Islamic Studies in Germany: A Historical Overview

Author(s): ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL

Source: Islamic Studies, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Autumn : 2010), pp. 401-410
Published by: Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, Islamabad
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IslamicStudies49:3(2010)pp.401-410

Islamic Studies in Germany: A Historical Overview

ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL

In December1996,the renownedGermanscholarAnnemarieSchimmel
Islamabad,and delivereda
(d. 2003)visitedtheIslamicResearchInstitute,
lecture on Islamic Studies in Germany.In view of the Schimmers
eminenceand theexcellenceofthelecture,IslamicStudiesis publishingit.
Minor editorial changes have been made in the lecture, without
compromisingthe substance while transforming verbal to written
communication/

The history of the studies on Islam and Islamic culture in Europe, and in
particular in Germany, is a long one. We can trace it back to the year 1143
when the firstLatin translation of the Holy Qur'än was made in Spain, a
translationwhich was printed for the firsttime in Basel, Switzerland, at the
instance of no less important a figure than the German reformerMartin
Luther (d. 1546). This translationremained in use in Europe for the next 400
years. Afterthat, however, several translationsof the Qur'än were made into
Latin, and these translationsprovided the texts that were re-translatedinto
German and other European languages. In the 18th century, two mediocre
translationsof the Qur'än appeared in Germany,which are importantbecause
the great German poet and thinkerJohann Wolfgang von Goethe (d. 1832)
was aware of them and used them in his own works relatedto Islamic Studies.

Scholarly studies of Arabic began in Germany in the 16th centurywhen

several manuscripts came to the library in Heidelberg and a number of
Christian Syrians worked on these manuscripts.But for a long time the real
centre of Islamic Studies in Europe was Holland, especially the University of
Leiden with men like Jacob Golius (d. 1667) and Thomas Erpenius (d. 1624).
As a result of the special scholarly interest in Arabic, several works were
translatedfrom Arabic into Latin including Ibn TufayPs (d. 1185) Hayy Ihn
Yaqzãn. This book provided inspiration for the famous novel Robinson
Crusoe, which most of the German children read and become excited about

*
Transcribed
byDr. Muhammad
Akram.

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 ANNEMARIE
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402

the adventuresof the lonely man in his island who slowly discovered all the
possibilitiesof human lifeincludingphilosophy and religion.
But we have to keep it in mind that at that time Arabic Studies were
usually thought to be useful for the study of Hebrew. For those who needed
an understanding of the Old Testament Arabic was a kind of key to
theological studies. In other words, Arabic was studied as necessary for other
subjects and not for its own sake. The firstperson in Europe to undertake
Arabic Studies for their own sake was a German called, Johann Jakob Reiske
(d. 1774), a man with a very tragic career because his Dutch and German
colleague did not like his approach to oriental studies,as he was not willing to
make Arabic subservientto the study of Hebrew. For him Arabic and Islamic
History had to be studied for their own sake and he tried to add to it a
number of works and made the firstattemptto understand Islamic historya
little bit betterthan it was known previously.Reiske was called the Master of
Arabic Literature when he died in 1774 and it was he who really freed the
study of Arabic from bondage of theological enterprises.It is for this reason
that we honour his name. His autobiography,which his widow edited after
his death,is still a major hallmarkof Islamic Studies,particularlyin Germany.

