# Kultura > Letërsia shqiptare > Krijime në gjuhë të huaja >  Annemarie Schimmel

## PrInCiPiEl

Prof.Dr.*ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL*(Prof. Emeritus) :
http://ourworld.cs.com/fei%20hun%201...schimmel_a.jpg

_Shënim_:

*ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL*(1922 -2003),Profesoreshë e Historisë së Religjionit në Fakultetin e Teologjisë ISLAME në *Universitetin e Ankarasë* (1954-1959) ligjëruese e religjionit në gjuhën Turke ,Profesoreshë e Gjuhës Arabe dhe Studimeve Islamike në *Universitetin e Bonit*(1961-1966) dhe Profesoreshë e Kulturës Indo-Muslimane në *Universitetin e Harvardit*(1969-1992) ku ligjeroi deri në pensionim.
Më pastaj ajo kthehet në Bon dhe ushtron detyrën e Honorary Professor  në *Universitetin e Bonit*.
*Dr.ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL* ka shkruar me shume se 80 libra dhe ese.
Fushat e studimit të saj ishin Literatura Islame , Misticizmi Islam dhe Sufizmi.
Librat e sajë *'Mystical Dimensions of Islam'*, për  Maulana Jalal-ud-din Rumi-un, dhe* 'Deciphering the Signs of God'*  kan pasur një kontribut të jashtëzakonshëm në kuptimin
e esences së vërtetë të ISLAMIT !


Dr.ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL zotëronte më se 21 gjuhë botërore !!!
Ajo është fituese e cmimit ME PRESTIGJ të madh ,The Peace Prize of the German Book Trade ,1995.

 

*PrInCiPiEl*

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## PrInCiPiEl

Prof.Dr.*Annemarie Schimmel*(Prof. Emeritus) :

*' Thirst '*

*"Make thirsty me, O friend, give me no water!
Let me so love that sleep flees from my door!"*

         Yes, sleep flees, if he sees the burning eyelids,
         He would be drowned if he would cross the sea
         of tears; he would be poisoned
         if he should dare to drink
         That potent wine which you
         Poured in the gobler of my eyes:
         Those eyes which once beheld your radians face
         And try to mirror it on every tear...
         ...Those eyes which are a veil.


*Make me more thirsty, friend, give me no water-
My thirst is proof that you are thirsty, too...*

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## PrInCiPiEl

Prof.Dr.*Annemarie Schimmel*(Prof. Emeritus) :

* Maulana Spoke* 

Maulana spoke:

*The lover
         weaves satin and brocade
         from tears, O friend, to spread it
         one day beneath your feet...*

Only from tears, Maulana?

*Every breath*

Forms the weft of the endless fabric of love.

With every breath I weave the brocade of your name,
Golden letters inscribed in the satin-robe of my blood.
O, what garments have I prepared for you,
taking the ruddy dawn and the fist green silk of spring,
star-embroidered velvet, and feather-light wool!
Every thought embellishes your name, O my friend,
Weaving into the fabric the turquoise domes of Iran,
Dyeing the yarn in the pearl-studded depth of the sea.

Every pulse bears the drum of primordial love
Every breath is the flute of impossible hope
Every goblet is filled with you


*And I weave
          ever new silken garments of words
                                               only to hide you.*

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## PrInCiPiEl

Prof.Dr.*Annemarie Schimmel* (Prof. Emeritus) :

*' Remember '* 
Remember?
There were some unicorns
in the forest of yore.
Playful and white
they walked through the waning moon
in early dawn.
Lilies grew out of their steps.

But, dear, once you smiled at them
and they bowed at your feet,
melting like dew,
And I
cried
envying them.

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## Veshtrusja

Pershendetje Principiel:

Shume e bukur vjersha "Remember". :)

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## PrInCiPiEl

Prof.Dr.*Annemarie Schimmel* (Prof. Emeritus) :

*' I Know '* 

I know
There are no birch trees in Konya
They grow further north
under the silvery sky
mirrored in brownish brooks
in the Sarmathian steppe
or in upstate New York...
But I know
that *Maulana* said:

*Under the shade of your tresses
        so lovely and so cool
        my heart slept full of peace like
        the dust beneath a tree...*

Dust out of which
grass will grow
to praise your mildness
heather will grow
to sing your beauty
(taking its hue from my hood-stained tears)
dust which one day
will be covered by gold
when you, dervish-birch,
will shed your leaves
to attain perfect peace,
poverty, purity, love
Only your naked limbs stand there, on this silvery sky
and the wild grouse greet you
passing in winter nights into homelessness.
And I, the dust at your feet,
protect you , praying till spring...

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## PrInCiPiEl

Prof.Dr.*Annemarie Schimmel* (Prof. Emeritus) :

*' Maulali Near Hyderabad '* 


There are five hundred steps and five more
that lead to the dark little cell
which houses the trace of the saint.
You cross the gigantic rocks,
rocks, washed by the tears
of lovers through thousands of years.
Five hundred steps and five more 
you would be weary and torn
but for the guide who knows well
how to lead your heart on,
You'll see: the rocks turn to sand
You'll see: the thorns turn to roses.
Don't listen to the crows of despair,
don't listen to those who don't know
that to live is to die
and to love is to burn
There are five hundred steps and five more,
and the end is a rose.

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## PrInCiPiEl

Hasan Dagh

Never will you reach that silver mountain
which appears, like a cloud of joy,
in the evening light.

Never can you cross that lake of salt
which treacherously smiles at you
in the morning mist.

Every step on this road takes you farther away
from home, from flowers, from spring.
Sometimes the shade of a cloud will dance on the way
Sometimes you rest in a ruined caravanserai
seeking the truth from the blackish tresses of smoke

Sometimes you walk a few steps
with a kindred soul
                      only to lose him again.

You go, and go
torn by the wind, burnt by the sun,
and the shepherd's flute
tells you "the Path in Blood"

until you cry no more

until the lake of salt
is only your dried-up tears
    which mirror the mountain of joy
    that is closer to you than your heart.


Prof.Dr. *Annemarie Schimmel* 
* 'Nightingales Under the Snow' 
-  Variations on Rumi's Thoughts

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## PrInCiPiEl

Prof. Dr. *Annemarie Schimmel* (Prof. Emeritus) :

*A Life of Learning*

Once upon a time there lived a little girl in Erfurt, a beautiful town in central Germanya town that boasted a number of gothic cathedrals and was a center of horticulture. The great medieval mystic Meister Eckhart had preached there; Luther had taken there his vow to become a monk and spent years in the Augustine monastery in its walls; and Goethe had met Napoleon in Erfurt, for the town's distance from the centers of classical German literature, Weimar and Jena, was only a few hours by horseback or coach. 

The little girl loved reading and drawing but hated outdoor activities. As she was the only child, born rather late in her parents' lives, they surrounded her with measureless love and care. Her father, hailing from central Germany, not far from the Erzgebirge, was an employee in the Post and Telegraph service; her mother, however, had grown up in the north, not far from the Dutch border, daughter of a family with a centuries'-long tradition of seafaring. The father was mild and gentle, and his love of mystical literature from all religions complemented the religious bent of the mother, grown up in the rigid tradition of northern German protestantism, but also endowed with strong psychic faculties as is not rare in people living close to the unpredictable ocean. To spend the summer vacations in grandmother's village was wonderful: the stories of relatives who had performed dangerous voyages around Cape Horn or to India, of grandfather losing his frail clipper near Rio Grande del Sul after more than a hundred days of sailing with precious goodsall these stories were in the air. 

Mother's younger sister was later to weave them into a novel and to capture the life in the coastal area in numerous radio plays. 

Both parents loved poetry, and the father used to read aloud German and, later, French classical literature to us on Sunday afternoons. 

The little girl owned a book of fairy tales, printed in 1872, and at the age of seven she enjoyed correcting what appeared to her as spelling mistakes, that is, the old-fashioned orthography before the language reform of 1900, thus preparing herself as it were for the innumerable page proofs she would have to read later in life. In the book there was one story which she almost knew by hearta story not found in any book she would read in her entire life. It was called "Padmanaba and Hasan" and told of the visit of an Indian sage to Damascus where he introduces an Arab boy into the mysteries of spiritual life and guides him to the subterranean hall where the mightiest king's catafalque is exposed amidst incredible jewelry. Over it was written: "People are asleep, and when they die they awake." Ten years later, when the little girl was 18, she realized that this was a hadith, a word ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad and dearly loved by the mystics and poets in the Islamic world. 

She enjoyed school, especially languages such as French and Latin, and shocked her teacher by writing her first essay in high school, entitled "A Letter to my Doll" about the Boxer rebellion in China. She tried to copy little texts in foreign characters from a small publication of the British Bible Society, entitled God's Word in Many Languages, and loved poetry. One of her favorite poets was Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866), the ingenious Orientalist-poet, whose versions of Persian and Arabic literature impressed her deeply. Her most ardent wish was to learn more about Oriental culture, and when she was 15 she found a teacher of Arabic. After a week she was absolutely infatuated with her studies for her teacher not only introduced her to Arabic grammar, but also to Islamic history and culture. Weeks were counted only from Thursday to Thursday (that was the day of the Arabic class) although she had to keep this to herself. For whom among her classmates would have understood, whom of her relatives and acquaintances would have appreciated a girl's learning a Semitic language at a time when nationalism and political fanaticism filled the air? 

