostoutstanding expert on Sufism, classical and folk Islamic poetry, Indo-Pakistani literature, andcalligraphy.By the time of her sudden death following an accident aggravated by medicalcomplications, she had written and translated not only 105 works and numerous scholarlyand popular articles, but also poetical compositions in the spirit of medieval mystics such asal-Hallaj (d. 922 AD); Hafiz (d. 1380 AD); and Rumi (d. 1273 AD) – on whom she was theforemost western specialist long before he became a best-seller among new-age occidentals.Her impressive output was attributable to a solid grounding in not only the Islamic “tripos”of Arabic, Persian and Turkish but also Urdu, Pashto and Sindhi. For good measure she alsoadded Czech and Swedish to her native German, and also Latin, English, French and Italian.She read and corresponded in twenty-five languages and was able to deliver extemporaneouslectures serenely, in ten languages, with her eyes shut to enraptured audiences for an houror even longer. After concluding with a memorable verse, she conveyed her audience fromthe sublime to the mundane albeit mesmerised.Born in historic Erfurt, also hometown of the German mystic Meister Eckhart, AnnemarieSchimmel grew up in a house “permeated with religious freedom and poetry”. She beganstudying Arabic at 15, finished high school two years earlier than customary, and obtainedher first doctorate from Berlin University in 1941 at 19 in Arabic, Turkish and Islamichistory. After studying with Hans Ellenberg, Annemarie von Gabain, Richard Hartmann,Ernst Kühnel and the brilliant Hans Heinrich Schaeder, she commenced researches onMamluk history for her Habilitationsschrift. Having managed to avoid getting drafted, shewas employed in the translation bureau of the Foreign Office during the war years. Theprivation of this period was trying with ten hours forced labour a day during the summerbut despite this she prepared her dissertation; catalogued an index for a medieval Arabicchronicle; and, being passionately influenced by Goethe and Rilke – and above all, theprolific polyglot and her favourite, Friedrich Rückert – translated Rumi and Hallaj intoGerman verse. She was interred after Armistice Day (having submitted her Habilitationsschrifta month earlier), and following an invitation to join the University of Marburg, deliveredher inaugural address before her twenty fourth birthday in January 1946. In 1951 whilstteaching at Marburg, as Assistant Professor of Islamic studies (1946–54), she secured her1 Some extracts of the above first appeared in The Guardian (February 6, 2003): 24 of which copyrightpermission has been obtained. I thank Francis Robinson and Farrokh Vajifdar for their editorial comments.Annemarie Schimmel’s American colleagues, some of whom have been my teachers, shared rich reminiscences:I am grateful to Richard Frye, Merlin Swartz, Wheeler Thackston Jr. and John Williams. The inspiration for thisnecrology came from my teacher Herbert Mason who peppered my directed study seminar on Islamic history withvignettes of Schimmelia.JRAS, Series 3, 13, 3 (2003), pp. 377–379 C© The Royal Asiatic Society 2003DOI: 10.1017/S1356186303009866 Printed in the United Kingdom378 Burzine K. Waghmarsecond doctorate on Islamic mysticism under Friedrich Heiler. Heiler was a pioneeringtheologian to whom she dedicated her book Deciphering the Signs of God: A PhenomenologicalApproach to Islam (1994). This book was based on the Gifford Lectures delivered in 1992 atEdinburgh: a signal distinction in Religious Studies. She was also invited to present theCommittee on the History of Religions Lectures at sixteen Canadian and American universities –a record – in 1980 as well as the Kevorkian Lectures, New York University (1982) and, adecade later, the Bampton Lecture at Columbia University.Remarkably for a non-Muslim woman, Schimmel moved to Ankara University’s Facultyof Divinity and taught comparative religions, Church History and dogmatics in the mediumof Turkish from 1954 to 1959. By now she considered the venerable Louis Massignonas a mentor recalling him as a “figure of white light”. She returned home to teach asAssociate Professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at Bonn University (1961-65) where shejointly founded and edited with Alberto Theile the Arabic journal, Fikrun wa Fann. Despitethe persuasion of the late Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Richard Frye, she was initiallydisinclined to leave Bonn and her journal for Harvard. Frye was chiefly instrumental inarranging with the then Harvard President, Nathan Pusey, for