Annemarie Schimmel Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Prof. Dr. Annemarie Schimmel (1922-2003) was a well known and a very influential German scholar, who wrote emensly on Islam. She received a doctorate in Islamic Languages and Civilization from the University of Berlin at the tender age of nineteen. At twenty-three, She became a professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Marburg (Germeny), where she earned a second doctorate in the History of Religions. 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 served Harvard University from 1967 to 1992 and was Professor Emeritus of Indo-Muslim Culture there. 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 Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, the government of Pakistan honored her with the highest civil award of the country known as ‘Hilal-e-Imtiaz.’ She was showered with many other awards from many countries of the world, including the prestigious Peace Prize of the German book trade.
In an obituary Habib R. Sulemani wrote, “I had the honor to listen to her lecture in 1996 at the Goethe Institute in Lahore. It was really amazing to hear her speaking her mind with eyes closed. Psychologically, it was a difficult relationship between the speaker and the audience, as obviously she used to disconnect her contacts with the audience - no eye-to-eye contact. It seemed as if she connected herself with a divine power and got her thoughts from it. As it is a common practice here in this society to ask someone's faith, after the lecture, someone asked her if she had embraced Islam? After a scholarly lecture it was indeed a very difficult question, but she said neither 'yes' nor 'no'. Thus, she handled the situation very successfully.”[1]