Somewhat later the girl skipped two levels to finish high school at 16. Alas, she had to attain seven years of English in six months so that the grade in English was the lowest in her otherwise brilliant grade sheetthat is probably the reason why the Good Lord found it necessary later to send her to Harvard to improve her skills a bit. 

Before joining the university we had to undergo the trial of Arbeitsdienst, a forced labor service during which we lived in the countryside to serve as unpaid maids and agricultural help in poor areas, and I learned such useful things as cleaning pig sties and harvesting beetsand desperately tried to keep up my Arabic. This stubborn clinging to my ideals resulted in the fact that I was probably the only girl in my age group who was not automatically transferred into the Nazi party as was customary when one reached the age of 18. 

It was in the camp that we heard the news of the Second World War breaking out, and our leader proudly told us that we could now stay much longer than the usual six months to serve our herrlicher Führer. My non-existent love for the Führer certainly did not increase at hearing this news. 

My father had been transferred to Berlin on the very first day of the war. Soon my resourceful mother found out that I could be released from the Arbeitsdienst provided I studied natural sciences. Why not? After all, I loved physics and immediately imagined that I would work later in the history of Islamic science, especially mineralogy. After reaching Berlin and registering in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, I also continued Arabic and took courses in Islamic Art, and by the end of the first trimester (the semesters had been shortened), in Christmas 1939, Professor Kühnel, the doyen of historians of Islamic Art, smilingly encouraged me to forget science and to concentrate upon Islamic studies by promising that I would become his assistant after completing my doctorate. This, however, remained a dream. After I had finished my Ph.D., in November 1941, I joined the Foreign Service as a translator, for from the Museum, which was not important for war activities, I would have been drafted into the army. But 40 years later my initial dream was fulfilled when I was invited to join the Metropolitan Museum on a part-time basis to do what Kühnel had hopedthat is, to work on Islamic calligraphy, a field which I also taught during my Harvard years. 

To study in wartime Berlin wasat least for melike living far away from the stark realities of political life. My professors were the most outstanding representatives of their respective fields. Importantly for me, we had a woman professor, Annemarie von Gabain (d.1993), to whose introduction into Turcology I owe much and whom I considered my "elder sister," my apa. And while Richard Hartmann taught us the patient historico-critical approach to classical Arabic and Ottoman Turkish, Hans Heinrich Schaeder, a true genius, carried us to the farthest shores of history, nay of culture in general. Discovering my interest in Maulana Rumi (kindled by Rückert's free translations of his poems), he suggested that I read R. A. Nicholson's Selected Poems from the Divan-i Shams-i Tabriz (which I copied by hand) as well as Louis Massignon's studies on the martyr-mystic Hallaj (executed in 922 in Baghdad)and three months later, Christmas 1940, I surprised him with a set of German verse translations from Rumi and Hallaj which, I feel, are still valuable. After the war it was Schaeder who introduced me to the work of T.S. Eliot, and instead of spending a brief visit in Göttingen with discussions about Persian poetry, we read the Four Quartets, just arrived on his desk. As a corollary he suggested that I should read John Donne, whose poetry fascinated me so much that 20 years later I published a collection of my German verse translations of his work because his style seemed so close to that of my beloved Persian poets. 

Both Schaeder and Kühnel were married to academic women who generously encouraged me in my work. This certainly contributed to the fact that I never felt a stranger in the academic world and took it for granted that women had the same role to play in the academic community as did men. 

Six terms of study were, however, by no means a quiet time of learning: during every vacation we had to work in a factory, 10 hours a day, and I would return home, often with my hands bleeding, to write my dissertation on Mamluk history. I learned much about the hard life of the women in the factory and was grateful for the understanding they showed to the stranger whose work was meant to guarantee some days of paid leave for a few of them. After finishing my studies I worked not only in the Foreign Office, but also prepared the great index for a 16th-century Arabic chronicle of some 1,500 pages, which appearedstill during the warin Istanbul. 

The dark clouds of war became more and more terrifying; the bombing strongerI remember walking for four hours through burning streets in search of a lost colleague, of giving shelter to friends who had lost everything, and reading about the worsening political situation in the telegrams we had to decipher in our office. Yet, I remained, in my spare time, faithful to my Mamluk officials about whom I was writing my Habilitationsschrift. I submitted it on April 1, 1945, the day when our office was sent to central Germany for security reasons. In a small Saxonian village we were captured by the Americans, spent a week in a subterranean prison, and were transported to Marburg on the day of the armistice to remain interned during the summer in one of the students' houses. It was the best thing that could happen to us: at least we had a roof and regular, though, of course, minute rations of food, and we soon arranged something like a camp university, teaching and learning to adapt to life in a strange little community. 

One day an important visitor came to look after us. It was Friedrich Heiler, the famed historian of religions, then Dean of the Faculty of Arts in the yet to be re-opened old University of Marburg. He spoke about Nathan Söderblom, the leader of the Ecumenical Movement, Archbishop of Sweden, and historian of religion (d. 1931). Although I had the impression that the learned speaker barely noticed me during the discussion, two months later, when the internment was drawing to a close, he called me at home. Would I like to stay in Marburg? They were in need of a professor of Arabic and Islamic studies as the former chair holder was such a terrible Nazi. I was barely prepared, but as I hadalong with some Persian and Arabic texta copy of my Habilitationsschrift in the one suitcase I could bring with me, I agreed, and after three months with my aunts in northern Germany I delivered my inaugural address on January 12, 1946, not even 24 years old. It was quite an event in the conservative little town of Marburg, and the only woman on the Faculty, Luise Berthold, specialist in medieval German, congratulated me with the words: "My dear child, remember one thingmen are our enemies!" 

Despite her warning, I enjoyed teaching immensely. No one can image how happy both teachers and students were during those yearsno more war, freedom to speak, to read books of which we had not known anything, listening to inspiring lectures of returning emigrants, and although we had barely anything to eat, we ate and drank knowledge. Every classbe it Arabic, Persian, or Turkish, or first ventures into the history of Islamic literature and artwas an adventure, especially since quite a few of my students, returning from the war, were senior to me. Besides, I became closely attached to Heiler and worked with him on history of religions, supplementing his classes with Islamic materials and learning much about the phenomenological approach to religion, about Church History and its intricacies, and enjoyed the German Mass which Heiler used to celebrate on Sundays in the small chapel in his house. 

However, it was also the time of learning of the atrocities that had been taking place during our childhood and youth, atrocities which seemed too shocking to be trueand of which most of us had been unaware. 

In my discovery of new areas of knowledge I was supported by my mother who had joined me in May 1946 after my father had been killed in the battle of Berlin, one of the numerous elderly men who, without even knowing how to handle a shotgun (and there were six guns for 25 people!), were sent against the Russians as "the main defense line". 

One interesting aspect of my life in Marburg was that Friedrich Heiler was one of the first to realize the importance of women's contribution to religion and scholarship. His seminars and his book, Die Fran in den Religionen, tackled the problem long before it became an issue in the clerical and academic world. We jokingly called him "the patron saint of women professors." In this quality he warmly advocated the role of women as ministers of the church and a Swedish champion of this cause, Märta Tamm-Götlind, visited him in 1948. She invited me to come to Sweden in 1949, and, after many "external" difficulties, I went to spend two weeks with her on a small island on Sweden's West coast to polish up my Swedish which, at that point, was purely theological. Days in the beautiful setting of Sigtuna north of Stockholm followed and for a whole month I enjoyed Uppsala. I was fortunate enough to meet the great masters of Oriental studies, such as H.S. Nyberg and Zetterstéen as well as the numerous historians of religion, in the first place Geo Widengren. But the high point was the connection with gamla ärkebiskopinna, Archbishop Söderblom's widow, Anna, who received the young colleague of her husband's friend with affectionate warmth. I enjoyed every minute of my stay and felt thoroughly spoiltbut how could I foresee that 35 years later the Faculty of Divinity in this very place would confer upon me an honorary degree? I confess that I was proud, at that occasion, to be able to express part of my vote of thanks on behalf of the foreign recipients of degrees in Swedish, a language filled with precious memories, and I again enjoyed the fragrance of the lilacs around the Domkyrkan and tried to read the lines which the ravens around the church spire kept on writing on the crystalline blue sky. 

For a modern student of Oriental languages it seems unbelievable that we never saw an Arab, let alone studied in an Arab country. But for post-war Germans even the smallest excursion into a neighboring country was a major event. One event of this sort was my participation in the first International Conference for History of Religion in 1950 in Amsterdam, where I saw and heard the giants in that field. Among them was Louis Massignon, a figure that seemed to consist of white light, with barely any trace of a material bodya mystic, but a mystic who fought relentlessly for the underprivileged, for the Algerian Muslims, and who incorporated passion and love. Years later he talked to me in an overcrowded elevator in Tokyo about the secrets of the mystical rose, unaware of the noisy human beings around us. 

Amsterdam opened my eyes to the numerous possible ways to interpret religion in its essence and its manifestations, philological, historical, theological, sociological, and shortly afterwards I obtained a doctorate in the History of Religion from the Faculty of Divinity in Marburg. Yet, the Protestant church of the province Hessen very soon prohibited the faculty to offer such a degree because its ideals did not tally with the church's attitude toward the study of non-Christian religions. And was there not the danger that a non-Protestant might receive a degree from a Protestant faculty? 