Historically, the attitudeof the Europeans towards the Islamic world has
changed several times. On the one hand, there was the first attempt to
understand Islam from the Qur'an as we can see in Germany in the 15th
centuryin the work of a learned philosopher, Nicolaus Cusanus (commonly
known as Nicholas of Cusa; (d. 1464), who attemptedthe firstscrutinyof the
Qur'an. Later on, there was a new wave of hatred against the Islamic world
particularly in Austria and Germany, when the Ottoman Turks besieged
Vienna in 1529 and thus shocked the Western world. For about a centuryand
a half until 1683 we find a growing number of anti-Islamic, that is, anti-
Turkish writingsin the West. This obviously was because the Turks seemed to
threatenthe European civilization. In fact sometimes one has the feelingthat
this fearis stillsub-consciouslylingeringon. On the other hand, therewas also
a new interestin Islamic culture, in particularin the Islamic culture of Iran
and India. This was due to merchantsas they travelledto India and explained
in their writings about the treasures of the East and the great cultural
achievements of the Islamic countries. It was the firsttime that books from
Persia were translated into European languages, including German. Let us
mention here a book which had a greatimpact on the German understanding
of the Islamic world, in particular, of the Persian world. This is the first
German translation of Shaykh Sa'di's Gulistãn, which appeared in 1654 in
Germany and deeply impressed our great classical writers such as Johann
Gottfriedvon Herder (d. 1803) and Goethe. The influenceof Sa'di's beautiful

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ISLAMIC
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INGERMANY:
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OVERVIEW

works, the Gulistãn and Büstän, on German literaturewas visible throughout

the 19th century.Thereafterwith the help of other translationssuch as those
made by the British orientalistsof Fort William College, Calcutta, slowly a
betterunderstandingof Islamic culture began although, of course, there was a
great shortage of critically edited sources. We can say that the scholarly
oriental studies in Europe began around 1800, that is shortlyafterReiske, the
master of Arabic literature,had passed away. On the one hand, we see in
Germany the growing interestof people like Herder and Goethe in Islamic
culture. When you read Herder's studies in the historyof the Philosophy of
human beings you find some very interestingremarks about Islamic culture
and literatures.Remarks which are stunninglymodern in their approach but
nowadays very few people have read them. I am always amazed by Herder's
approach to the Muslim world. He was the one who influencedGoethe as you
all know probably through the work of Allãma Iqbãl. Goethe, in his youth,
attemptedat writinga drama on the Prophet Muhammad,(peace be upon him)
which was, however, never completed but one of its fragmentsknown in
German as Mahammadsgesang(the song of Muhammad) was translatedvery
freelyinto Persian by Allãma Iqbãl in his Payzm-iMasbriq. And it is Allãma
Iqbãl who for the firstand, as far as I am aware, the only time wrote an
answer, a poetical answer, to Goethe's West-östlicher Divan, thus making his
work and his way of understanding Islamic culture available also to his
compatriots in Indo-Pakistan. Goethe certainly was a poet and a wise
philosopher and his way of understandingthe literatureand the culture of
Islam is amazing. You may rememberthat he was inspired to write his Divan
reading the German translation of the Diwãn-e Hãfiz by the Austrian
orientalistJoseph von Hammer-Purgstall (d. 1856), a book that appeared in
1812 to 13. And it was this book that sparked offhis interestin the East. And
when you read today the notes known as Abhandlungen(the Essays), which he
appended to his poetical work, you are amazed how intelligentlyand how
wonderfullyhe has analyzed many featuresof Islamic culture. And afterhim a
man like Friedrich Rückert (d. 1866) was able to translate whatever was
available of Arabic, Persian and also Science literatureinto German poetry,
thus amassing a treasurehouse of oriental lore, which unfortunatelywas never
fullyunderstood by his compatriots.The East was also at that time the land of
fairytales. The French translationof the Arabian Nights,which appeared in
the firstdecade of the 18th centuryby Antoine Galland (d. 1715), was a new
step to a differentunderstandingof the East. Now the Arabic world was seen
as a countryof fairies,of ghosts,and of miracles.And a large part of European
literature,music, and painting was inspired by these fairytale images of the
East, which incidentallyis continuing to this day. People like the great Latin

