Sabine Schmidtke

This volume presents critical, annotated editions of three unpublished German travel accounts of Yemen under Imām Yaḥyā Ḥamīd al-Dīn (r. 1904–1948). The first is Hermann von Wissmann's account of the expedition he undertook in the winter of 1927/28 with the geographer Carl A. Rathjens and the teacher Frieda ("Friedel") Apitz—the journey, improvised after Saudi authorities refused the party access to the interior of the Ḥiǧāz, that opened the largely closed kingdom to German scholarship and occasioned, at the Imām's own initiative, the first archaeological excavation on Yemeni soil, at al-Ḥuqqa. The second and third are Rathjens's diaries of his return journeys of 1931 and of 1937, the latter made through Palestine and Egypt in the company of the Imām's Jewish commercial agent, Israel Isḥāq Ṣubayrī. Written for private recipients and never intended for publication, the accounts offer an unusually candid, day-by-day record of Ṣanʿāʾ and the Yemeni highlands between the wars: the court of Imām Yaḥyā and his sons, the rivalries of Italian, British, Soviet, and German interests, the Jewish community of Ṣanʿāʾ, the beginnings of archaeology, meteorology, and modern cartography in the country, and—through Apitz, who traveled disguised as a man yet enjoyed unique access to the world of Yemeni women—rooms no male traveler could enter. Since the archives of the Yemeni government for those years are mostly lost, these testimonies, edited here from the typescripts in the Carl Rathjens Nachlass at the SUB Hamburg and collated against von Wissmann's original letters in Tübingen, and accompanied by von Wissmann's sketches and hand-drawn map, constitute a primary source of the first order for the history of Yemen in the first half of the twentieth century. An introduction situates the three travelers and their sharply contrasting ways of seeing within the broader history of European travel to Yemen.

This Notice presents the first detailed description of Ms. Istanbul, Köprülü Library, Mehmed Âsım Bey 1 bis, a composite Christian-Arabic manuscript hitherto known only through a minimal catalogue entry. The codex consists of numerous fragmentary units copied by different hands and brought together without a codicological plan. Its contents include multiple independent Arabic New Testament witnesses—three distinct Gospel manuscripts, fragments of Acts, Pauline Epistles, and the Minor General Epistles, in addition to a lectionary for the fourth week of Len—as well as Christian Arabic doctrinal, legal, and canonical texts, including a previously unknown textual witness to Aḥkām al-ʿAtīqa, Kitāb al-Hudā, and a canon law collection attributed to Michael of Damietta. A detailed analysis of the script, layout, chapter division systems, marginalia, and paratextual features demonstrates that the volume is an ad hoc aggregation rather than a deliberate miscellany. All identifiable Gospel witnesses belong to the Arabic Vulgate tradition (family K), though they preserve divergent chaptering systems and paratextual practices. This Notice further reconstructs the manuscript’s modern provenance through waqf stamps and ownership marks, situating its binding in the first half of the eighteenth century and its later transmission into the Köprülü Library via Mehmed Âsım Bey. Beyond its textual contents, the manuscript offers important evidence for the circulation, fragmentation, and reassembly of Christian Arabic books in the Ottoman period and for the precarious survival of Christian Arabic materials within Islamic library collections.