A brief visit to Switzerland in the spring of 1951 brought me in touch with the philosopher Rudolf Pannwitz, whose fascinating thought system much too little known even in German-speaking countrieshelped me appreciate better the philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal, the Indo-Muslim poet-philosopher. For the first time I also met Fritz Meier, the best authority on the study of Sufisman admired model and, later, a wonderful friend to this day. 

A decisive event took place in 1952: my first visit to Turkey. I had received a small grant to study manuscripts on Islamic prayer life in Turkish libraries, and fell immediately in love with Istanbul and with the wonderful hospitality of Turkish friends from whom I learned so much about Islamic culture as well as of Turkey's classical past. At the end of my first stay I had still enough money left to fulfill my heart's wish: I flew to Konya to visit the mausoleum of Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi who died in this place in 1273. After reading and translating his ecstatic verse for so many years, I simply had to go, and Konya, then a small sleepy town, did not disappoint me (as it does now, surrounded by rows of high-rise apartment buildings that seem to bar off spirituality). A thunderstorm at night transformed the greyish streets and little gardens into a veritable paradise; the roads were filled with the heavy fragrance of igde (musk willow), and I understood why Rumi's poetry is permeated with spring songs. It is not a logos or a worn-out image based on a Koranic reference to the resurrectionrather, he knew that the thunder was indeed like the sound of Israfil's trumpet which announces the resurrection of the seemingly dead bodies. And did not the trees now don green silken robes, fresh from Paradise? 

I loved Turkey so much that I returned next fall without a grant. In retrospect, these two stays look like a time of perfect ecstasy, and my major joybesides the library workwas to discover Istanbul on foot. The librarian of the delightful Aya Sofya library took me around after work, reciting a poem at each corner, so that I experienced the city through poetry. And often did I sit with the well-known poets of the country to discuss with them problems of modern literatureproblems of a people that had been deprived of its time-honored Arabic alphabet in 1928 and was trying to shed its historical fetters. 

During my second stay, new friends helped me to gain access to another part of Turkish culture, to the best traditions of Turkish Sufism. There were successful businessmen who yet would spend night after night in silent meditation, and there was Samiha Ayverdi, the towering figure among mystics and writers, author of numerous books and articles in which she conjures up the traditional life. In her house I was introduced to the culture of Ottoman Turkey, and she and her family opened my eyes to the eternal beauty of Islamic fine arts, in particular calligraphy. I loved to listen to her discourses which went on in long, swinging sentences, while the sky over the Bosphorus seemed to be covered with clouds of roses. A few weeks ago, in March 1993, she passed away on the eve of the Feast of Fastbreaking, three days after I had kissed her frail hands for the last time. 

After experiencing such generous friendship by people from all walks of life, Germany appeared cold and unfriendly to me, and the prediction of my old colleague in Marburg seemed to be much more true than at the beginning of my careerthere were enough people who did not like a young woman who, to add to this in itself negative aspect, had published a book of verse translations of Oriental poetry, not to mention a volume of German verse in Persian style and who waseven worse!fascinated by the mystical dimensions of Islam instead relying solely on the hard external facts, be it history or philology. Therefore I more than gladly accepted the offer of Ankara University to join the recently created Faculty of Islamic Theology and to teach, in Turkish, history of religions although I was a Christian woman. The five years that followed were beautiful, hard, and instructive. My mother joined me for many months every year and shared my love of the Anatolian landscape through which we traveled on long, dusty roadsthe poetry of Yunus Emre, the medieval Turkish bard, was my company. The years in Ankara gave me the chance to visit villages and small towns, to observe "the piety of the old women", and to discuss questions of religious truth with Sufis and lay people, to learn much about Islamic customs and practices. At the same time I had numerous friends who espoused Ataturk's ideals, and I saw how a gap was widening, year by year, between the two faces of contemporary Turkey. Its result is a superficial Americanization of those who have forsaken their moorings in the Islamic-Turkish tradition, and a hardening stance of those who, as a reaction to such a development, seek help in a legalistic "fundamentalism." 

Of course, we visited Konya time and again. Shortly after our arrival I was asked to give a paper during the first public celebration of Rumi's anniversary on December 17, 1954. It was the first time that the old dervishes could get together for the samac, the mystical concert and the whirling dance, after Ataturk had banned the mystical fraternities in 1925 and prohibited their activities. There they werewe saw them first in an old private mansion, whirling like big white butterflies and listened to the enchanting music. Thus Rumi became even more alive and stayed with me as an unfailing source of inspiration and consolation to this day. Now, however, dervish dance and whirling have in most cases degenerated into a folkloristic play or a tourist attraction, just as much as those who claim to translate Rumi's poems into a western language usually cling to a few, often misunderstood, concepts which would make the great mystical thinker-poet shudder. But who can still undergo the hard training of 1,001 days, during which Rumi's Persian works would be studied while music, whirling, and meditation slowly "cooked" the dervish until he was spiritually matured? 

Having reached a certain impasse in my scholarly work after five years, I decided to return to Marburg, not exactly welcomed by my colleagues. 

But in the meantime another strand appeared in my life's fabric.Even since I was a student I had admired the work of Muhammad Iqbal, the Indo-Muslim poet (1877-1938) who is regarded as Pakistan's spiritual father and in whose poetical work Eastern and Western ideals, personified by Rumi and Goethe, are blended in a fascinating way. After Pakistan came into existence in 19471 was able to procure some studies about him, and a wonderful coincidence brought me, thanks to Rudolf Pannwitz, in touch with an old German poet who once had translated some of Iqbal's poems from an English version into German verse. He had sent them to Lahore where they are now on display in the Iqbal Museum, and as he could not read the two Persian works Iqbal offered him as a token of gratitude, Harms Meinke gave them to me. It was the poet's Payam-i mashriq, his answer to Goethe's West-Östlicher Divan, and the Javidnama, the soul's journey through the seven spheres. I could not help translating the latter work into German verse, and my enthusiasm was so great that I talked incessantly about his wonderful, reformist and yet deeply mystical thought so that my Turkish friends urged me to translate the epic into Turkishnot in verse, to be sure, but with a commentary. This lead to my invitation to Pakistan at the beginning of 1958. 

There it was not only Iqbal's memory and the repercussions of his work that I found; I became interested in the different languages and literatures of the country and fell simply in love with Sindhi, the language of the lower Indus Valley. To read the mystical songs of Shah Abdul Latif (d.1752) and his successors proved a never ending spiritual adventure, for classical Islamic thought, mystical trends, the admixture of Indian bhakti elements, and especially the concept of the woman as the representative of the soul in her quest for the Eternal Beloved fascinated me for years. I often remembered the wise old Padmanaba of my childhood tale who introduced the young Arab into the mysteries of Sufism, for from the walls of the innumerable saints' tomb in the countryside resounded the word: "People are asleep, and when they die they awake." And the undulating cadences of Sindhi music led to a deeper love for Indian and, in general, Oriental music. 

Pakistan remained my main field of work after I left Turkey. Numerous journeys have led me there in the following years to this day, and I came to know the different nooks and corners of the vast countrynot only the steppes of Sind, dotted with little mausoleums, but also, at a much later stage, the mountains in the north, and I often wonder what was the highpoint of some 30 visits to Pakistan. Was it the radiant morning in Islamabad when I was awarded the Hilal-i Pakistan, the highest civil distinction of the country, in a ceremony in which the Aga Khan also participated? Was it the drive to the Khunjrab Pass of 15,000 feet at the Chinese border? Or the flight along the Nanga Parbat into the gorges of the young Indus? Or was it the incredible hospitality of the people even in the poorest village, the gentle gesture of an unknown guard who hurried to bring a glass of water for the honored guest from Germany? Or was it perhaps the flight in a small helicopter across southern Balochistan to Las Bela and then to the sacred cave of Hinglaj in the Makran mountains, a Kati sanctuary which we finally reached on camel back? I watched the political changes; had long talks with Mr. Bhutto and with General Zia ul-Haqq; saw the industrialization grow; the old patterns of life slowly disappear; tensions between the different faction intensify; ministers and heads of states changing or being killed. But the variegated cultural trends and the friendship of so many people (who usually knew me from my frequent appearance on TV) makes me very much feel at home in Pakistan. 

My fascination with Pakistanand the whole Subcontinentwas supported in a quite unexpected way. In 1960, before being called to the University of Bonn to teach Islamic studies and the related languages, I had helped organize the International Congress for the History of Religion in Marburg. Five years later American colleagues invited me to assist them a bit in organizing the next conference in Claremont, California. It was my first visit to the United States. I enjoyed it, taking in everything from Disneyland to the Grand Canyon as well as New York, which never ceases to excite me. The conference itself clearly showed the historical approach to religious studies of the majority of Europeans and a more dynamic attitude advocated by a number of North American scholars. But more confusing for me than this somewhat worrying tension between schools of thought was Wilfred Cantwell Smith's question whether I would consider coming to Harvard to teach Indo-Muslim Culture. It was the famous Minute-Rice Chair which a wealthy Indian Muslim, infatuated with the Urdu poetry of Mir (d.1810) and Ghalib (d.1869), had dreamt of in the hope that his favorite poets would be translated into English to enchant the West as much as Fitzgerald's renderings of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat had done more than a century ago. No, I said; I was not interested at allUrdu was not my field. And America? I had never thought of settling there. 

