In Europe, perceptions of Islam have historically been shaped through polemical, reductionist, and often exclusionary discourses. In the modern period, these perceptions have continued to be reproduced in academic forms as well. However, in the twentieth century, there emerged a number of exceptional scholars who approached Islam not through ideological defenses or theological refutations, but through an ethics of understanding. Annemarie Schimmel stands out as one of the most significant figures in European academia who transcended entrenched prejudices against Islam through scholarly depth, aesthetic sensitivity, and personal experience [1]. 

Schimmel’s orientation toward the East was preceded not by an academic choice but by a striking encounter experienced at an early age. This event occurred during a period when she was unable to attend school due to a kidney infection she suffered at the age of seven. Family members and friends brought her various books to read, one of which was a fairy tale titled Padmanaba and Hasan. In this story, a Hindu sage teaches the secrets of supreme wisdom to a Muslim youth in Damascus and asks him to guide him to a marvelous realm located at the bottom of a deep well. There lay the tomb of the world’s greatest Emir, and inscribed beneath it were the words: “People are asleep; they awaken when they die” [2]. According to Schimmel, this sentence became a turning point that determined the course of her life. She would learn only ten years later that the saying was attributed to Ali ibn Abi Talib, Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law (peace be upon him) [3]. Yet this childhood intuition—however subjective—opened a gateway that led her to encounter the tradition of Islamic wisdom. 

A life of learning 

Schimmel was born on April 7, 1922, in Erfurt, Germany. Her childhood passed within a family nurtured by affection and compassion. Her father, Paul, had an interest in philosophical and mystical subjects, while her mother, Anna, was an avid reader. Demonstrating scholarly aptitude beyond her age, Schimmel’s favorite pastime as a child was arranging words in alphabetical order. 

After learning French and English in high school, she studied Persian, followed by Ottoman Turkish and modern Turkish. When she decided to learn Arabic at the age of fifteen, she encountered Dr. Hans Ellenberg, a scholar deeply knowledgeable about Islamic culture and devoted to the East. Ellenberg required her not only to learn Arabic but also to read extensively in history, literature, and religion. Thrilled at having found what she was searching for, she read three books a week from the very first lesson. During this period, Schimmel skipped two grades and completed high school at the age of sixteen. [4] 

At a time when her extraordinary talents were leading her from one success to another, all high school students were summoned to Berlin for compulsory service due to the impending outbreak of World War II. Students in medicine and the natural sciences were exempt, prompting her to enroll in physics and chemistry at university. Meanwhile, she continued taking courses in Islamic art history from Ernst Kühnel and Arabic from Walther Björkman. Recognizing her exceptional talent in Islamic arts, Kühnel encouraged her to pursue a doctorate and promised to take her on as an assistant upon completion [5]. 

Accepting this academic plan, Schimmel devoted herself entirely to the East. Under the encouragement of her mentor Richard Hartmann, she completed her doctoral dissertation entitled The Status of Scholars under the Mamluks and the Problem of Relations between the Turkish-Speaking Military Class and the Muslim Elite at the age of nineteen [6]. 

In October 1940, eager to go beyond her readings, she asked her mentor Hans Heinrich Schaeder whether he would recommend reading Rumi’s Masnavi. Schaeder instead suggested reading the Dīvān-i Kabīr through Reynold Nicholson’s translation. Schimmel would later describe the profound impact of this work as follows: “When I picked up the Dīvān, I felt as though struck by lightning. The harmony of the poems swept me away; although I was unfamiliar with Persian meter and rhetoric at the time, I could understand the texts directly. As I read, the poems seemed to translate themselves into German. Since photocopying did not exist, I copied Nicholson’s entire book by hand, including the footnotes” [7]. This experience explains why she gravitated toward understanding Islam primarily through Sufism. 

After completing her doctorate, Schimmel worked as a translator at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During this time, World War II ended with the victory of the United States, and she was sent to Marburg, where she was detained for five and a half months. There, she further developed her habilitation thesis prepared earlier in Berlin and completed The Social and Cultural Roles of Soldiers, Emirs, and Sultans in the Mamluk State. She submitted this work to Marburg University in 1946, thereby earning her second habilitation [8]. 

She was subsequently appointed to a vacant position in Arabic philology, where she taught Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Islamic arts, and the history of Islamic literature. She also attended the lectures of Heiler, the only scholar in the faculty advocating mysticism, and under his supervision completed her third doctoral dissertation on The Concept of Mystical Love in Islam [9]. 

“Who could resist the allure of the Süleymaniye?” 