the first teaching positionin the world exclusively on South Asian Islamic culture, namely, the Minute Rice Bequestfunded from the estate of its inventor, A. K. Ozai Durrani, which she came to hold in 1967as Lecturer and then as full Professor of Indo-Muslim Languages and Culture (1970-92).Upon her retirement she delivered “The Life of Learning” Charles Homer Haskins Lecture tothe American Council of Learned Societies (Williamsburg, 1993) before returning home tobecome Honorary Professor at Bonn University, where the Annemarie Schimmel Chair forIndo-Muslim Culture was instituted on her 75th birthday in 1997. Earlier, two Festchriften, aspecial number of the Journal of Turkish Studies (Cambridge, Mass, 1994) and the appositelyentitled Gott ist schön und Er liebt die Schönheit (Bern, 1994), consisting of 50 essays werepresented to her by colleagues, students and friends. She was felicitated by the city of Bonnand her name registered in the town’s Golden Book when she turned 80 last year, an eventalso celebrated in her “zweite Heimat”, Pakistan.As the doyenne of Pakistan studies, Schimmel was an authority on that nation’s poet-philosopher, Sir Muhammad Iqbal, and hitherto unexamined aspects of folklore, classicalUrdu poetry, and popular devotional life. She came to own presented copies of Iqbal’sPayam-i mashriq [Message of the East] and Javidname [Book of Eternity]; and enthusiasticallyundertook over 35 visits, one of which included accompanying German President RomanHerzog on his 1995 state visit. Over the years she was awarded honorary doctorates by theuniversities of Sind, Islamabad and Peshawar – besides Uppsala, Konya and Teheran’s Al-Zahra University – and the nation’s Sitara-ye Quaid-e Azam (1965), Hilal-i Imtiaz (1983) andfirst International Iqbal Award (1998). Schimmel, much loved in Pakistan, has had a boulevardflanking Lahore’s Canal Bank; an Institute of Languages, Culture and Communication inHyderabad; and a scholarship for female students pursuing advanced research in Britainnamed after her. Lahore’s Goethe Institute has recently been renamed Annemarie SchimmelHaus. That a grave was kept prepared for her burial in Makli, Sind, was widely recounted inSenior Common Rooms.Her significant publications were: Gabriel’s Wing: A Study into the Religious Ideas of SirMuhammad Iqbal (1963); Mystical Dimensions of Islam (1975); The Triumphal Sun: A Study ofProfessor Annemarie Schimmel 379the Works of Jalaloddin Rumi (1978); Islam in the Indian Subcontinent (1980); And Muhammadis His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (1985); A Two-Coloured Brocade:The Imagery of Persian Poetry (1992); and an autobiography Morgenland und Abendland: Meinwestöstliches Leben (2002).Schimmel was the first female President of the International Association of the Study ofReligion (1980); honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, RoyalAsiatic Society, Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, Royal Dutch Academy of Lettersand Middle East Studies Association of North America. Among numerous accolades she alsoreceived UCLA’s Giorgio Levi della Vida Medal (1987); her nation’s highest civil award, theGrosses Bundesverdientskreuz (1989); the Organisation of Islamic Conference’s IRCICA Goldmedal (1990); the first female recipient of Tübingen University’s Dr. Leopold Lucas Prizetowards Christian, Jewish and Muslim understanding (1992); Egypt’s Order of Science andArt (1996); Arts and Sciences Award of the Turkish Republic (1996); and the Uzbek Order ofFriendship Award (2002). Faddists expressed outrage upon the conferral of the Friedenspreis desDeutschen Buchhandels in 1995 as she did not appear to support Salman Rushdie or condemnabuses within Islamic societies. But Annemarie Schimmel was a multicultural Orientalist longbefore both terms became tainted. She was a gifted teacher, sensitive interpreter of Islamand a bridge for inter-cultural dialogue between Muslims and Westerners. An AnnemarieSchimmel Forum has been established in Bonn to foster such discussions.Herbert Mason, a mystic scholar and colleague of over three decades, reminisces how“she had foretastes of eternity for a long time” and that the part of Shaghab in his play, TheDeath of Al-Hallaj, read by her at Harvard on Ash Wednesday, 1974, poignantly mirrored her“sensitivities and hearbreaks, all healed, all transformed, ‘in flight”’ – on Gabriel’s wing.Burzine K. WaghmarLondon

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Professor Annemarie Schimmel (April 7, 1922 to January 26, 2003)

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