At that point I had still another reason to refuse the offer or, at least, to hesitate to accept it: after moving to Bonn in 1961, I was editing from 1963 onward an Arabic cultural magazine with Albert Theile, one of the most ingenious creators of high-class cultural publications. Our Fikrun wa Fann was often praised as the most beautiful journal printed in Germany, and as I was not only responsible for the Arabic texts but in part also for the composition, I learned how to make a classical layout with scissors and glue until a perfect piece of work was achieved. In connection with our selection of articles, authors, and illustrations, we had to visit numerous museums, theaters, and ballets, and my horizon widened thanks to the lovely work which enabled me to indulge in my artistic interests and thus in a certain way supplemented my academic teaching. To leave my journal? No! 

And yet, who could resist a call from Harvard? I finally accepted, all the more since I did not see any chance for further promotion in Germanyas my chairman remarked: "Miss Schimmel, if you were a man, you would get a chair!" 

My contract with Harvard began in July 1966, but I used the first months to buy books in India and Pakistan. Coming from Iran I stopped in Afghanistan whose natural beauty captured my heartwas not the sapphire lake of Band -i Amir taken out of a childhood dream? Later I was to return several times to this country with its hospitable people, traveling from Sistan to Balkh, from Ghazni to Herat, and each place was fraught with memories of Islamic history, resounding with Persian verse. I stayed again in Lahore and then proceeded to India, which in the following years was to become more and more familiar to menot only the north with its Moghul heritage but perhaps even more the south. I found in the old royal cities of the DeccanGulbarga, Bidar, Bijapur, Aurangabad, and Golconda-Hyderabadso many things that gave witness to the vast but little-known literary and artistic heritage of that area that again a new world unfolded, a world which I tried to open up to my students at Harvard and which enabled me to be of some help when Cary Welch prepared the glorious "INDIA!" exhibition in 1985 at the Metropolitan Museum. 

In March 1967 I arrived in Harvard to experience the very first morning a terrible blizzard. Nobody had ever told me that such events were quite common, just as nobody ever bothered to introduce me into the secrets of Harvard administration: the mysterious proceedings that ruled grades, term papers, admission meetings, the difference between graduates and undergraduates, and so on. How could one, acquainted with a completely different academic system (that held true for both Germany and Turkey), know all these things? The first semester was hard: not only was I made to teach an introduction to Islamic history besides Persian, Urdu, and quite a few other subjects, but I also spent every spare moment in the bowels of Widener making the first list of the hundreds and hundreds of Urdu books which by then had arrived from the Subcontinent. While we had only six or seven Urdu publications when I checked the catalogue first, Widener now boasts one of the finest libraries of Urdu and Sindhi in the United States. 

"Harvard is the loneliest place on earth." Thus an American colleague had told me, and it was only thanks to my wonderful students that I survived those first yearsstudents from India and Pakistan, from the Carolinas and from the West Coast, from Iran and from the Arab world, Jesuits and Muslims as well as Buddhists. They were my children, and they supported me when I went through phases of despair, and trying to help them solve some of their problems (not only scholarly ones but personal ones as well) helped me overcome some of my own problems. And as I had seen Istanbul through the eyes of poets, so I learned something about "the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls" through e.e. cummings' verse. 

My problem was that I had to teach in a language not my own, and while I had thoroughly loved teaching in Turkish, I always remembered my near-failure in English in high school, even though I had already published quite a few books in English. And worse: In Germany I could use the magnificent poetical translations of Oriental poetry made from 1810 onward, and when there was none available I translated a poem myself into verse. Here, I was like mute, unable to get across these treasures to my studentsor so I thought. After Harvard had offered me tenure in 1970, I grew more secure, and the arrangement to teach one semester with a double teaching load while spending most of the fall in Germany and in the Subcontinent was, I think, beneficial both for my research and for my students. That such an arrangement was accepted by the university was largely due to the efforts of the trustee of the Minute-Rice money, Mr. James R. Cherry, whose friendship and wise counsel I have enjoyed ever since I came to this country. In the course of time, especially after moving into Eliot House, I felt more and more a veritable member of the Harvard community, meeting colleagues from different fields of specialization through the Senior Common Roomsomething the member of a small, exotic department really needs in order to develop a sensitivity to the problems facing a major elite university. 

Strangely enough, with my life on three continents, my literary output kept on growing. The United States compelled me to publish in English, which meant reaching a much wider readership than previously when I wrote mainly in German. I also enjoyed the chance to learn more about North America since numerous conferences led me to most of the major campuses. Everywhere I found friends. UCLA was an almost regular site where I attended many of Levi-della-Vida conferences and was honored myself, quite unexpectedly, by receiving the Levi-della-Vida medal in 1987. There was Salt Lake City and the stunning beauty of southern Utah; there was Eugene (Oregon) and Dallas; Chapel Hill and Toronto and many more; and there was Chicago with its fine group of historians of religion who included me among the editors of Mircea Eliade's prestigious Encyclopedia of Religion. It is fitting to mention here the ACLS lectures in the History of Religion in the spring of 1980, which brought me from Tennessee and Duke to Edmonton, Alberta. I think I broke the records with the sheer number of my lectures on various aspects of mystical poetry in Islam, published in the book As Through a Veil. The time on the other side of the ocean was filled with lecture tours to Switzerland and Scandinavia, to Prague and to Australia, to Egypt and Yemen, not to forget my participation in the festivities on occasion of the 2,500 years of Iran in 1971. 

Often people ask me whether such a life between classes, typewriter, and ever so many lectures on a variety of topics is not exhausting. It may be at certain moments, but the joy one experiences when meeting so many interesting people indulging in lively discussions after the lecturesover breakfast, lunch, and dinneris certainly rejuvenating for it fills the mind with fresh ideas, and even the most stupid question of an untutored journalist or an inquisitive high school student may tell you that you could have tackled a certain problem more skillfully, or defined a formulation more lucidly. To be sure, the constantly repeated question: "How is it that you as a woman became interested in Islam, of all things?" makes me increasingly impatient and even angry! 

The circle of my scholarly life, and that is almost a coterminous with my life in general, expanded. The fact that my American cousin Paul Schimmel (named after my father who never knew of his existence) teaches at MIT and was elected on the same day as I to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences was and still is a great source of joy for me, and I feel proud of him and his loving family, with the two girls deeply interested in Islamic culture. 

It was certainly an experience to watch not only the development of my students (some of whom by now are retired ambassadors or greybearded professors), but also to observe how spiritual seeds that existed long ago matured into wonderful flowers and fruits. When I learned how to handle the phenomenological approach to religion, which seems to facilitate the understanding of the external manifestations of religions and slowly guides the seeker into the heart of each religion, I was and still am convinced that such an approach can lead to much-needed tolerance without losing oneself in sweeping, dangerous "syncretistic" views that blur all differences. 

But could I have ever dreamt in those early years that one day I would be elected (in 1980) President of the International Association of the History of Religion, the first woman and the first Islamologist to occupy this office? Or could anyone have foreseen that I would be invited to deliver, in 1992, the prestigious Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh, the dream of every historian of religion, theologian, or philosopher? When I read in my second semester of Persian, at age 17, the Safarnama of the great medieval Ismaili philosopher Nasir-i Khusraw (d. after 1071), could I have imagined that some of my best students at Harvard would be members of the Ismaili community or that I was to become closely associated with the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, where I like to teach summer courses and for whom I translated (and nowthank heaven!into English verse) poems from the pen of this very Nasir-i Khusraw? 

And when I, near despairing in the Arbeitsdienst before entering the university, wrote a letter to the imam of the Berlin mosque asking him whether he could find a family in Lahore with whom I could spend some time to learn Urdu (which, of course, was a purely utopian idea!)who could have foreseen that more than 40 years later, in 1982, one of the most beautiful alleys in Lahore would bear my name? 

My entire life, lived in widening circles, as Rilke puts it, was a constant process of learning. To be sure, learning and re-learning history, as it happened several times in my life, made me somewhat weary of the constant shift of focus or of perspective in the political life of the countries I was associated with. Perhaps, looking at the Islamic (and not only Islamic!) societies in modern times, one should keep in mind the ingenious insight into the patterns of ebb and flood of the tides of history as expressed by the 14th-century North-African historian Ibn Khaldun in his muqaddima, parts of which I translated in my early daysand one tends (at least I do) to look out for the unchanging power behind the fluctuating surface of the ocean of events. 

My parents, wise as they were, taught me this in different ways. Without my father's understanding of the very heart of religion and without my mother's even deepening wisdom, her infinite patience with a somewhat unusual daughter, and her never failing support, my life would have been quite different. A village girl who never had been to high school but was completely self-taught, my mother read the manuscripts and proofs of all my German books and articles and acted, as she loved to say, as the "people's voice" and thus taught me to write with non-specialist readers in mind. But she also tried to check my tendency to enter too deeply into dreams of mystical love for, being supersensitive herself, she was afraid lest I lose my sobriety and my critical mind. 

Although it seems that the time of learning might now draw to a close, yet I understand that every momenteven the most unpleasant oneteaches me something and that every experience should be incorporated into my life to enrich it. For there is no end to learning as there is no end to life, and when Iqbal says in a daring formulation: "Heaven is no holiday!" he expresses the view, dear to Goethe and other thinkers, that even eternal life will be a constant process of growing, and, that is, of learninglearning in whatever mysterious way something about the unfathomable mysteries of the Divine, which manifests itself under various signs. Suffering, too, is part of it; and the most difficult task in life is to learn patience. 

