IASInstitute for Advanced Study Islamic Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study THE FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE to pursue the most research that will contribute to the transformation of future interesting and relevant questions about nature and humanity have knowledge on the evolution of intellectual traditions not just in been the essence of the Institute for relation to Islam, but also Judaism Advanced Study for more than eighty and Eastern Christianity to the years. The Institute exists to provide an extent that mutual influences can be optimal environment where scholars revealed. from all over the world can think and Given these considerations, share, imagine and risk, and begin again SabineSchmidtke, previously without conditions and limitations. Professor of Islamic Studies and The Institute’s School of Historical founding Director of the Research Studies, established in 1949 with the Unit Intellectual History of the merging of the School of Economics Islamicate World at Freie Universität and Politics and the School of Berlin, was appointed as Crone’s Humanistic Studies, expanded its scope successor in July 2014. Schmidtke has to include Islamic and Near Eastern played a central role in the studies with the appointment of the late exploration of heretofore unedited, Professor Oleg Grabar (1929–2011) in Sabine Schmidtke speaking at the Institute for Advanced Study and indeed unknown corpora of Islamic Art and Culture in 1990. This was theological and philosophical followed by the appointment, in 1997, of Professor Patricia Crone writings. Thanks to her excellent knowledge of Arabic, Judaeo- in the field of Islamic History. Both appointments focused on the Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian, Schmidtke is regarded internationally premodern period, recognizing the overall historiographical as one of the most accomplished and rigorous philologists. She has importance of the cultural, religious, and intellectual history of devoted herself for the past fifteen years to the indefatigable study Islam and the Near East. and publication of hitherto mostly unexplored manuscript collec- Over two decades, Grabar drew both emerging and established tions. Her collaborations and research on manuscript materials span scholars to the Institute, where, both before and after he became Iran, Russia, Turkey, Yemen, and beyond, and she regularly publishes Professor Emeritus in 1998, Grabar continued to cultivate and both in the West and in the Islamic world. advance fundamental research in a field in which he posited The broad reach of Schmidtke’s interests allows her to work questions that challenged Western perspectives. Crone has focused across different traditions and to make important connections that her research on the political, religious, and cultural environment in would otherwise go unnoticed. For instance, her study of Arabic which Islam began and how it transformed, and was itself and Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts preserved in various Genizah transformed by, the regions that the Arabs conquered. With Oleg collections has enabled her to recover works, by Muslim as well as Grabar and Patricia Crone, the Institute has become, over a period Jewish authors, considered lost. Her research, thus, has an inherent of almost a quarter century, a recognized center for the pursuit of innovative quality, in that it not only allows new perspectives to be the study of Islamic culture and history. opened but also enables other scholars to pursue their studies with In finding a successor for Crone, who retired in July 2014, the greater awareness of available sources, and especially with School considered the most innovative and creative areas within transformed perspectives about the interrelations and connections the vast field of Near Eastern Studies, covering over two millennia among different strands of intellectual inquiry, across time, place, and every aspect of humanistic knowledge from art to literature, religions, and philosophical schools. and to political, cultural, social, and economic history. Schmidtke’s inexhaustible energy in uncovering, editing, and The intellectual history of classical and postclassical Islam is an studying new texts combines with a rare ability to cover the full area that, because of renewed philological and textual activity made span of the intellectual development of Islamic thought from the possible by an increased accessibility of manuscript libraries and early classical period to the late Ottoman, and the ability to collections, represents a primary challenge and a critical frontier in initiate and direct research groups. Pushing the boundaries of her the future development of Islamic studies. This particular field holds field in several directions and in multiple ways––as author, editor, the greatest promise of long-term investment in fundamental and coordinator of major collaborative projects––Schmidtke (Continued on page 2) ISLAMIC STUDIES (Continued from page 1) represents both a change of direction with respect to the work centuries C.E.)