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404 ANNEMARIE
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American poet JorgeLuis Borges (d. 1986) have largelydrawn on the figuresof
the Arabian Nightsand German poetry. German music in the 19thccnturyhas
many reflectionsof this fabulous work. But I have to say that from the early
19th century onward the scholarly approach to the East and the poetical
approach got separated. Friedrich Riickert, the great orientalist whose
translationsof al-Harirx's(d. 1122) Maqãmãt and other masterpiecesof Arabic
literatureare still unsurpassed and will remain unsurpassable. However, he
was neithera historiannor a philologist in the narrow sense of the word. But
at the same time, scholars in France, Germany and Great Britain began to
study the resources of Oriental culture. This wave of studies began with an
excellent Arabic Grammar by a French scholar. After a few Arabic to Latin
dictionariesthat had been broughtout successfullyin the previous century,for
the firsttime large dictionaries were compiled. Finally in Germany Georg
Wilhelm FriedrichFreytag (d. 1861) fromthe Universityof Bonn compiled an
enormous Arabic-Latin dictionary which, for many years and decades,
remained a standardwork for German orientalists.Gradually, more and more
sources in Arabic, Persian and Turkish became available to European scholars
and with greatinteresttheyedited manuscriptsand triedto trace the historical
development of Islamic culture. Up to that time, the historical sources were
very rarely used and I can say, without exaggeration,that from about 1835
onwards there has been a constant stream of editions of classical works in the
Islamic languages, in particular Arabic and later on in Persian, by European
scholars. It is the approach of the historian and philologist to historythat is
predominantin the scholarshipof the second half of the 19th and the firsthalf
of the twentiethcentury.
As for the German orientalists, they have a particular role in this
development. Many of you must have read the book by Edward Said,
Orientalism,in which he chides French and Britishorientalists,claiming that
their studies were nothing more than a tool for the imperialist ideas. It is
typical that Said did not mention the German orientalistsbecause Germany
had no colonies. Germany had no interestin the political field in the Islamic
world. For the German orientalists,the study of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish
was purely acadcmic, a study aimed at findingthe truth for truth's sake and
hence Edward Said's verdictagainstthe orientalistshad nothing to do with the
scholarly work of German scholars in the various universities. I have to
mention just by way of digression, that some of the leading German
orientalistswent far,sometime to Great Britain,because there they had more
possibilitiesto continue their studies. One of them is a man to whom we owe
the firstand an intense study of what we now would call Pakistani linguistics,
that is Ernest Trumpp (d. 1885) who wrote an enormous grammar of the

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ISLAMIC INGERMANY:
STUDIES AHISTORICAL
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Sindhi language and who also wrote a grammarof Pushto, both appearing in
the 1870s. He also was interestedin Balochi and in Brahwi, not to mention
other languages. But his great work, which he did under the auspices of the
BritishGovernment,was the Sindhi and the Pushto grammarand the English
translationof the Adi Grants which he produced while stayingin Lahore. But
Ernest Trumpp is an exception. On the whole, German scholars concentrated
on Arabic and on the study of early Islamic development. Classical Arabic and
classical Persian were the fieldsin which Germna scholars excelled. Here, the
name of Theodor Nöldeke (d. 1930) should be mentioned. He is the one who,
for the firsttime, ventured to write a historyof the Holy Qur'an, which was
continued later on by other scholars. Nöldeke tried to show the historical
development in the Sürahs of the Qur'an taking advantage, of course, of the
classificationof Makkl and Madanï Surahs in the Qur'an. He tried to show
how the development of thoughtcan be detectedin the historyof the Qur'an.
He was the firstscholar to tackle this problem and he was followed by many
others. There are German and Britishscholars, one of them with his attempt
to write his translation of the Qur'an in the historical sequence and many
more. At the same time - and this is somethingwhich is always difficultto
-
explain to a Muslim audience the first"true" translationsof the Qur'an into
European languages were startedand we have a considerable number of them
in European languages and especially in German. Recently, a new translation
has been done by a leading Muslim of German origin, Ahmad von Denfer
who lives in Munich and who has translatedthe Holy Qur'an into German
with very few footnotes. To be honest, I am not impressed with this
translation but it is now available and here we come to a problem which
always creates difficultiesfor the western scholars as much as for the Muslim
scholars. As all of you know, the Qur'an should not be, and cannot be,
translatedbecause the Arabic Word of God is untranslatableinto any other
language. You can make, as Marmaduke Pickthal (d. 1936) did, an integral
translationjust showing the contents. But one aspect is always irretrievably
lost in these cases namely the beauty and the impressivenessof the language,
the sound of which moves people even when they don't understandthe word
and the intricate relations between the differentparts of the Qur'an. A
scholarly translationis certainlysomethingthat leaves much to be desired and
even the most scholarly translationof the Qur'an into German, that by Rudi
Paret, which came out about two decades ago is perhaps interestingfrom the
viewpoint of the contents,but it has not the slightresemblance to the literary
beauty of the original and that is something that worries us orientalistsvery
much.
The only translationinto German which gives you a certain insightinto