Learning is, to me, transforming knowledge and experience into wisdom and love, to matureas according to Oriental lore, the ordinary pebble can turn into a ruby provided it patiently takes into itself the rays of the sun, shedding its own blood in a supreme sacrifice. Perhaps a few lines which I once wrote after visiting *Maulana Rumi*'s mausoleum in Konya can express what learning means to me: 

*Never will you reach that silver mountain
which appears, like a cloud of joy,
in the evening light. 

Never can you cross that lake of salt
which treacherously smiles at you
in the morning mist. 

Every step on this road takes you farther away
from home, from flowers, from spring.
Sometimes the shade of a cloud will dance on the road,
sometimes you rest in a ruined caravansary,
seeking the Truth from the blackish tresses of smoke,
sometimes you walk a few steps
with a kindred soul
only to lose him again. 

You go and go, torn by the wind,
burnt by the sun
and the shepherd's flute
tells you "the Path in blood". 

until you cry no more
until the lake of salt
is only your dried-up tears 

which mirror the mountain of joy
that is closer to you than your heart.*





@ The Charles Homer Haskins Lecture Series
*A*merican *C*ouncil of *L*earned *S*ocieties

----------


## PrInCiPiEl

Prof. Dr. *Annemarie Schimmel* (Prof. Emeritus) :

" Honourable assembly, Your Honour Mr. President. I am very grateful for the
guiding speech by which you honoured me and in which you emphasised so
strongly the importance of tolerance and of understanding foreign civilisations, which are indispensable to our foreign politics. When I learnt to my great surprise and joy that I had been awarded the Peace Prize,nobody would have imagined that during the following months a campaign would unfold - a campaign of such force that it seemed to destroy my life's work, which was and is devoted to a better understanding between East and West. This hurt me to the very core of my heart and mind, and I hope that those who attacked me without even knowing me in person or having read my works will never have to undergo a torture like that.


I learnt one thing: _the methods and ways of scholarship and poetry are one
thing, those of journalism and politics something else. Both sides however agree on one point: that is the central role of the word, the free word, in our lives_.

......I  will help in my own way to defend the freedom of speech, of the word. In the 1950s my Pakistani poet friend *Fez* wrote from prison;


*"Speak! for your lips are still free,
speak! for your tongue is still yours,
speak! your straight body is still yours,
speak! for your life is still yours,
See, how in the Blacksmith's forge
the flames are sharp, the iron is red,
The locks' mouth begin to open,
every rind in the chain becomes wide!
Speak a little time is plenty
before body's and tongues's death.
Speak truth is still alive,
speak out whatever is to be said."*

And this leads me to the very subject of my address. Sometimes I thought: if
Friedrich Ruckert (1788-1866) were still alive he would certainly deserve the
Peace Prize, as his motto was: "Weltpoesie (global poetry) alone is
Weltversohnung (leading to the reconciliation of worlds)". During his lifetime, he produced thousands of masterly poetical translations from dozens of languages and knew that poetry,"the mother tongue of the human race", connects people as it is part of all civilisations.


But in the period when Ruckert spoke of poetry as the medium of global
reconciliation, and that means, of peace, people had a different relationship
with the non-Western world from what we have now. Amazed and shocked, the West had observed in the 8th and 9th centuries the Muslim conquest of the Mediterranean, but thanks to the Arabs who ruled Andalusia for centuries, it has also inherited the foundations of modern science; medical works by Rhazes and Avicenna were considered standard works in Europe to the beginning of modern times; the writings of Averroes played a role in theological discussions and prepared the way towards the Enlightenment. The translations of Toledo, where Jews, Christians and Muslims lived peacefully together, made Arab learning the poetry of the West. The Catelan scholar Ramon Lull, again, taught the mutual respect of religions which, in his opinion, should end not only in discussion but lead to a common enterprise - that is to foster peace.

After the siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1529, bloody dramas about the Turks
were part and parcel of a widespread anti-Turkish, and that meant anti-Islamic literature, but at the same time, Europe came to know another aspect of the East thanks to objective reports by travellers and merchants.
The first French translation of the Arabian Nights at the beginning of the
10th century showed the West an oriental world of fairies, jinnies and sensual attractions which inspired generations of poets, painters, and musicians; at the same time Arabic and Islamic studies as well as Indology gained an independent status among the sciences thanks to the Enlightenment.
Scholarly studies and translations triggered off a current of orientalising
poetry, which was headed by Goethe, whose West-Oestrlicher Divan with its
"notes and dissertations" is an unsurpassed analysis of Islamic culture.

But when Ruckert published his first poems inspired by Persian poetry in 1820
(one year after Goethe's Divan) people listened to the tales "when far away
in Turkey people fight each other" (as Goethe says in Faust).

As for us, we are not only informed day after day of news events but rather
are entangled by the mass media to watch pictures of the Muslim world, to
which we owe so much. This culture appears strange and alien to most
Europeans, and is constantly blamed because it seems to have no reformation, no Enlightenment, and is therefore considered "incapable of changing" as Jacob Burckhardt claimed a century ago with a deadly aversion. But do not most people know that the Islamic world between Indonesia and West Africa presents us with most diverse culture expressions, although it has the common basis in the firm belief in the One and Unique God and the acceptance of Muhammad as the last Prophet? To look at the Islamic world as something monolithic is as if we would overlook in the West the difference between Greek orthodox Christianity and North American Freechurches. But in times where we are constantly flooded with condensed, brief information, it seems next to impossible to differentiate, and to recognise the softer shades and positive aspects of Islam as it is lived.

"Man is the enemy of what he does not know." says the Greek as well as the
Arabic proverb. Maulana Rumi, the great mystical poet of the 13th century,
tells in his Persian prose work that a little boy complained to his mother of
a black figure that appears time and again to frighten him; finally the mother advises him to address the terrible apparition, as one can recognise someone's character by his answer. For the word, as Persian poets like to repeat, discloses the speaker's character by its "smell", just as an almond
cake stuffed with garlic discloses its true character although it may outwardly look quite appetising.

"A good word is like a good tree." Thus says the Quran, and in most religions the word is regarded as the creative power; it is the carrier of revelation: God's word incarnate in Christianity, or His word inlibrate in Islam. The word is a good entrusted to man, which he should preserve and which he must not weaken, falsify, or kill by talking too much. For it has a power of its
own which we cannot gauge, it is this power of the word upon which rests the extraordinary responsibility of the poet and even more of the translator who by a single wrong nuance can cause dangerous misunderstandings.

The ancient Arabs believed that the poets' words were like arrows, and even
in the Gulf War the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussain used poets to propagate his
will to victory. The power of poetry is much greater in the Islamic world than with us; we are touched by music, the Muslim mostly by the sound of language.

I have discovered Istanbul corner by corner through the verses which Turkish
poets had sung for five centuries about this wonderful city; I have learnt to
love the culture of Pakistan through the songs that resound in all of its provinces, and when one of my Harvard students had the misfortune to be among the American hostages in Tehran, he experienced a great change in his jailers' attitude when he recited Persian poetry; here, suddenly, a common
idiom emerged and helped to bridge deep ideological differences.

I agree with Herder's words: "It is from poetry that we gain a deeper knowledge of times and nations than we do from the deceptive miserable way of political and martial history."

The long dirges which Urdu poets in 19th century India wrote in memory of the martyrdom of Hussain, the prophet's grandson, served at the same time to
criticise the British colonial power in coded words. We have to decode them
to understand their explosive political message.

For centuries poets have complained about exile and jail. It is sufficient to
mention the contemporary Iraqi poet *al-Dayati*:

*"I dreamt, and separation,
oh beloved, was pain
for I am homeless
I die in a foreign town
die alone, oh my beloved,
without a fatherland."*

Hermann Hesse, whose Morgenlandfahrt is well-known to all of us, said in his
Peace Prize speech in 1955: "It is not the poets' affair to accommodate to
any actual reality and to glorify it, but rather to show beyond it the possibility of beauty, of love, and of peace." Did not the Lebanese poet *Adonis* intend the same thing when he wrote during the horrors of the Lebanese civil war:

*"Take a rose, spread it out as a pillow
after a little while
weakness will devour you
in murky dirt
heavy bombs will make you
their victim
after a little while
Take a rose and call it songs
and sing it for the world"*

The later poetry of Islamic peoples is largely influenced by mysticism, but
one should not, as is usual, equate mysticism with obscurantism, with fleeing
from reality or as something that has no meaning for post-Enlightenment
people. Many of the great mystics were rebels against what they regarded as
injustice, against corrupt states, against hairsplitting jurists who, as the
great thinker Al-Ghazali in the 11th century wrote in his autobiography,
"knew the tiniest details of the divorce laws but knew nothing of God's
living presence". Such an attitude of mystics is found in all religious traditions; in Christianity, male and female saints actively tried to change the fate of their countries, and the same is true for the Chassidim in
Eastern Europe as we understand from Martin Buber's books. Because they
emphasised spiritual values, these people often came to criticise the society
intensely and became fighters for social justice.

