Schimmel became fascinated with the Muslim world after hearing Arabian tales as a child and went on to become one of the 20th century's most influential scholars of Islam.
      She taught generations of students in a breathtaking style that included lecturing with her eyes closed and reciting long passages of mystical poetry from memory. She spoke Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Urdu, and Punjabi.
      She wrote more than 50 books and hundreds of articles published around the world, on Islamic literature, mysticism, and culture. In some Muslim countries she was treated as a celebrity and showered with honors.
      Her eagerness to delve into Islamic cultures led to friendships with repressive rulers that sometimes propelled her into public controversies. Some intellectuals attacked her for painting too gentle a picture of Islam and for failing to denounce evils committed in its name.
      Schimmel's interests ranged across the Muslim landscape. She wrote a book about the role of cats in Islamic literature and another, The Mystery of Numbers (1993), that compared numerical symbolism in various cultures. Her consuming passion, however, was Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. Prominent Sufis acknowledged her as one of the foremost experts on their history and tradition.
      Annemarie Schimmel was born on 07 April 1922, in Erfurt, Germany. She loved to read poems by Friedrich Rückert. She was so deeply impressed by his versions of Persian and Arabic literature that she ardently longed to learn more about Oriental culture. When she turned 15, she met a teacher of Arabic. He found her so infatuated with her studies that he began to introduce her to Islamic history and culture.
      She finished high school at 16, two years earlier than is usually the case. One year later she followed her father to Berlin where she continued her Arabic studies at the University and also took courses in Islamic art. In November 1941 she got her first doctorate.
      In the course of her 6 years of study, she began writing her dissertation on Mamluk history and on 01 April 1945, took her second doctorate. On Armistice Day, in May 1945 she was interned by the Americans in Marburg. After a few months she joined the University of Marburg and studied under Professor Friedrich Heiler, the famous historian of religions. She submitted her Habilitation (postdoctoral) and delivered her inaugural address on 12 January 1946.
      She had a nearly photographic memory. For years she was a consultant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where she was legendary for her ability to identify scraps of ancient text.
      After earning her second doctorate, in comparative religion, Schimmel began teaching Persian and Arabic poetry at the University of Marburg in Germany. From 1954 to 1959 she taught theology at the University of Ankara in Turkey, the first woman and the first non-Muslim to do so. In July 1969 she inaugurated the Indo-Muslim studies program at Harvard, and taught it until she retired and returned to Bonn in 1994.
      Leaders of Islamic countries revered her, and she readily accepted their hospitality.
      Schimmel often seemed naïve about politics. She said: “That is not my world. I'm interested in culture, religion, the daily life of Islam, the foundation, not the politics of the day."
      In 1995 Schimmel was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, an award also given to Albert Schweitzer, Martin Buber and Vaclav Havel. The citation praised her lifelong search for “a synthesis of Islam and the modern.” In awarding the prize, Roman Herzog, then president of Germany, called Schimmel “one of the few Western scholars who is able and ready to think herself totally into the mental world of this different culture.”
      Several dozen German intellectuals, among them Günter Grass and Jürgen Habermas, issued a statement condemning the award: “This German Orientalist is a welcome guest in totalitarian Islamic states like Iran, but in her entire work there is not a single reference to human rights violations in those countries. But Schimmel declared: “I have never seen anything in the Koran or in the traditional writings that called for or even allowed terrorism or hostage-taking.”
      Schimmel was briefly married in the 1950's. Despite her fascination with Islam, she remained Lutheran her entire life. She completed work on an autobiography not long before her 23 January 2003 death.
      “Corporeal death is necessary,” she said once in a lecture about Sufism. “How else do you get in close touch with the Divine Beloved?”
      Schimmel wrote sometimes in English. Some of her books are The Triumphal Sun. Life and Works of Mowlana Jalaloddin (1978) — Rumi: Ich bin Wind und du bist Feuer — Calligraphy and Islamic Culture (1984) — Mystical Dimensions of Islam (1975) — Berge, Wüsten, Heiligtümer (1994) — Gabriel’s Wing. A study into the religious ideas of Sir Muhammad Iqbal (1963) — Die Träume des Kalifen: Träume und ihre Deutung in der islamischen Kultur (1998) — Im Reiche der Großmoguln (2000) — The Mystery of Numbers (1993). — Islam in the Indian Subcontinent (1980) — And Muhammad is His Messenger (1985) — A Two-Colored Brocade: The Imagery of Persian Poetry (1992) — Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to Islam (1993) — As Through a Veil (1982) — Islamic Personal Names (1990) — Make a Shield from Wisdom (1993) — Die Zeichen Gottes: Die religiöse Welt des Islams (1995)— Meine Seele ist eine Frau: Das Weibliche im Islam (1996) — Nightingales under the Snow (from which 4 short poems online)— Die Religion des Islam (1999) — Sufismus: Eine Einführung in die islamische Mystik (2000) — Im Namen Allahs, des Allbarmherzigen: der Islam (1999).
      She has also translated Persian, Urdu, Arabic and Turkish works into English and German.