A. Schimmel, 80; Scholar of Islam, Professor, Author

Annemarie Schimmel, 80, a leading scholar of Islam who promoted understanding of the religion in the West, died Jan. 26 of unstated causes in Bonn, Germany.

Born in Erfurt, Germany, Schimmel became fascinated with the Muslim culture as a child when she was told Arabian tales.

She spoke Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Urdu and Punjabi, as well as German and English, and earned doctorates in Islamic studies and in comparative religion.

Schimmel taught Persian and Arabic poetry at the University of Marburg in Germany; theology at the University of Ankara in Turkey; and Indo-Muslim studies at Harvard University.

Schimmel wrote more than 50 books and hundreds of articles published in various languages around the world. Her subjects ranged from cats in Islamic literature to numerical symbolism. But her favorite topic was Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam.

With a nearly photographic memory, Schimmel was a consultant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, respected for her ability to identify scraps of ancient text.

Muslim nations treated Schimmel as a celebrity. Western intellectuals, however, criticized her for failing to denounce human rights violations committed in the name of Islam.

Schimmel insisted that she saw nothing in the Koran or traditional Islamic writings that even permitted terrorism, and said: “I’m interested in culture, religion, the daily life of Islam, the foundation -- not the politics of the day.”