The history of Islam contains numerous names of such mystics, whose lives
were devoted to the realisation of their love of God and mankind. 
The greatest among them is al-Hallaj, who was executed in Baghdad in 922, in part because of his daring religious claims but in part because of his political
activities. He remains a symbol for the Muslims to this day, hated by the
traditional orthodox, admired by those who regard him not only as the
representative of pure love of God but also as a fighter against the establishment. His parable of the moth that casts itself in the flame to gain
new life through dying inspired Goethe's famous poem "Selige Sehnsucht". 
The apotheosis of this "martyr of Divine love" whose name is conjured up by
progressive writers in all Islamic countries is a scene in Iqbal's Persian
epic, Javidname, where *Hallaj* warns the modern poets:

*"You do exactly what I once did - beware!
You bring resurrection to the dead - beware!"*

That is, resurrection from a fossilised world of legalism, and this is by denying human responsibility but as a fulfilment of man's real role in the world. Does not the Quran state that God has honoured humans by entrusting to them a precious good (Sura 33:72)? Iqbal's, the spiritual father of Pakistan,is perhaps the best example of a modern interpretation of Islam. His poetry was on everyone's lips in India in the 1930s, for the largely illiterate masses could be reached only by the poetical word which can be memorised easily. 
Iqbal (whose works, incidentially are banned in Saudia Arabia) had under the influence of Goethe and Rumi, tried to postulate a dynamic Islam; he was aware that the human being is called on to improve God's earth in cooperation with the Creator, and that one should exhaust the never-ending
possibilities of interpreting the Quran in order to survive changing circumstances. But he also taught that one never should rely exclusively upon
intellect, as much as modern technology and progress can be admired and man is called on to participate in it. In a central poem of his, "Message of the
East", his answer to Goethe's "Divan", he writes that science and love, that
is critical analysis and loving synthesis, must work together to create positive values for the future.

This brings us to a point which appears increasingly important to me - this
is the problem of lovingly understanding foreign civilisations. Unfortunately
the word "understanding" seems to be equated today with an uncritical
acceptance and general forgiveness. Yet, true understanding grows from a
knowledge of historical facts and many people lack such a knowledge.
Spiritual and political situations however develop out of historical facts which one has to know first before correctly judging a situation.

St. Augustine said "one understands something only as far as one loves it"
and our mediaeval theologians knew that "love is the intellect of the eye."
One can of course claim that such a love makes the lover blind, but I believe
that such a deep love also opens one's eyes, for we see all beloved beings'
sins and mistakes with much deeper grief then those of an unknown person. We spent our lives in studying the world of Islam in its manifold facets and
tried to show its positive aspects to a public that has barely an idea of this complex world. Therefore for us it is a much more terrible shock to follow the developments that appeared in some parts of the Islamic world during the last decades.

In a civilisation whose traditional greeting is Salam "Peace" (like the Hebrew Shalom) we observe at the moment a horrifying narrowing and stiffening of dogmatic and legalistic positions. At the beginning we believed that this could be explained as an attempt to shut the floodgates against the increasing influence of the West, in order to be such that the believers follow the straight path shown by the Prophet Muhammad. Now, however it looks different: in large areas we are confronted with sheer power politics, with ideologies which utilise Islam more or less as a catchword, and have very little in common with its religious foundations.

At least I have not discovered in the Quran or in the Traditions anything
that orders or allows terrorism or the taking of hostages. On the contrary,
the Golden Rule is valid everywhere in the world of Islam. No thinking individual can appreciate acts of terror wherever they appear and in whichever ideology they are rooted, and nobody would be happier than we,
whatever our special field of research may be, when death sentences or
imprisionment of persons of deviant opinions or critical thinkers would no
longer be pronounced. Many of the radical fundamentalists seem to forget that the Quran says la ikhra fid-din "no compulsion in religion" and that the Prophet warned against declaring anyone a kafir, an infidel. The fundamentalists try to recruit followers among the unemployed, rootless youth
whom they supply with a few simple formulas to manipulate them easily. But
such a politically misused Islam is something completely different from lived
Islam; it is, as Tahe Ben Jalloun writes, a caricature of true Islam, "for it
stands for a political doctrine which was nonexistent until now in the Arab-Islamic world".

But the image of the West in the media of the different Islamic countries is
also often distorted, and we need to enlighten both sides. Strangely enough
even liberal Muslim intellectuals are but little aware of their own history
and the works that Muslims in other parts of the world have created; they are
most grateful when they are gently led to recognise the great traditions of
their own civilisations which nowadays often seem to be forgotten under a
crust of centuries-old developments and yet could help them find their own
way into a modern future that is genuinely their own. Gently, I said, and not
by lifting one's index finger like a teacher for that can result immediately
in a negative reaction to suspected "cultural colonialism".

I speak from experience after giving innumerable lectures during the last 40
years in different oriental countries. During those years that I, a young
non-Muslim woman, was occupying the chair of History of Religions in the new
faculty of Islamic theology in Ankara (at a time when there were barely any
chairs for women in German universities) I had also to teach `Church History
and Dogmatics'. And that was very important. For we usually forget the great
role Jesus, the "Spirit of God" and his mother play in the Quran and Muslim
piety. Once in a while we should remember a sentence which Novalis in his
novel "Heinrich von Ofterdingen" (published 1801) put in the mouth of the
imprisioned Saracen woman in Jerusalem: "Full of respect, our princes
honoured the tomb of your saint whom we too regard as a divine Prophet. How beautiful would it have been if his sacred tomb had become the cradle of a happy understanding and the reason for eternal beneficial alliances ..."

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam knew the ideal of eschatological peace where
lion and lamb lie together in the time of the just ruler. But peace is
nothing static. The UNESCO Declaration about "The role of religion in the
promotion of a culture of peace" (Dec. 1994) says: "Peace is a journey, a
never ending process." There is nothing that is not kept alive by the principles of change and polarity; a heart that no longer beats is dead.
Peace too is a process of living growth which begins in each of us. The
Muslim mystics considered the constant struggle with their lower qualities
the real jihad: "the greater war in the way of God" and when their souls had
finally reached peace they were capable of working for peace in the world.

One may think that the picture of Islam which I offer is too idealistic, far
away from hard political realities, but as a historian of religion I learned
that one has to compare ideal with ideal. The Swedish Lutheran Bishop Tor
Andrae (d.1948) a leading Islamologist, wrote in his biography of Muhammad:
"A religious faith has the same right as every other spiritual movement to be
judged according to what it really intends and not according to how human
weakness and contemptibleness have stained this ideal".

My picture of Islam has emerged not only from a decades-long interest in
Islamic literature and art, but even more from the friendship with Muslims
all over the world and from all levels of the population, who accepted me
into their families and acquainted me with the poetry of their languages. I
owe them an enormous gratitude, a small part of which I want to acknowledge
today. People like Mevlude Genc, the Turkish woman in Solingen who forgave
those who caused the loss of many of her family members, are representatives of that tolerant Islam which I have known for so many years. I am so grateful to my parents who educated me in an atmosphere of religious freedom, permeated by poetry, as well as to my teachers, colleagues and students each of whom has expanded my horizons in his or her special way.

I am most grateful to the Borsenverein whose election committee had the
courage to elect me into the illustrious circle of the recipients of the
Peace Prize, although Ibn Khaldun, the great North African philosopher of
history in the 14th century says in the headline of one of his chapters that
"the scholar is one who among all people is least acquainted with the ways of
day-to-day politics."

The scholar's duty is to explain cultures to himself and to others. Martin
Buber pointed out in this place in 1953 that the acceptance of the other is
the basis of dialogue. That is also true of the relations between the West
and the Islamic world, as much as Islam appears to be the enemy after the end of the East-West conflict. Yet, like Buber, I still believe in true dialogue, which, as he says, consists in the acceptance of the other as he is, for only
thus differences can be overcome - though not taken out completely - in a
human way.

This Peace Prize is an honour - which I had never dared dream of, and it will
be an incentive to continue and increase my efforts for a better
understanding between the Occident and the Orient as long as my strength will last. The words which the President of the Federal Republic of Germany has addressed to me will strengthen me on this path. But first and last I owe my thanks to Him about whom *Goethe* says in his "West-Ostlicher Divan":

"*The East belongs to God
The West belongs to God
north and southern lands
rest in the peace of His hands,
He, the sole just ruler,
intends the right things for every one,
Among His hundred names
- be this one glorified and praised
Amen*."

*Annemarie Schimmel*
March 1996


_Shënim_:
Ky ishte fjalimi që Prof.Dr.Annemarie Schimmel mbajti para asamblese së shkrimtarëve, botuesve dhe zyrtarëve publik , midis tyre edhe Presidenti i Republikes Federale të Gjermanisë Roman Herzog, me rastin e pranimit të Shpërblimit të Paqes në Panairin e Librit Gjerman.
Fjalimi është përkthyer nga gjuha gjermane në gjuhën angleze dhe publikuar në revistën javore londineze Q-News.

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## PrInCiPiEl

Prof.Dr.*Annemarie Schimmel*(Prof. Emeritus)

Disa poezi nga *Jalal al-Din RUMI*, të përkthyera nga Prof.Dr.*Annemarie Schimmel* :


*Without the eyes...*

Without the eyes - two clouds - the lightning of the heart:
The fire of God's threat, how could it be allayed?
How would the herbage grow of union, sweet to taste?
How would the fountains all gush forth with water pure?
How would the rosebed tell its secret to the meadow?
How would the violet make contracts with jasmine?
How would the plane tree lift its hands in prayer, say?
How would the trees' heads toss free in the air of Love?
How would the blossoms shake their sleeves in days of spring
To shed their lovely coins about the garden wide?
How would the tulip's cheek be red like flames and blood?
How would the rose draw out its gold now from its purse?
How would the ringdoves call like seekers, "Where, oh where?"
How would the stork repeat his laklak from his soul,
To say: "O Helper high, Thine is the kingdom, Thine!"
How would the dust reveal the secrets of its heart?
How would the sky become a garden full of light?