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406 ANNEMARIE
SCHIMMEL

the rhetoricalbeauty of the Qur'an is that by Rückert, who has been already
mentioned above. It is unfortunatelynot complete, it contains about three
quarters of the Qur'an. It was published in fragmentsin the 1820s, then re-
edited in 1888 with a quite obtuse introductionby a German orientalistnamed
August Müller, and finallyre-editedby Hartmut Bobzin a young scholar from
the University of Ireland who is also a specialist on the translationsof the
Qur'an into European languages.I am very happy that this translationis now
available in a good printso that people can at least have a certainimpressionof
the beauty of the language as well as of the contents and I recommend this
book to everyonewho wants to know more about Islam and its foundations.
In any case, along with translationof the Qur'an there is an increasing
amount of interestin, what European scholars call, differentsources of the
Qur'an and a great number of articleshave tried to show the Jewish and the
Christian and God knows what other sources and inspirationsin the Qur'an.
Some of the modern Britishscholars have tried to show that the Qur'an was
developed much later than the Prophet's life. So we have all kinds of critical
approaches with which we have to work and which we have to share with our
students in order to provide them overview or make them a little more
understandingof the subject.
Besides attemptsto understandthe Qur'an, there have been attemptsat
understandingthe development of Islamic historyand culture. From the early
19th centurywe have a number of considerablyvast writingson the historyof
the Arabs, on the cultural historyof the Arabs, and so on. In fact,historical
writing has always been a major featureof the German oriental studies. To
this day, we have a number of excellenthistorianswho, of course, do not dare
any more to write comprehensivesurveys but ratherconcentrate on specific
events in the history of Islam. Especially afterWorld War П, the interestin
modern Islam is growing steadily.It is an interestthat is quite natural because
now, thanks to the new media and the possibilityof travellingvery quickly to
the countries of the Islamic world, it is important for us to understand the
Islamic issues. We have seen, and we are still seeing, that often through the
media facts and developments appear in distorted form. Our generation of
orientalists,that is now in their 50s, have taken over a great responsibilityin
producing good books, since the number of studies on the modern historyof
the differentIslamic States, be it Kuwait or Egypt, Sudan or Morocco, is
increasing almost week by week. Hence, the historical approach is still very
strongand I am happy to say that our young orientalistsare doing an excellent
job in this field.
Another aspect, which was largelyneglected in previous times, is Islamic
Law. It is amazing that duringthe last few years a growing number of studies

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on various aspects of the Islamic Legal Systemhave been produced specially in