The following conversation focuses on Scholar of Islam, Victim of the Holocaust: The Tragic Story of Hedwig Klein (De Gruyter, 2026), a new book by Sabine Schmidtke, Professor of Near Eastern and Islamic Studies in the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of Historical Studies. The book narrates the fascinating, powerful, and yet immensely tragic story of the life and career of Hedwig Klein, an exceptionally talented and potentially path-paving German Jewish scholar of Islam with a focus on Ibāḍī knowledge traditions. Klein was killed during the Holocaust in 1942 at the age of thirty-one. In this book, Schmidtke performs three tasks simultaneously: providing an intimate social and intellectual history of German Orientalism and Islamic Studies at the cusp of and during Nazi Germany, presenting a finely grained analysis of Klein’s life and her intellectual contributions to Islamic Studies, and correcting some popular and dominant misconceptions about Klein’s role in the writing and compilation of the equally well-known and controversial scholar Hans Wehr’s widely used Arabic dictionary. In many ways, the book brings together two prominent threads of Schmidtke’s recent scholarship: her work on Shī‘ī, Zaydī, and Ibāḍī knowledge traditions centered on the excavation and production of critical editions of previously lesser-known Arabic manuscripts and her long-running project of offering an in-depth intellectual genealogy of the German Orientalist tradition in Islamic Studies. Ultimately, the book not only restores a critical, silenced voice and expert of Islam but also reorients our prevailing conceptions of Orientalism while showcasing the impact of the Holocaust on the study of Islam today. In what follows, questions are posed to Schmidtke by SherAli K. Tareen, Patricia Crone Member (2024–25) in the School of Historical Studies, who is himself an expert in Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia.

The conversation below focuses on Professor of Near Eastern Islamic Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ) Sabine Schmidtke’s new book Scholar of Islam, Victim of the Holocaust: The Tragic Life of Hedwig Klein (De Gruyter, 2026). This book narrates the fascinating, powerful, and yet immensely tragic story of the life and career of Hedwig Klein, an immensely talented and potentially path paving German Jewish scholar of Islam with a focus on Ibāḍī knowledge traditions who was killed during the Holocaust in 1942 at the age of thirty-one. In this book, Schmidtke performs three tasks simultaneously: providing an intimate social and intellectual history of German Orientalism and Islamic Studies at the cusp of and during Nazi Germany, presenting a finely grained analysis of Klein’s life and her intellectual contributions to Islamic Studies, and correcting some popular and dominant misconceptions about Klein’s role in the writing and compilation of the equally well-known and controversial scholar Hans Wehr’s widely used Arabic dictionary. This book in many ways brings together two prominent threads of Schmidtke’s recent scholarship, her work on Shī‘ī, Zaydī, and Ibāḍī knowledge traditions centered on the excavation and production of critical editions of previously lesser known Arabic manuscripts and her long running project of offering an in-depth intellectual genealogy of the German Orientalist tradition in Islamic Studies. Ultimately, this book not only restores a critical silenced voice and expert of Islam. It also reorients our prevailing conceptions of Orientalism while also showcasing the impact of the Holocaust on the study of Islam today.

This article offers a contribution to the study of polemics between Muslims and Jews in the Middle Ages. It presents an annotated translation of the extant fragments of a reply by an unknown Jew to the polemical tract Ifḥām al-Yahūd in which the mathematician Samawʾal al-Maghribī (d. 570/1175), who converted to Islam in 558/1163, virulently attacks his former religion. Samawʾal'stract had a significant impact both on later Muslim polemicists and on Jewish thinkers, who defended their religion against his strictures. The unique manuscript of the anonymous refutation, written in Judaeo-Arabic, is part of the Firkovitch collection kept at the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg. It is included in a codex that also contains an incomplete version, in the same hand, of Samawʾal al-Maghribī's tract. While the codex can be tentatively dated to the fourteenth century and was presumably written in Egypt, we cannot know with any degree of certainty when and where the refutation itself was composed, nor whether the unknown author had access to a complete copy of Samawʾal's work. Although at times the author quotes Ifḥām al-Yahūd verbatim, paraphrases and indirect references to Samawʾal's arguments are more common. In order to contextualize the unknown author's counterarguments, we provide a running commentary, including quotations of the passages from Ifḥām al-Yahūd that are being refuted.