*********


*Ghazal 1919*

*Look! This is love* -- to fly toward the heavens,
To tear a hundred veils in every wink,
To tear a hundred veils at the beginning,
To travel in the end without a foot,
And to regard this world as something hidden
And not to see with one's own seeing eye!
I said: "O heart, may it for you be blessed
To enter in the circle of the lovers,
To look from far beyond the range of eyesight,
To wander in the corners of the bosom!
O soul, from where has come to you this new breath?
O heart, from where has come this heavy throbbing?
O bird, speak now the language of the birds

Because I know to understand your secret!"
The soul replied: "Know, I was in God's workshop
While He still baked the house of clay and water.
I fled from yonder workshop at a moment
Before the workshop was made and created.
I could resist no more. They dragged me hither
And they began to shape me like a ball!



*********



"We worship Thee!" -- that is the garden's prayer
in winter time.

"We ask Thy help!" -- that is its cry then
in time of spring.

"We worship Thee" -- that means: I come to beg,
imploring Thee:

Don't leave me in this sorrow, Lord, make wide
the door of joy!

"We ask Thee, Lord, for help" -- that is, the fullness
of ripe, sweet fruit.

*Now break my branches and my twigs -- protect me,
My Lord, My God!*

Nga libri : _Diwan-i Shams-i Tabrizi, 2046_



*********



*Ghazal (Ode) 2821*


At the time of evening prayer
everyone spreads cloth and candles,
But I dream of my beloved,
see, lamenting, grieved, his phantom.
My ablution is with weeping,
thus my prayer will be fiery,
and I burn the mosque's doorway
when my call to prayer strikes it. . . .
Is the prayer of the drunken,
tell, is this prayer valid?
For he does not know the timing
and is not aware of places.
Did I pray for two full cycles?
Or is this perhaps the eighth one?
And which Sura did I utter?
For I have no tongue to speak it.
At God's door - how could I knock now,
For I have no hand or heart now?
You have carried heart and hand, God!
Grant me safety, God, forgive me. . . .

Nga libri : _"I Am Wind, You are Fire"_



*********



HOW SHOULD THE SOUL  not take wings
when from the Glory of God
It hears a sweet, kindly call:
"Why are you here, soul? Arise!"
How should a fish not leap fast
into the sea form dry land
When from the ocean so cool
the sound of the waves reaches its
How should the falcon not fly
back to his king from the hunt
When from the falconer's drum
it hears to call: "Oh, come back"?
Why should not every Sufi
begin to dance atom-like
Around the Sun of duration
that saves from impermanence?
What graciousness and what beauty?
What life-bestowing! What grace!
If anyone does without that, woe-
what err, what suffering!
Oh fly , of fly, O my soul-bird,
fly to your primordial home!
You have escaped from the cage now-
your wings are spread in the air.
Oh travel from brackish water
now to the fountain of life!
Return from the place of the sandals
now to the high seat of souls!
Go on! Go on! we are going,
and we are coming, O soul,
From this world of separation
to union, a world beyond worlds!
How long shall we here in the dust-world
like children fill our skirts
With earth and with stones without value,
with broken shards without worth?
Let's take our hand from the dust grove,
let's fly to the heavens' high,
Let's fly from our childish behaviour
and join the banquet of men!
Call out, O soul, to proclaim now
that you are rules and king!
*You have the grace of the answer,
you know the question as well!*


Nga libri : _'Look! This is Love'_

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## PrInCiPiEl

Fragment prej librit *"The Triumphal Sun : A Study of the Works of Jalaloddinn Rumi "* 
nga Prof.Dr.*Annemarie Schimmel*(Prof. Emeritus)
_(State University of New York Press, 1993, p. 332-336)_

" Rumi's poetry has been produced under the spell of Divine Love.

*Save love, save love, we have no other work!* 
_Divan 1475/15557_

This love, the veritable astrolabe of God's secrets, was kindled by his meeting with Shams, but differs from the experiences of those mystics who saw the Divine Beauty reflected in beautiful youths. His experience of love,separation, and spiritual union was dynamic; it overwhelmed him and burned him. Therefore, his words about love, which form the warp of his poetry from the first to the last pager, are colorful and fiery.

He knows, like his predecessors in the path of mystical love, that earthly love is but a preparation for the heavenly love. It is a step towards perfection : . . . man's heart can be educated through human love to perfect obedience and surrender to the friend's will. The happiness of such love, however, will soon vanish; real love should, therefore, be directed towards Him who does not die. This Divine love may start with a sudden rapture or take the form of a slow spiritual development: when the hook of love falls into a man's throat God most High draws him gradually so that the bad faculties and blood which are in him may go out of him little by little.

Eventually, the lover is totally immersed in the ocean of Divine love and those people who are still fettered by hope and fear or think of recompensation for good and punishment for evil deeds, will never understand him.

Love is a quality innate in everything created:

*All the particles of the world are loving, Every part of the world is intoxicated by meeting.* 
_D 2674/28365_

The basis of truth is explained once more in a letter of Mowlana's:

*In the eighteen thousand of worlds, everything loves something, is in love with something. The height of each lover is determined by the height of his beloved. Whose beloved is more tender and more lovely, his eminence is also higher. . .* 
_Mektuplar I._

But true love is, at the same time, the prerogative of man. He alone can express it and live through it in all its stages. Rumi, although sometimes using language influenced by the discussions of Avicenna and the theoreticians of Sufism concerning the nature of love, knows that this experience,as produced by Divine power, cannot be described in human words.
He begins his Mathnavi with a praise of this love:

*How much I may explain and describe love,
    When I reach love, I become ashamed.
    Although the commentary by the tongue is illuminating,
    love without tongues is more radiant.*
_Mathnawi I, 112f._

More than a decade later, he still sings:

*Love cannot be described; it is even greater than a hundred
resurrections,
     for the resurrection is a limit, whereas love is limitless. Love has
five hundred wings, each of which reaches from the Divine Throne to the
lowest earth. . .*
_Mathnawi V, 2189 f._

Once man has reached the limits of love in this life, his journey continues
in the Life Divine, in which he is faced with ever new abysses of love which
induce him into deeper longing. Love and longing are mutually interdependent;
love grows stronger the more the Divine Beauty unfolds in eternity, in ever
new forms.

*Ever more shall I desire
    than time's bounded needs require.
    Ever as more flowers I pluck
    Blossoms new gay spring's attire.
    And when through the heavens I sweep
    Rolling spheres will flash new fire.
    Perfect Beauty only can
    True eternal love inspire.*
_Ghazzaliyat IV 277 f._

Mowlana Jalaloddin sees the power of love everywhere:

*Love is like an ocean on which the skies are only foam,
    agitated like Zoleykha in her love for Joseph,
    and the turning of the skies is the result of the wave of love:
    if  love were not there, the world would be frozen.*
_Mathnavi V 3853 f._

One may explain these lines, and also many similar verses found in Rumi's work, as an expression of the almost magnetic force of love which attracts everything, sets it in action, and eventually brings it back to its origin. But Rumi's view is closer to the notion of love as 'the essential desire' of God as defined first in Sufism by Hallaj, who was overwhelmed by the dynamic essence of God which caused the Creator to say: 'I was a hidden treasure, and I wanted to be known. . . '

Rumi emphasizes this dynamic character of love again and again in ever new images:

*Love makes the ocean boil like a kettle, and makes the mountains like sand.*
_Mathnavi V 2735_

It is the only positive force in the world:

*The sky revolves for the sake of the lover,
    and for the sake of love is the dome turning,
    not for the sake of baker and blacksmith,
    not for the sake of superintendent and pharmatician.*
_Divan 1158/12293 4._

Love is the physician of all illnesses, Plato and Galen in one, and the cause and goal of existence:

*If this heaven were not a lover,
    its breast would have no purity,
    and if the sun were not a lover,
    in its beauty were no light,
    and if earth and mountain were not lovers,
    grass would not grow out of their breasts.*
_Divan 2674/28369 ff._

As the sun changes doleful shades and destitute darkness into colorful beauty, love is the great alchemy which transforms life: 'love means to fall in a goldmine.' Divan 1861/19618

*From love bitterness's become sweet,
    from love copper becomes gold,
    from love the dregs become pure,
    from love the pains become medicine,
    from love the dead become alive,
    from love the king is made a slave.*
_Mathnawi II 1529 f._

as Rumi says in his great hymn in honor of love's power. Much later, he continues in the same strain:

*Love makes the dead bread into soul, and makes the soul which was perishable eternal.*
_Mathnawi V 2014_

A verse which must be seen in connection with his thoughts on the constant upward development which traverses the whole gamut of existence from minerals to man and angel.