Germany but also in the United States and other countries. We have some
excellent doctoral dissertationswhich have been published as books about
aspects of Islamic law, about the role of the fatwã, about modern fatwã in
Egypt, concerning several problems such as familyplanning and so on. These
works are really very importantforthe understandingof Islam bccause on the
whole the general readingpublic knows very little about Islamic law and they
do not know all the intricacies of the Shari'ah and the ways in which
jurisprudencehas been used to apply the differentaspects of Shari'ah to daily
life especially to modern life,and here is a field that becomes more and more
importantthe fartherwe go in time. I am very happy to say that a number of
young German scholars are doing excellent,solid, and impartialwork on these
aspects. This is something that should be taken into account for a better
understandingof the role of German orientalists.
On the other hand, several aspects of oriental studies, which might have
been prominent in the past, have now receded a little bit more in the
background. One of them is the study of literature,especially of the Persian
literature.We had a good number of scholars for it, of whom we have already
mentioned Rückert above. These German orientalistsdevoted their time, and
sometime their entire lives to Arabic, Persian and also Turkish literatures.
Especially those orientalistswho worked on the connection between literature
and Tasawwufproduced some exquisite work. Let us mention only one of the
great German scholars, Hellmut Ritter (d. 1971). He was a philologist of the
firstorder. He was a man who worked for long years in Istanbul and knew all
the manuscripts,the catalogued ones, in the Istanbul Library and whose major
interestwas literature.Farid al-Dln 'Attãr (d.c. 1220) was his favouriteamong
the Sufis. Ritter's book Das Meer der Seele (the Ocean of the Soul) is an
unsurpassable survey of the work of Farid al-Dín 'Attãr, both from the
philological and the mystical view-points. It is a pity that it has never been
translatedinto English. My students at Harvard whose German was pretty
shaky were deprived of the knowledge of this marvellous book. Ritterhad also
worked on Turkish and Syrian popular literature. In short, his work is a
treasúretrove for all of us and it is his studentswho have continued his work
to a certainextent.
Similarly,a scholar who is Swiss but trained in the German tradition,is
Fritz Meier of Basel (d. 1998) whose work on the great Süfis is probably the
best ever written. He has devoted studies to Abü Ishäq Kazarünx of Shiräz
who died in 1035. He has a major work on Abü Sa'ld ibn 'Abi '1-Khayr
(d. 1049), the great Sufï of Mahnã and probably his best-known work is the
study of Najm al-Dïn Kubrã who died duringthe Mongol invasion in 1221. In

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40g ANNEMARIE
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his work we find a wonderful combination of philological subtleness and

philosophical understandingof the teachings of Kubrã and his students. Ые
also devoted an interestingbook to the fatherof Maulãnã Jalãl-ud-DlnRumi,
Bahã' al-Dín Walad, which examines Sufism from a completely different
viewpoint. Lately he has published a book on the Naqshbandiyyah, in which
he follows up the spiritual teachingsand the philosophical approaches of the
Naqshbandiyyah to life. He is, without any doubt, the great master of studies
on Arabic, Persian, and Turkish mysticaland philosophical traditions.In fact,
it is difficultto findas eruditea scholar as Fritz Meier who is a greatmodel for
all who work in the fieldof oriental and Islamic studies. Unfortunately,again,
none of his works has appeared in English. Now there are coming out the
Persian translationsof some of his work but for some reason no one has dared
to translatehis complete works into English. It is a pity that his books are not
available to the English reading friends.Fritz Meier is now the last scholar,
who representsthe classical oriental studies,though his studentsand admirers
have tried to continue his work. Their interestin the Süfl orders has grown
again afterit was almost dead for some decades but we should not forgetthat
the firststudy of, for instance,on the Bektashi order in Turkey, was made by
Georg Jacob, a scholar of the University of Kiel. Lately several studentshave
written specificallyon the Sufi orders in Turkey. In this connection, a very
important study on the political role of the Naqshbandiyyah has appeared a
few years back by a young German orientalist.On the whole, these scholars
follow up the lines of Sufism more or less from the anthropological or the
philosophical viewpoints.
As for Arabic poetry,which has been one of the major fields of classical
German scholarship, it is now representedby two or three orientalistswho
dedicate their work to classical Arabic Jãbiliyyahpoetry, Abbasid poetry, and
so on. However, lately under the impact of modern developments there are
also studies on the modern Arabic writers,especially the Palestinian writers
with their expressions of fearsand hopes. There are some works on Mahmüd
Darwïsh (d. 2008) and Fadwa Tüqän (d. 2003) and other Arabic writers.
Coming to Persian, the most beautifulflowerof Iran, it is taughtrarelyin
the universitiesand fewerscholars concentrateon this field. The only scholar
of Persian whom I know is interestedin a kind of statistical approach and
more or less computerized understandingof greatPersian poets like Hãfiz, his
approach is purely scholarly and intellectual.It seems that the feelingof the
heartis not very much in vogue among German orientalistsat the moment.
On the other hand, we have seen developments in the Central Asian
Studies. Coming out of the traditionalTurkish and Persian Studies, a number
of younger people have taken up the study of the languages of Central Asia as

