Annemarie Schimmel

Annemarie Schimmel studied at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Ayoub and Heinz Halm are recorded as having studied under Annemarie Schimmel. The recorded working language is German. Places of work recorded in the authority are Berlin, Marburg and Bonn. Employment is recorded with Harvard University, University of Bonn and University of Marburg. Distinctions recorded are Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, Hilal-i-Imtiaz, Sitara-i-Imtiaz and Peace Prize of the German Publishers' and Booksellers' Association.

• Name — Annemarie Schimmel • Born — 7 April 1922 • Birthplace — Erfurt, Germany • Died — 26 January 2003 • Place of death — Bonn, Germany • Education — Doctorate in Islamic civilization and languages, doctorate in history of religions. • Alma Mater — University of Berlin • Occupation — Iranologist, Sindhologist, Orientalist, Islamic studies, Sufism studies, Iqbal studies

• Illustration — Glass plate in the Bonngasse, Bonn, Germany Schimmel was born to Protestant and highly cultured middle-class parents in Erfurt, Germany. 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," and she recalled that her mother made her feel that she was the child of her dreams. She also remembered her childhood home as being full of poetry and literature, though her family was not an academic one. Having finished high school at age 15, she worked voluntarily for half a year in the Reich Labour Service. She then began studying at the University of Berlin in 1939, at the age of 17, during the Third Reich (1933–1945). At the university, she was deeply influenced by her teacher Hans Heinrich Schaeder, who suggested that she study the Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi, one of the major works of Rumi. In November 1941, she received a doctorate with the thesis Die Stellung des Kalifen und der Qadis im spätmittelalterlichen Ägypten (The Position of the Caliph and the Qadi in Late Medieval Egypt). She was only 19 years old at the time, and her thesis was awarded magna cum laude. Not long after, she was drafted by the Federal Foreign Office, where she worked as a translator for the next few years while continuing her scholarly studies in her free time. On April 1, 1945, she submitted her Habilitation. After the end of World War II in Europe, in May 1945, she was detained for several months by U.S. authorities for investigation of her activities as a German foreign service worker, but she was eventually released. In 1946, at the age of 23, she became a professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at Marburg University. She was married briefly in the 1950s, but domestic life did not suit her, and she soon returned to her scholarly studies. She earned a second doctorate at Marburg in the history of religion in 1954.

• Illustration — The grave of Annemarie Schimmel and her mother, with a quotation from Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib: "People are asleep. When they die, they wake up."

A turning point in Schimmel's life came in 1954 when she was appointed professor of the history of religion at Ankara University. She spent five years in the capital city of Turkey teaching in Turkish and immersing herself in the culture and mystical tradition of the country. She was the first woman and the first non-Muslim to teach theology at the university.

In 1967 she inaugurated the Indo-Muslim studies program at Harvard University and remained on the faculty there for the next twenty-five years. While living in quarters on the Harvard campus, Schimmel often visited New York City, where, as a consultant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she was famed for her ability to date manuscripts and objects from the style of calligraphy in or on them. Her memory of calligraphic styles was almost photographic. During the 1980s, she served on the editorial board of the Encyclopedia of Religion, published in 16 volumes (Macmillan, 1988) under the aegis of Mircea Eliade. In 1992, upon her retirement from Harvard, she was named professor emerita of Indo-Muslim Culture. During this period, she was also an honorary professor at the University of Bonn.

After leaving Harvard, she returned to Germany, where she lived in Bonn until her death in 2003.

She was often asked by both Muslims and non-Muslims whether she was a Muslim. In such cases, she preferred to give an evasive answer, saying, for example, that only those who are not sure whether they are good Muslims or not can really be good Muslims.

She was multilingual—besides German, English, and Turkish, she spoke Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Punjabi—and her interests ranged across the Muslim landscape. She published more than fifty books and hundreds of articles on Islamic literature, mysticism, and culture, and she translated Persian, Urdu, Arabic, Sindhi, and Turkish poetry and literature into English and German. Her particular fondness for cats led her to write a book about their role in Islamic literature, and her interest in mysticism resulted in a book about numerical symbolism in various cultures. Her consuming passion, however, was Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. Schimmel was the cofounder of Fikrun wa Fann, a multilingual cultural magazine.

• Mohammad Iqbal, Poet and Philosopher: A Collection of Translations, Essays, and Other Articles. Karachi: Pakistan-German Forum, 1960. • Islamic Calligraphy. Evanston, Ill.: Adler's Foreign Books, 1970. • Islamic Literatures of India. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 1973.. • Mystical Dimensions of Islam (512 pages). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975.. • Classical Urdu Literature: From the Beginning to Iqbal. A History of Indian Literature, v. 8. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 1975.. • Pain and Grace: A Study of Two Mystical Writers of Eighteenth-Century Muslim India. Leiden: Brill, 1976.. • Foreword by Annemarie Schimmel. The 'Ilāhī-nāma is a 12th-century Persian poem. • A Dance of Sparks: Imagery of Fire in Ghalib's Poetry. New Delhi: Ghalib Academy, 1979. • We Believe in One God: The Experience of God in Christianity and Islam, edited by Annemarie Schimmel and Abdoldjavad Falaturi; translated by Gerald Blaczszak and Annemarie Schimmel. London: Burns & Oates, 1979. • The Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Jalaloddinn Rumi. London: East-West Publications, 1980. • As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam (376 pages). New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.. • Das Mysterium der Zahl (310 pages). Munich: Eugen Diederichs Verlag, 1983. English edition, The Mystery of Numbers (314 pages). New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.. • And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (367 pages). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.. • Gabriel's Wing: Study into the Religious Ideas of Sir Muhammad Iqbal. Karachi: Iqbal Academy, 1989.. • Calligraphy and Islamic Culture. New York University Press, 1990.. • Islamic Names: An Introduction (134 pages). Edinburgh University Press, 1990.. • Islam: An Introduction (166 pages). Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.. • A Two-Colored Brocade: The Imagery of Persian Poetry. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.. • Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to Islam (314 pages). The 1991–1992 Gifford Lectures. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.. • Nightingales under the Snow: Poems. London and New York: Khaniqahi Nimatullahi Publications, 1994.. • Anvari's Divan: A Pocket Book for Akbar. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994. • Introduction to Cats of Cairo: Egypt's Enduring Legacy, with photographs by Lorraine Chittock. New York: Abbeville Press, 1995. Reissued as Cairo Cats: Egypt's Enduring Legacy (96 pages). American University in Cairo Press, 2005.. • Meine Seele ist eine Frau. Munich: Kosel Verlag, 1995. English translation: My Soul Is a Woman: The Feminine in Islam (192 pages). New York and London: Continuum, 1997.. • Look! This Is Love. Boston: Shambhala Centaur Editions, 1996.. • I Am Wind, You Are Fire: The Life and Work of Rumi. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1997. Reissued as Rumi's World: The Life and Works of the Great Sufi Poet. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2001.. • Im Reich der Grossmoguls: Geschichte, Kunst, Kultur. Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 2000. English translation: The Empire of the Great Mughals: History, Art, and Culture (352 pages). London: Reaktion Books, 2004.. • Make a Shield from Wisdom: Selected Verses from Nasir-I Khusraw's Divan (112 pages), translated and introduced by Annemarie Schimmel. London: I.B. Tauris, in association with the International Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2001.. • Islam and the Wonders of Creation: The Animal Kingdom. London: Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation 2003..

She was employed by Harvard University, University of Bonn, University of Marburg and Ankara University. She belonged to Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She worked at Berlin, Marburg, Bonn and Ankara.