Sabine Schmidtke headshot

Sabine Schmidtke

Professor
School of Historical Studies

Islamic Intellectual History

Affiliation

Historical Studies

Field of Study

Islamic Intellectual History

Home Institution

Institute for Advanced Study

Sabine Schmidtke is a scholar of Islamic intellectual history whose pioneering research has transformed perspectives on the interrelations and connections among different strands of intellectual inquiry, across time, place, religions, and philosophical schools. She has played a central role in the exploration of heretofore unedited and unknown theological and philosophical writings. Schmidtke has applied rigorous study to the edition and critical analysis of manuscripts in Arabic, Judeo-Arabic, and Persian, and her work extends from Arabic-speaking countries to Israel, Iran, Russia, and Turkey. Schmidtke is currently working on the history of Islamic thought in the post-classical period (thirteenth to nineteenth century), with a focus on reconstructing the textual heritage and the intellectual import of the Islamic intellectual world, from Iran and Central Asia to Turkey and Yemen. She is also engaged in a comprehensive study of the Muslim reception of the Bible, a topic on which she has published extensively over the past years.

Dates at IAS

Faculty
School of Historical Studies
Member
School of Historical Studies
Member
School of Historical Studies

Degrees

Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Habilitation
1999
University of Oxford
D.Phil.
1990
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
M.A.
1987
The Hebrew University, Jerusalem
B.A.
1986

Honors

Editorships: Arabo-Islamica, Editor-in-Chief; Biblia Arabica: Texts and Studies, Editor-in-Chief; Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, Editor-in-Chief; Shii Studies Review, Executive Editor; Makers of the Muslim World, Series Editor
Fellowships: Fellow, Center for Advanced Study (CAS), Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (Research Group "Books Known Only by Title: Exploring the Gendered Structures of the First Millenium Imagined Libraries"), 2021; Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Fellow 2018; Leiden University, Centre for the Study of Islam and Society, LUCIS Visiting Fellow 2013; Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Fellow-in-Residence 2012; Tel Aviv University, The Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies, Sackler Scholar 2011; Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Philadelphia, Fellow 2010-11
2023
Corresponding Fellow, British Academy
2021
Corresponding Member (Korrespondierendes Mitglied der Philosophisch-Historischen Klasse im Ausland), Austrian Academy of Sciences (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften), Vienna
2019
Humboldt Research Award ("Humboldt-Forschungspreis")
2019
Correspondant étranger, L’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
2017
Member, American Philosophical Society
2017
Member, Accademia Ambrosiana, Milan
2006
Prize for Scholarly Achievement in the Study of Twelver Shiʿism Conferred by the Written Heritage Research Centre, Tehran
2002
The World Prize for the Book of the Year of the Islamic Republic of Iran (for the book: Theologie, Philosophie und Mystik im zwölferschiitischen Islam des 9./15. Jahrhunderts. Die Gedankenwelt des Ibn Abi Gumhur al-Ahsa’i, Leiden 2000)

Appointments

Freie Universität Berlin
2010–2014
Research Unit Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, Founding Director 2011–14, Professor 2002–14, Visiting Professor 1999–2001
Freie Universität Berlin
2004–2014
Faculty (Professor of Islamic Studies)
German Foreign Office
1991–1999
Diplomat