The same idea underlies an oft-quoted passage written towards the end of Mowlana's life:

*When the demon becomes a lover, he carries away the ball, he becomes a Gabriel, and his demon - qualities die. "My Satan has become a Muslim' becomes here conspicuous, Yazid became, thanks to his bounty, a Bayazid.* 
_Mathnawi VI 3648 f; cf. Divan 1012/10675_

That means the base faculties of man, the nafs, seen here in accordance with the Prophetic tradition in the old Arabic image of the demon, can be fully conquered and educated only by love, not by loveless austerities and sheer asceticism. Eventually, man will be blessed with the Prophet's own experience: his demonic qualities become sanctified and serve him only in the way towards God. The stronger the 'demon' was previously, the higher will his rank be in the angelic world, once he has given himself to the power of love; even an accursed sinner like Yazid could, by such an alchemy,be transformed into a Bayazid-like saint. Such an annihilation by love of the nafs,the personal representative of all evil of 'the world', as well as of independent, separate existence can be seen in Koranic terms:

*Love is Moses who slays the Pharaoh of existence by means of his Miraculous rod. . .*
_Divan 1970/20807_

And it is the police-officer who helps the soul to break down the door of the prison of the world.

Love, which destroys the borders of separation, is the truly uniting force: it gives union to hundreds of thousands of atoms; their faces which are at present directed towards various, and often conflicting, directions and to egotistic goals, are turned by love towards the One Eternal Sun. There, they will be united in the whirling, mystical dance and, lost to themselves, live in a higher unity, no longer distinct as rose and thorn, or as Turk and Hindu. 
For the religion of love knows no difference between the seventy-two sects: it is different from all religions.

But how to explain this love? Even examples and parables cannot help: did not Somnun the Lover say in early tenth century Baghdad:

*One can explain something only by a means subtler than itself.
     Now, there is nothing subtler than love; how, then, can it be explained?*
_Hujwiri/Nicholson p. 137._

The qal, 'word' conveys only a weak shade of this experience; what is required, is hal, 'mystical state'. Love may be understood by the lover's behavior when his pulse, beating irregularly, tells the secret of his illness, and Rumi replies to his inquiring friends:

*Some asked: "What is the state of a lover?"
    I said: "Don't ask these meanings!
    The moment you become like me, you will see it,
    The moment He calls you, you will call!*
_Divan 2733/29050_

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## PrInCiPiEl

Libri : *" Gabriels Wing. A study into the religious ideas of Sir Muhammad Iqbal"* _(1963 rpt. 1989)_
nga Prof.Dr.*Annemarie Schimmel*(Prof. Emeritus)
- është një studim me rëndësi të madhe për *Dr.Muhammed Ikballin* (1877-1938) , që konsiderohet një prej veprave më të mira për Ikballin dhe mendimin Islam në përgjithësi.

Dr.*Annemarie Schimmel* shkruan :  my long lasting love of Iqbal (which began when I was a student in Berlin during the war) has led me to publish a number of works which are more or less relevant for a study of his contribution to Muslim thought . In many articles I have tried to show Iqbal in the context of Islamic modernism, or deal with his imagery .

Për kontributin e saj të madh ,Qeveria e Pakistanit , e ka nderuar Dr.*Annemarie Schimmel*-in me shpërblimin më të lartë civil *Hilal-e-Imtiaz* dhe një bulevard në qytetin *Lahore* është emërtuar sipas saj.

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## PrInCiPiEl

Në librin *" My Soul Is A Woman. The Feminine in Islam "*  (1997);
Prof.Dr.*Annemarie Schimmel*(Prof. Emeritus) shkruan:

" The topic of the 'women in Islam' is now in vogue.
Feminists particularly are eagerly trying their hands
at it, albeit frequently without sufficient knowledge
of the historical facts and, even more, to a great
extent ignorant of Islamic languages and literature."

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## PrInCiPiEl

Disa poezi nga *Jalal al-Din RUMI*,të përkthyera nga Prof.Dr.*Annemarie Schimmel* :

The day I've died, my pall is moving on -
But do not think my heart is still on earth!
Don't weep and pity me: "Oh woe, how awful!"
You fall in devil's snare - woe, that is awful!
Don't cry "Woe, parted!" at my burial -
For me this is the time of joyful meeting!
Don't say "Farewell!" when I'm put in the grave -
A curtain is it for eternal bliss.
You saw "descending" - now look at the rising!
Is setting dangerous for sun and moon?
To you it looks like setting, but it's rising;
The coffin seems a jail, yet it means freedom.
Which seed fell in the earth that did not grow there?
Why do you doubt the fate of human seed?
What bucket came not filled from out the cistern?
Why should the Yusaf "Soul" then fear this well?
Close here your mouth and open it on that side.
So that your hymns may sound in Where- no-place!
Nga libri : _'Look! This Is Love'_




*" O You Who've gone on Pilgrimage "*

O you who've gone on pilgrimage -
where are you, where, oh where?
Here, here is the Beloved!
Oh come now, come, oh come!
Your friend, he is your neighbor,
he is next to your wall -
You, erring in the desert -
what air of love is this?
If you'd see the Beloved's
form without any form -
You are the house, the master,
You are the Kaaba, you! . . .
Where is a bunch of roses,
if you would be this garden?
Where, one soul's pearly essence
when you're the Sea of God?
That's true - and yet your troubles
may turn to treasures rich -
How sad that you yourself veil
the treasure that is yours!
Nga libri : _'I Am Wind, You are Fire'_




* "If A Tree Could Wander"*

Oh, if a tree could wander
     and move with foot and wings!
It would not suffer the axe blows
     and not the pain of saws!
For would the sun not wander
     away in every night ?
How could at ev'ry morning
     the world be lighted up?
And if the ocean's water
     would not rise to the sky,
How would the plants be quickened
     by streams and gentle rain?
The drop that left its homeland,
     the sea, and then returned ?
It found an oyster waiting
     and grew into a pearl.
Did Yusaf not leave his father,
     in grief and tears and despair?
Did he not, by such a journey,
     gain kingdom and fortune wide?
Did not the Prophet travel
     to far Medina, friend?
And there he found a new kingdom
     and ruled a hundred lands.
You lack a foot to travel?
     Then journey into yourself!
And like a mine of rubies
     receive the sunbeams? print!
Out of yourself ? such a journey
     will lead you to your self,
It leads to transformation
     of dust into pure gold!
Nga libri : _'Look! This is Love'_




Did I not say to you, friend:
 "Don't go, for I am your Friend?
 I am the Water of Life
 in the mirage of decay!
 And if in anger you go
 thousands of miles, far from me:
 Finally you will return -
 I am your goal and your end!"
 Did I not say to you, friend:
 "I am the sea, you're a fish.
 Do not go to the dry land -
 I am the Attributes' sea!"
 Did I not say to you, friend:
 "Don't fly like birds to the snare!
 Come, I am strength for your flight,
 and I am strength for your wings!"
 Did I not say to you, friend:
 "They'll block your road, make you cold!
 But I am fire and heat,
 warmth of your heart and your love!"
 Did I not say to you, friend:
 "Bad qualities, that's your share!
 But you can lose them! I am
 the fountain of qualities pure."
 Did I not say to you, friend:
 "Don't grieve: 'From which side my work
 Will be arranged?' For I am
 He who creates, without sides!" 
Nga libri : _'Look! This Is Love'_

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## PrInCiPiEl

*' In flight '* 

Carried away by the falcon Love,
The heart finds itself
on the glaciers of joy.
Superbly happy,
It gazes into the sun;
Suberbly lonely
It craves for a cloud's flighty shade
Before it dissolves in the light;
Before it is shattered again
In the dark of despair
Where Your hand will gather its shards.
*Annemarie Schimmel*

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## PrInCiPiEl

*' Majnun's letter to Layla '* 


*I love you so much -
But you are a scent
that fades away
when the night is spent..

I love you so much -
but you are a song
on everyone's lips -
and the nights are long.

I love you so much -
but you are a dune,
ever new shifting sand
ever new changing moon...

And I count the stars
And I am that tune,
And I am that scent,
and the silvery dune...*


*Annemarie Schimmel*


 :)

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## PrInCiPiEl

*' Layla's letter to Majnun '* 


*You don't ask the birds any more
to tell you news about me.
You gave them
your heart to dwell,
your hair to nest.


They have carried away my heart,
and the glaring sun at the hight noon of despair
dries up my eyes' wells


But yonder gazelles
that drink from your salty tears
become immortal.* 



*Annemarie Schimmel*

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## PrInCiPiEl

Prof.Dr.*Annemarie Schimmel* (Prof. Emeritus) :


I walk
and the blood of my feet
transforms the stones into roses.


I walk
and the tears of my eyes
water the desert shrubs,
Every day the same sun,
scorching, merciless, white,
And at nightfall the wind, cutting my heart and my hope.


I walk out of myself
and the desert is you.
the paths are throbbing like veins,
and tenderly touches my hand
your skin, soft as sand.


I wander through you,
drinking the saltly water that flows from your eyes,
sleeping at night in your arms
when you cover my weary limbs with your garment of stars.
And I am
one with the beats of your heart,
one with your breath, with the wind.



***  _'Nightingales Under the Snow'_

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## PrInCiPiEl

_Journey_

Through dawns, through clouds, beyond stars
I have to go and to go
to find the flower of alchemy
in the garden of souls.

_If I could find it,_
opening its petals like crimson wounds...

_If I should find it_
my heart would open like crimson wounds
and I would begin
once more the way through the gamut of elements,
and I would be
dust at your feet
wind in your hair
water in your eyes
sunlight, to add to your smile.

_Then, all consumed,
I would be just a kiss
to talk with you with no words._


Prof.Dr. *Annemarie Schimmel* 
* 'Nightingales Under the Snow'

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