This study traces the prolonged efforts of scholar Abraham Shalom Yahuda to recover his personal library, manuscripts, antiquities, and study materials from Berlin after his departure in 1913. Yahuda, a British national teaching at the Lehranstalt (Hochschule) für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, left for Madrid on a lecture invitation and never returned, as World War I broke out and he was classified as an enemy alien. His property—books, manuscripts received from his brother in Cairo, and Egyptological research notes—remained stored at the Lehranstalt's library and attic. During the war, Yahuda mobilized an extraordinary diplomatic network including British, French, and Spanish ambassadors to retrieve his scientific materials from the Spanish Embassy in Berlin via Switzerland. After the war, his former colleague Ismar Elbogen assisted him but faced severe obstacles including export bans, customs regulations, and high export levies on books and manuscripts leaving Germany. The Lehranstalt's caretaker Josef Hirsch managed the physical storage, cataloguing, and eventual dispatch of the boxes between 1923 and 1931. The paper documents how portions of the collection were gradually retrieved—some shipped to Madrid in 1915, others during the 1920s—while the final seventeen boxes were dispatched to London only on 29 October 1930. It further notes that Yahuda's later account to collector Alfred Chester Beatty overstated the disorder of his materials and understated how much had already been recovered. The study draws on four categories of primary sources: Yahuda's German-language diary, correspondence with Elbogen, letters with caretaker Hirsch, and diplomatic correspondence in English and French. Overall, the paper illuminates the intersection of wartime displacement, scholarly property rights, bureaucratic obstruction, and the personal anxieties of an academic fearing intellectual theft of his unpublished discoveries.

MS Riyadh, Maktabat Malik Fahd al-Waṭaniyya 748 is a multitext volume copied by al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿAlī Ibn Abī l-ʿAshīra in 552/1157 in Ṣaʿda. It consists of doctrinal texts by Zaydī and Muʿtazilī authors, invariably Iranian. The codex is the only known extant witness of all but two of the tracts it includes (the exceptions being Ismāʿīl b. ʿAlī b. Ismāʿīl al-Farrazādhī’s K. Taʿlīq al-Tabṣira and Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Dāʿī al-Ḥasanī’s K. Ḥaqāʾiq al-aʿrāḍ wa-aḥwālihā wa-sharḥihā), and two of its tracts, K. al-Nasīm fī l-uṣūl by one Abū Jaʿfar and K. Muhaj al-ʿulūm by Muʿādh b. Abī l-Khayr al-Hamadhānī, are not even attested in the relevant biobibliographical sources. This study includes critical editions of the doctrinal tracts included in the majmūʿa as well as an additional tract preserved in a related codex that was apparently also copied by Ibn Abī l-ʿAshīra (MS Milan, Ambrosiana, ar. E 462). The edited tracts include Abū l-Faḍl al-ʿAbbās Ibn Sharwīn’s K. al-Wujūh allatī taʿẓumu ʿalayhā l-ṭāʿāt ʿinda llāh, his K. al-Yāqūta, and his Ḥaqāʾiq al-ashyāʾ, ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Hamadhānī’s Ḥudūd al-alfāẓ, Ibn al-Dāʿī’s K. Ḥaqāʾiq al-aʿrāḍ wa-aḥwālihā wa-sharḥihā, the extant part of the K. al-Nasīm fī l-uṣūl, K. Muhaj al-ʿulūm, by Muʿādh b. Abī l-Khayr al-Hamadhānī, fragments of two theological summae by unidentified Zaydī scholars, and collections of doctrinal definitions of uncertain authorship.

On Tuesday, September 17, 2024, a team of librarians from the American University in Cairo (AUC) arrived at the al-Khanji Bookstore in downtown Cairo to oversee the transfer of a rare archive documenting the al-Khanji family's role in the cultural life of the region for nearly a century. This transfer was the result of a cooperation between AUC and five North American academic institutions—the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ; Princeton University; New York University; the University of Michigan; and the College of Charleston—to purchase the archive, preserve it, and make it available to researchers. The al-Khanji archive consists of several thousand documents of various types produced by the well-known Syrian-Egyptian al-Khanji family of booksellers and publishers. Completely unique as the only known surviving archive of a manuscript seller in the region, the archive documents the book-selling and publishing business established by Muhammad Amin al-Khanji after immigrating to Cairo from Aleppo in the 1890s to the 1960s, when the business was run by his sons Sami Amin (d. 1966) and Najib (d. 1980). An exceptionally rich source, the archive promises to open numerous new lines of research into print history, manuscript studies, and Muslim and Orientalist intellectual networks in the first half of the twentieth century. ...