Schimmel’s period in Turkey represented not merely a phase of academic research but also a direct engagement with Islam as it was “lived.” She first came to Istanbul in 1952 to examine manuscript collections and met figures such as Abdülkadir Gölpınarlı, Nihat Sami Banarlı, and Yahya Kemal. Her friendship with Samiha Ayverdi was so close that she addressed her as “sister.” Reflecting on the joy she felt while examining the calligraphy and tilework of mosques and historical sites, she later remarked: “The finest thing I did here was to visit the mosques; who could resist the allure of the Süleymaniye, rising like a crown over Istanbul?” [10] This statement reveals that her presence in Turkey was not merely an academic obligation but a conscious and heartfelt choice. 

A year later, she traveled to Ankara, where she encountered other prominent figures. For Schimmel, Ankara’s primary significance lay in her appointment to the newly established Faculty of Theology—the first of its kind in Turkey. She later recounted that there were several reasons why she was appointed to the job: It was in Ankara where she delivered her first lecture in Turkish; she was being regarded as sympathetic to Islam; and she had recently earned a second doctorate in the history of religions in Marburg. All these factors made her an ideal candidate for the vacant chair of History of Religions at the Faculty of Theology. “When I received the offer to begin work on November 1, 1954,” Schimmel says, “I accepted with pleasure, believing that I had found an ideal opportunity to live in a country I deeply loved while gaining knowledge about Islam.” [11] 

Having completed her third doctorate on Mystical Love in Islam, Schimmel felt compelled to visit Rumi. She made her first visit in 1952 and was invited to the Shab-i Arus ceremonies in 1954. As elsewhere, she formed lasting friendships there. What gave her the greatest joy during these visits was witnessing the sincerity of Anatolian women and customs previously unfamiliar to her. 

During her stay in Turkey, Schimmel traveled extensively across Anatolian cities such as Kayseri, Konya, Sivas, and Hatay. She also frequently visited other parts of the Islamic world, including Tunisia, Iran, Riyadh, India, Egypt, and Pakistan. Her particular affection for Pakistan, inspired by her admiration for Muhammad Iqbal, was something she believed originated from the tale Padmanaba and Hasan. 

Pakistan became her second homeland. She first visited the country in 1958, which she described as “the place where my destiny was shaped.” She was deeply moved by the shrines she encountered there and remarked: “…I loved my Sindh and visited many villages and sacred sites. I befriended singers and musicians who played and sang for me on moonlit boats. I never tired of listening when they performed old melodies accompanied by double flutes and various percussion instruments” [12]. 

Prejudice and exclusion in European academia 

Though it was difficult to leave Anatolia, Schimmel left Turkey in the autumn of 1959 with a warm farewell. Upon returning to Marburg, however, she was met with a cold atmosphere and was not reinstated to her former position. The reason lay in the intolerance of colleagues who could not accept a female professor of international renown who approached Islam, its culture, and Muslims without prejudice [13]. Bias and resentment now stood before her like the Great Wall of China. 

During this period, her mentor Heiler asked for her assistance in organizing a congress in Marburg, which occupied her for a year. Nonetheless, unemployment weighed heavily on her, leading her to briefly consider emigrating to Pakistan. Around that time, the President of Pakistan, whom she had met in Karachi, visited Bonn and requested a meeting. At that meeting, Prof. Otto Spies, dean of the Oriental Institute and a Turkologist, offered her a professorship. Thus began her Bonn years, lasting from May 1, 1961, to 1967. There she taught Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, as well as the history of religions, Sufism, and Islamic history. She was like a fertile land yielding three harvests in a single season. Despite her heavy workload she also served as editor of the Arabic journal Fikrun wa Fan (Thought and Science) and contributed articles to it [14]. 

American years and global impact 

By the mid-1960s, Schimmel had become a leading authority in the history of religions. She was invited to the 1965 Congress of the History of Religions in Claremont, California, where Harvard University offered her a chair to teach Indo-Muslim culture. Although she had long awaited such recognition from her own university, male administrative dominance had prevented it. Thus, she moved to the United States and spent twenty-five years at Harvard University introducing Islam to Western students through its poetry, symbolism, and mystical language. Her studies on Rumi, Yunus Emre, and Muhammad Iqbal, in particular, had a broad impact. Yet in America—what she called the “ghurbat al-gharbiyya” (Western exile) of her soul, borrowing from Suhrawardi—she carried the voice of the East to the West until her retirement [15]. 

The autumn of her life 

A life that bore fruit in every season could hardly be confined to quiet retirement. During what she called the autumn of her life, Schimmel published three-five books annually, bringing her total output to over one hundred works. Among these, And Muhammad Is His Messenger is especially significant for its profound portrayal of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). She prefaced the book with the words of Sir Kishan Prasad Shad (Kishen Pershad) (d. 1943), the Hindu Prime Minister of Hyderabad state:  

Be I infidel or true believer 

God alone knows, what I am! 

