Sweet Schimmel of Islam

Society Religion & Philosophy
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Nice article, I musta dmit I don’t know a lot about her and only heard about her after her death. Anyone with some information, do add to the thread.

HISTORY MAN: Sweet Schimmel of Islam
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_15-10-2003_pg3_6
Ihsan Aslam

Schimmel was deeply religious and firmly believed in prayers: she wished to write a book on prayers. One of her other wishes, said Hobohm, was to visit the holy places of Islam

Professor Annemarie Schimmel, the renowned German scholar who died in January aged 80, was concerned that Islam was ‘little known and even less appreciated’. Her lifelong mission was to act as a bridge-builder between Islam and the West.

She started early: by the age of fifteen she turned to the study of Arabic; at age nineteen she received a doctorate in Islamic Languages and Civilisation from the University of Berlin. Teaching Islam at various universities of the world, she eventually ended up as the Professor of Indo-Muslim Culture at Harvard.

A commemorative seminar to celebrate the life and works of Schimmel was held on October 9 at the German Information Centre, London. Entitled ‘A quest for the sacred’, the inspiring seminar was organised by the Iqbal Academy (UK). From a biographical point of view, it was particularly interesting to hear those who knew Schimmel reminisce about her.

The Chairman of the Academy, Professor Saeed Durrani, related how he first met Schimmel in 1977 at the University of Birmingham, where he is still based. Schimmel was a globetrotter; she was everywhere: a talk here, a lecture there. And when she spoke, she shut her eyes tightly and out came the precise dates and references to scholarly works.

Mohammad Aman Herbert Hobohm, the German diplomat who embraced Islam at the age of thirteen (in 1939), presented the most moving account of Schimmel. A former imam of the Berlin Mosque, Hobohm benefited greatly from her scholarship, and she in turn drew on his practical experience as a Muslim.

With a quiver in his gentle voice, Hobohm whispered how Schimmel ‘closed her eyes forever’ on January 26, 2003. While the world lost a scholar of Islam, he personally lost someone with whom he had been closely associated for more than 50 years. As her oldest surviving friend, they often talked about the past in terms of ‘do you remember?’

They shared a deep interest in and a high regard for the history and culture of Muslims. Schimmel was a great scholar, serious in her study, but was also a lovely, sweet person with an ‘impish twinkle in her eyes’. She was enraptured by Islamic verses and was a poetess in her own right. Her great interest was Islamic mysticism.

Hobohm dubbed her ‘Umm Huraira’, the Mother of Cats on account of her love for cats, after the famous narrator of Prophetic traditions, Abu Huraira, the Father of Cats. Schimmel, however, didn’t own any cats herself because of her extensive travelling.

Hobohm described Schimmel as ‘extremely romantic’ but added that she was not a dreamer. She was addicted to work and wrote more books than the average person reads. She worked on two or three books simultaneously and published three or so every year. She lectured and travelled extensively. There was great workload on her frail shoulders, but she was tough and did not give into frailty.

Schimmel had a highly retentive memory, which was a great asset in her scholarship. It was a pleasure to listen to her as well as to read her writings, as her language was free from academic jargon. She also had a gift for languages — there probably was no language in the Muslim world she did not master.

All her work was done on a vintage typewriter for she found computers too technical and impersonal (there’s a thought — the PC, personal computer, not being personal enough). Even when she was presented a computer, she did not use it.

Schimmel was deeply religious and firmly believed in prayers: she wished to write a book on prayers. One of her other wishes, said Hobohm, was to visit the holy places of Islam, Makkah and Madinah. This raises the question: was she a Muslim? Hobohm said he ‘never touched on this topic’. However, Schimmel fully believed in the One and Only God, and called herself as one of His friends.

For Hobohm, Schimmel was ‘Apa [Sister] Annemarie’. He concluded, “I accepted her as a sister many years ago, as for the rest [her faith] Allahu alam, God knows best”.

This is the first of a two-part series. Ihsan Aslam is a Cambridge based writer interested in biography and history. He can be contacted at [email protected] or visited at http://www.pakistanhistory.com

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Sweet Schimmel of Islam II

Annnemarie Schimmel has written: “The poets of Turkey (following Rumi and Yunus Emre) and of Muslim India often compared the heart to a tree, which lives and moves only by the breeze of love and is nourished by the water of dhikr; it is the jasmine tree watered by the la and illa (the two parts of the profession of faith, which is frequently used in dhikr), as Sultan Bahu [died 1691] of the Punjab sang”.