Over the past decade or two, the formation, provenance, and history of manuscript collections around the world has become a focus of scholarly attention. This trend has prompted numerous studies of the Jerusalem-born cosmopolitan Abraham Shalom Yahuda (1877–1951), arguably the most important seller of Islamic manuscripts to Western collectors and libraries during the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century. One area that has not been studied is Yahuda's assistants, whom he employed over the years to write descriptions of the manuscripts in his possession. No attempt has been made to identify the individuals who worked for Yahuda at different times or to distinguish between the various languages (Arabic, German, English, French) and hands in which the extant catalog slips were written. It appears that Yahuda employed a number of Egyptian and German scholars over the years, some of whom worked for him longer than others. Among them were Hans Kindermann (1902–1979) and Hans Ludwig Gottschalk (1904–1981). The surviving evidence of their respective work for Yahuda is discussed in this study, as is the unsuccessful attempt of Hedwig Klein (1911–1942) to enter into Yahuda’s service in 1938.

This list aims to provide an overview of Abraham Shalom Yahuda’s (1877–1951) academic work and its reception. There are certainly gaps at this point, and I would be grateful for any additional titles missing from the list in its current form.

The authenticity of the Kitāb al-dīn wa-al-dawla by the Nestorian convert to Islam, Abū al-asan ʿAlī b. Sahl Rabban al-abarī (d. ca. 251/865), has been discussed since the publication of the text by A. Mingana in 1922 Mingana, A. (1922) The Book of Religion and Empire. A Semi-Official Defence and Exposition of Islam Written by Order at the Court and with the Assistance of the Caliph Mutawakkil (A.D. 847–861) by ʿAlī abarī. Translated with a critical apparatus from an apparently unique MS. in the John Rylands Library (Manchester/New York). [Google Scholar]/23. A comparison between the chapter of the Twelver Shīʿī Sadīd al-Dīn Mamūd b. ʿAlī al-immaī al-Rāzī's (d. after 600/1204) Munqidh min al-taqlīd discussing the biblical predictions of the Prophet Muammad and the corresponding sections of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī's (d. 606/1209) Mafāti al-ghayb reveals a substantial degree of verbal and structural agreement. It becomes evident that Fakhr al-Dīn, like al-immaī, are using material from Ibn Rabban's Al-dīn wa-al-dawla, although they were both relying on an intermediate source, Abū al-usayn al-Barī's (d. 436/1045) Kitāb ghurar al-adilla.

The present volume—the first of its kind—deals with takfīr: accusing one´s opponents of unbelief (kufr). Originating in the first decades of Islam, this practice has been applied intermittently ever since. The nineteen studies included here deal with cases, covering different periods and parts of the Muslim world, of individuals or groups that used the instrument of takfīr to brand their opponents—either persons, groups or even institutions—as unbelievers who should be condemned, anathematized or even persecuted. Each case presented is placed in its sociopolitical and religious context. Together the contributions show the multifariousness that has always characterized Islam and the various ways in which Muslims either sought to suppress or to come to terms with this diversity. With contributions by: Roswitha Badry, Sonja Brentjes, Brian J. Didier, Michael Ebstein, Simeon Evstatiev, Ersilia Francesca, Robert Gleave, Steven Judd, István T. Kristó-Nagy, Göran Larsson, Amalia Levanoni, Orkhan Mir-Kasimov, Hossein Modarressi, Justyna Nedza, Intisar A. Rabb, Sajjad Rizvi, Daniel de Smet, Zoltan Szombathy, Joas Wagemakers.