But I know: I am the Prophet’s servant, 

Who Medina’s ruler is. 

“Poets like him” Schimmel writes “want to leave their native country and leave their garden like a disturbed nightingale” and ask God “to lift the veil of separation” between them and the beloved Prophet [16]. 

Additionally, after reviewing a doctoral dissertation on Fethullah Gülen, she stated: “I was deeply impressed by what I read and heard. This movement represents a beautiful aspect of engagement with the modern world… If these ideals are properly introduced and implemented, they would greatly benefit Turkey, the Turkish people living here, and humanity as a whole. Humanity should come to know Fethullah Gülen and his ideals. His idea of tolerance and “accepting everyone as they are” is extremely important” [17]. 

Alongside her prolific writings, numerous awards crowned the autumn of her life. Although she was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1995, some envious critics—unable to challenge the scholarly merit of her works—criticized the institution for honoring her. Among them was even one of her former students, Gernot Rotter. 

In her later years, Schimmel received numerous international awards not only for academic excellence but also for poetry and literature: Rückert Prize, Germany (1965), Grand Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1989), Order of Merit of the Republic of Turkey 1996, and many more. One of her latest works was Morgenland und Abendland. Mein west-östliches Leben (East and West: My Life in the East and the West) [18]. 

By the age of eighty, Schimmel’s physical body was ready to bid farewell. Having devoted her life to studying the intricacies of Islam—particularly its mystical tradition—she mastered Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Gujarati, Marathi, Kashmiri, Bengali, Sanskrit, Czech, Hebrew, Ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Dutch, French, and English. She passed away on January 26, 2003. On her gravestone, she requested that the phrase which had shaped her life since childhood—“People are asleep; they awaken when they die” [19]—be inscribed in both German and Arabic. 

References 

1. Annemarie Schimmel, Morgenland und Abendland: Mein west-östliches Leben (München: C.H. Beck, 2002), 12–15. 

2. Damla Çeliktaban “Ölüm Bir Uykudan Uyanmaktır”, K dergi, S. 131, (2009), p. 17. 

3. İsmail b. Muhammed el-Aclûnî, Keşfü’l-Hafâ ve Müzîlü’l-İlbâs, c. 1 (Beirut: Dâru’l-Kütübi’l-İlmiyye, 1988), 413. 

4. Senail Özkan, “Zümrüt Hayallere Adanmış Bir Ömür”, İslâm Araştırmaları Der., S. 9, (2003), p. 154 

5. Ibid. p. 154. 

6. Ömer Faruk Altıntaş, “Bereketli Bir Ömrün Kısacık Hikâyesi; Annemarie Schimmel”, ehlibeytalimleri.com. 21.09.2022. 

7. Schimmel, Morgenland und Abendland: Mein west-östliches Leben (München: C.H. Beck, 2002), 49-50. 

8. Schimmel, “Social and Cultural Roles of Soldiers, Emirs and Sultans in the Mamluk Empire,” (dissertation), Marburg University, 1946, 45–78. 

9. Semanur Bal, “Annemarie Schimmel’in Tasavvuf Anlayışında Türkiye’de Geçirdiği Dönemin Rolü,” Istanbul: Üsküdar Üniversitesi Tasavvuf Araştırmaları Enstitüsü, 2019, p. 67. 

10. Cengiz Batuk, “Türkiye’de Dinler Tarihi Çalışmalarının Tarihsel Seyri”, Dinbilimleri Akademik Araştırma Dergisi, C. IX, S. 1, (2009), pp. 82-83. 

11. Mustafa Kara, “Doğudan Batıya, Batıdan Doğuya Bakan Bir Alim Prof. Dr. Annemarie Schimmel”, Tasavvuf: İlmî ve Akademik Araştırma Dergisi, Vol. IV, Number. 11, (2003), p. 498.  

12. Ethem Cebecioğlu, “Bir Akademisyen Olarak Annemarie Schimmel,” Tasavvuf: İlmî ve Akademik Araştırma Dergisi, Vol. IV, p. 11 (2003), pp. 583-58. 

13. Özkan, “Zümrüt Hayallere Adanmış Bir Ömür,” İslâm Araştırmaları Der., Number 9, (2003), p. 154. 

14. Ibid. 

15. Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Messenger, The University of North Carolina Press, 1985, p. 192. 

16. Ibid. 

17. Aymaz, Abdullah. “Annemarie Schimmel,” Çağlayan, Sep. 2020. 

18. Altıntaş, 21.09.2022. 

19. Altıntaş, 21.09.2022.