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ISLAMIC
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well as the political and religious state of these countries. During the recent
conferencesin Samarkand and Bukhara, we had the opportunity to come to
know some scholars who approach Central Asian Islamic historyfromvarious
vantage points such as those of social anthropology,linguistics,and so on. In
my opinion, this is a field that will grow in the next decade because now the
Central Asia is being opened up to scholars of the world. There is enormous
amount of work to be done in this regard. It seems that the shiftfrom the
classical orientalism to a modern and contemporary approach is discernible.
Interest in the border zones of the Muslim lands seems especially to be
growing not only in Central Asia but also in West and South Africa. The
Islamic heritageof these regionswas rarelystudied duringthe last century.
There is, however, one field which is surely under-representedin
Germany although it originedthere.This is the historyof the Islamic art. The
firstmajor publication on Islamic art was a catalogue of the exhibition of
Islamic masterpiecesin Munich in the year 1910. This was a startingpoint for
taking seriously Islamic art which up to that time had attractedonly a few art
lovers and was considered to be rather second or third rate compared with
European art but thanks to the effortsof Ernst Kiihnel (d. 1964) Islamic art
became an importantfieldin German Islamic Studies. Unfortunately,the best
of the art students of Kiihnel left Germany after 1933 and built up the
traditionin the United States and Great Britain.
Presently,there is not a single chair for Islamic art in Germany. I know
about the attempts being made to create such a chair in the University of
Bamberg but it seems that there are no competent people available. On the
positive side, as a resultof the unificationof Germany two Islamic museums in
Berlin have now merged which is, of course, a wonderful event for the art
lovers but it has also creates administrativedifficulty.There is a huge number
of objects, which have never been exhibited. According to my knowlege, in
the magazines of Berlin museum there are more than 25,000 pieces of
ceramics, metal work, and other pieces of Islamic art which have never been
exhibited properly. The sudden death of the Director of the Berlin Museum,
Michael Meinecke (d. 1995), who was a great specialist of architecture in
Mamlük Egypt and Syria, has created a void which has not yet been
adequately filled. So, this field, which is very close to my heart, is
unfortunatelyneglected.
In my view, which I always share with my students,to understandIslam
better in its manifold aspects it is necessary to know at least a little bit of
Islamic art or calligraphy. For, how can one really enjoy reading something
about medieval Islamic thoughtwhen one doesn't know how the architecture
looked like. And how can one enjoy the master-piecesof art - a beautiful

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 SCHIMMEL
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copy of the Qur'än written on vellum, or a marvellous prayer book or

-
something like that without ever having touched such a manuscript.
Reliance on the writtenword is something that is certainly necessary but it
should not be the only way of approaching Islamic culture. I was lucky
enough to live in Turkey forfiveyears and to go to Pakistan and other Islamic
countries and to see things that arc not written in the books and thus have
some feelingfor thingsthat can never be put in writing.In fact,it is extremely
importantfor young scholars to experience the East or the oriental countries
from Morocco to Pakistan and Bangladesh for some time just to get in touch
with the people who live in Islamic culture.Lukily, young studentshave now
more such opportunities,then before which will certainlyresult in scholarly
works that bear warmth and sympathyforIslamic culture in general.
In Germany oriental studies declined in the 1950s with the loss of a great
number of good scholars either due to the war or due to emigration. I am
happy to say that fromthe mid 60s of the twentiethcenturyonward we have a
growing number of young people who are interestedin all the differentfacets
of Islamic Studies. Hopefully, during the next few years Germany will again
be producing some of the leading scholars in this field, Inshã' Allah. The
people with whom I am in touch, colleagues and students alike, give me the
hope and the conviction that this will be the case. I hope when I come here
again aftersome time, Inshã' Allah, I will be able to present a survey of what
has been happening in the late 1990s and the beginning of the twenty first
millennium.Thank you.

$ $ $

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