Rate My Professor Sabine Schmidtke

Sabine Schmidtke is Professor of Islamic Intellectual History in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study. She joined the faculty in 2014 after serving as Professor of Islamic Studies at Freie Universität Berlin from 2002 to 2014, where she also founded and directed the Research Unit Intellectual History of the Islamicate World. Earlier in her career, she worked as a diplomat with the German Foreign Office from 1991 to 1999. Schmidtke holds a B.A. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1986), an M.A. from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London (1987), a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford (1990), and a Habilitation from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn (1999).

Her research focuses on Islamic intellectual history, with particular emphasis on the interrelations among different strands of inquiry across time, place, religions, and philosophical schools. She has made significant contributions through the edition and critical analysis of manuscripts in Arabic, Judeo-Arabic, and Persian, and her work spans Arabic-speaking countries as well as Israel, Iran, Russia, and Turkey. Schmidtke is engaged in reconstructing the textual heritage of the post-classical period (thirteenth to nineteenth century) and has published extensively on the Muslim reception of the Bible. Among her honors are election as Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (2023), Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2021), Correspondant étranger of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (2019), and the Humboldt Research Award (2019). She is a member of the American Philosophical Society (2017) and has received additional recognitions including the World Prize for the Book of the Year of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Schmidtke serves as Editor-in-Chief of several publications, including Arabo-Islamica, Biblia Arabica: Texts and Studies, and Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, as well as Executive Editor of the Shii Studies Review and Series Editor of Makers of the Muslim World. Her pioneering scholarship has advanced understanding of Islamic and Jewish intellectual traditions and their interconnections.