––a period that is often described as either of Grabar and Crone, and a new engagement with the field of largelyunknown or irrelevant––Schmidtke is painstakingly Islamic thought. reconstructing the textual heritage and intellectual import of the Currently working on the history of Islamic thought in the Islamic world at large. Her project is breathtakingly ambitious, postclassical period (i.e., ca. thirteenth through nineteenth and surely one that will transform the field at its foundations. At a short conference on the city of Rayy, from left: Hassan Ansari, Sabine Schmidtke, Patricia Crone, and Jan Thiele While working as a diplomat for the German Foreign Office, where for eight years she held positions in its Middle East Unit among others, Sabine Schmidtke finished her “Habilitation” (1999) about the later intellectual development of Twelver Shi‘ism since the thirteenth century C.E. that was characterized by a unique amalgamation of various intellectual strands such as Mu‘tazilite theology, Peripatetic philosophy, Illuminationism, and philosophical mysticism. For this work (Theologie, Philosophie und Mystik im zwölferschiitischen Islam des 9./15. Jhdts. Leiden: Brill, 2000) she received “The World Prize for the Book of the Year of the Islamic Republic of Iran” in 2002 and another “Prize for Scholarly Achievement in the Study of Twelver Shi‘ism,” awarded by the Written Heritage Research Centre, Tehran, in 2006. SABINE SCHMIDTKE’S RESEARCH FIELD is the history of ideas in School of Oriental and African Studies, and D.Phil. from the the medieval, post-medieval, and early modern world of Islam as University of Oxford), Schmidtke very early on developed an reflected in the literary productions of Muslim, Jewish, and intense awareness of borders in every sense. Throughout her Christian writers in Arabic. More specifically, her work focuses on academic life, she has attempted to cross these wherever possible. the following main areas: Though a frequent visitor to Israel, she has been traveling regularly • post-Avicennan philosophy; to the Islamic world and particularly Iran, Turkey, Yemen, and • Muslim doctrinal thought and its reception both among Oman, and has established working contacts with the leading Jews and (within Islam) Shi ites; scholars in her field in these countries. She regularly publishes and • interreligious exchanges and apologetics; lectures in the Middle East, stressing particularly the intimate ʿ • Muslim perceptions and receptions of the Bible; connectedness of Muslim and Jewish thought in the lands of • aspects of intellectual and social history in the Islam. She moreover founded several book series in Iran. transmission of knowledge. On the basis of rediscovered manuscripts, Schmidtke is Schmidtke’s research is focused on the vast manuscript holdings working to reconstruct how Jewish, Christian, and Muslim that have so far escaped the attention of scholarship. In many areas scholars have engaged and influenced each other’s thinking. With within the field of intellectual history of the medieval world of this objective in mind, she assembled over the past decade a Islam, the main challenge is a lack of a critical mass of primary collaborative research team whose members include Muslims, literature. Christians, and Jews, scholars of Islam and Judaism, and specialists As a German trained in Islamic Studies partly at Hebrew in Eastern Christianity. Moreover, she is the founding editor-in- University in Israel (B.A.) and partly in England (M.A. from the chief of the journal Intellectual History of the Islamicate World (Leiden: Brill), which provides a forum for research that systematically crosses the boundaries between the three disciplines of Islamic, Jewish, and Eastern Christian Studies. The Reception of al-Shaykh al- Ṭūsī’s Theological Writings in In the field of POST-AVICENNAN PHILOSOPHY, Schmidtke has 6th/12th century Syria. Facsimile worked intensively on the earliest generation of commentators on Edition of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. ‘Alī the works of the founder of Illuminationist philosophy, Shihab b. Muḥammad al-Ḥusaynī’s alDin al-Suhrawardi (d. 1191), viz. Ibn Kammuna, Shams al-Din Commentary on al-Ṭūsī’s al-Shahrazuri, and Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi. The pioneer of modern Muqaddama (MS Atıf Efendi scholarly research of Illuminationist philosophy, Henry Corbin, 1338/1), Tehran: M r th-i mak- had considered Shahrazuri as the central figure among these three; t b, 2013 (Classical Muslim his writings apparently influenced both Ibn Kammuna and Qutb ī ā Heritage