Am 20. August 1939 bestieg die 28-jährige jüdische Arabistin Hedwig Klein in Hamburg den Dampfer Rauenfels mit Kurs auf Indien. Sie hatte ein Visum. Sie hatte eine Zukunft. Vier Tage später, in Antwerpen, wenige Stunden vor dem Ausbruch des Zweiten Weltkriegs, erhielt das Schiff den Befehl, nach Deutschland zurückzukehren—mit Hedwig Klein an Bord. Sie saß in der Falle ...

From the time of its foundation in 284/897, the Zaydī Imamate of Yemen was home to Muʿtazilī ideas. During the first centuries and starting with Imam al-Hādī ila ʼl-Ḥaqq (d. 298/911), Zaydī ideology included elements akin to the opinions of the Baghdad School of the Muʿtazila as founded by Bishr b. al-Muʿtamir (d. 210/825). However, in the 5-6th/11-12th centuries, we see a rise in popularity of Bahshamiyya ideas, a sub-group of the Basran School of the Muʿtazila around Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī (d. 321/933). These ideas were systematized and elaborated upon by the Zaydī theologian al-Raṣṣāṣ (d. 584/1188). Among those who resisted Bahshamī ideas to defend the teachings of the earlier imams was the jurist, theologian and author of more than 100 works, Ḥusām al-Dīn al-ʿAnsī (d. 667/1268). This volume contains a facsimile of the largest copy of al-Maḥajja al-bayḍāʾ fī uṣūl al-dīn, al-ʿAnsī’s major theological handbook, covering the first four parts out of eight.

The volume contains critical editions of the extant parts of two hitherto unknown theological works by the Buyid vizier al-Sahib b. 'Abbad (d. 385/925), who is well known to have vigorously promoted the teaching of Mu'tazili theology throughout Buyid territories and beyond. The manuscripts on which the edition is based come from Cairo Geniza store rooms. They consist of two manuscripts for each of the two texts—testimony to the impact of al-Sahib’s education policy on the contemporaneous Jewish community in Cairo. The longer treatise of al-Sahib of ca. 350/960, possibly his Kitab Nahj al-sabil fi usul al-din, appears to be the earliest Mu'tazili work preserved among the Jewish community. The second, briefer treatise also contains a commentary by Abd al-Jabbar al-Hamadani (d. 415/1025).

This book is a detailed analysis of the reception and transmission of the doctrinal, legal, literary, and exegetical oeuvre of al-Šarīf al-Murtaḍā, arguably one of the most important thinkers of the medieval period, within and beyond Twelver Šīʿism. The study undertakes an archaeological inquiry of sorts into al-Murtaḍā’s monographic works and their transmission through an analysis of their manuscript tradition from al-Murtaḍā’s time until the contemporary period, covering the full range of the disciplines that he addressed. Inspired by similar quests undertaken by scholars of early modern Europe, this study also pays special attention to the various clusters of one-volume libraries of al-Murtaḍā's writings, the earliest witnesses of which can be traced back to the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries, and it discusses their astoundingly linear transition from manuscript to print. The resulting insights into the transmission of al-Murtaḍā’s oeuvre allow for a careful reconstruction of the relative chronology of al-Murtaḍā’s works in the various disciplines, a necessary foundation for future in-depth analysis of the development of his theological, legal, and exegetical thought.

Among the responsa collections by al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā that still remain to be edited are the Jawābāt al-masāʾil al-Sallāriyya, which consist of responsa to eight questions most of which revolve around issues related to the subtleties of kalām. On the basis of the two earliest witnesses of this text, MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Petermann II [Pm.] 169 and MS Mashhad, Āstān-i quds 1448, an edition has been prepared.