These are the words of someone who was deeply immersed in Islam, who understood the spiritual dimensions of Islam. Speaking at a seminar commemorating Schimmel, the Rt Rev Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, emphasised the mystical approach to Islam. Many scholars are interested in mystical Islam from the outside, but Schimmel’s approach was to understand Sufism from within. Schimmel was, as Professor Saeed Durrani asserted, a Sufi.

Schimmel understood Sufism to be based on the Qur’an and the Sunnah. She has written, “These Sufis were people who meticulously fulfilled the words of the law, prayed and fasted, constantly recollecting God, and were absolutely bound by Koran and tradition”. The Sufis also looked to the Sahabah, the companions of the Prophet (pbuh), whose ascetic lifestyle was a source of inspiration.

Nazir-Ali, who studied theology at Cambridge (Fitzwilliam College), said Schimmel had a theological understanding of Sufism. In fact, she had written about the ‘danger of fossilization of the revealed word under the crust of legal formalism’. Schimmel analysed the various stages of Sufism. She highlighted the need for taubah (repentance), the importance of zuhd (renunciation), fakhr (poverty), tawakkul (complete trust in God), sabr (patience), and shukr (gratitude). She emphasised the centrality of love in Sufism.

Nazir-Ali revealed that Schimmel was not only his teacher, but also his examiner. He got to know her quite well. She was always worth listening to, whether in small or large gatherings.

Dr Leonard Lewisohn, an expert in Sufi literature and Persian, described Schimmel as an ‘extraordinary woman’ who was warm and sensitive. She was different from other German academics and did not feel at home in Germany after she returned from her professorship in Turkey. She found the atmosphere ‘cold’ and ultimately moved to Harvard.

Schimmel protected herself with knowledge, the shield of her scholarship. Knowledge was food for her. She has related how in the dire circumstances of the 1940s she did not have enough to eat but survived on knowledge instead. She was passionate in the pursuit of knowledge. Not any knowledge, but mystical knowledge.

Lewisohn spoke of the ‘phenomenal reach’ of Schimmel’s knowledge. She was, for example, at ease with world literature, language studies, and religious studies. She was a cosmopolitan scholar of Islam. All her life she fought battles defending mystical Islam and expanded on the contemporary value of Sufism.

Schimmel is accessible through the veil of her writings, the veil of her poetry. She found poetry the best way to express her inner feelings. She was a profound writer on love. A leading expert on the poet Rumi, Schimmel also loved the works of Allama Iqbal. She truly was ‘a remarkable woman’.

Dr David Mathews, a leading authority on Urdu, described Schimmel as a ‘friend and mentor’. They first met in 1969 in Lahore. It was an ‘extreme pleasure to meet her’ and to know her over the years, he said. People were spellbound when she spoke fluently in, say, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, or Urdu.

Schimmel had much in common with Iqbal — Persian poetry; the German connection. Her interest in Iqbal started early (she translated Iqbal’s Gabriel’s Wing). She found the dynamism of Iqbal’s poetry attractive and was the one to introduce Iqbal at Harvard. For her, Iqbal was the universal poet of the future.

Prince Mohsin Ali Khan of Hyderabad called Schimmel a ‘sister’ and a ‘scholar of Islam’. He once asked her about Islam, and she replied: “Muslims cannot be Muslim if they don’t love our Prophet (pbuh)”. Burzine Waghmar, a research student at London University, focussed on Schimmel’s contribution to Indo-Pakistan studies.

The Rev Peter Berry, Vice-Chairman of the Iqbal Academy (UK), summed up by saying that he found the seminar ‘moving’. The ‘remarkable occasion’ provided an opportunity to see Schimmel through the veil. The excellent seminar was rounded off with ghazals of Iqbal and Uzbek classical music.

Schimmel may have gone, but her fragrance lingers in the form of her works. She used to close her eyes while delivering lectures; and, now as her friend Aman Hobohm has put it, she has ‘closed her eyes for ever’. But, a Sufi poem goes: “I have separated my heart from this world / My heart and Thou are not separate. / And when slumber closes my eyes, / I find Thee between the eye and the lid.”

This is the second of a two-part series. The first part was published on Wednesday, October 15, 2003. Ihsan Aslam is a Cambridge based writer interested in biography and history. He can be contacted at [email protected] or visited at http://www.pakistanhistory.com

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Thanks armughal..