Fritz Meier

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Fritz Meier (born June 10, 1912 in Basel ; † June 10, 1998 in Dornach ) was a Swiss scholar of Islam who wrote fundamental research articles, in particular on Sufism and Persian poetry.

Life

Fritz Meier was born on June 10, 1912 in Basel. He grew up in Gelterkinden in the canton of Baselland , first attended the district school in Böckten and then switched to the humanistic grammar school in Basel . In 1932 he enrolled at the University of Basel for the subjects of Greek Philology , Semitic Studies and Assyriology , but soon switched to Islamic Studies and became a student of the Ottoman and historian Rudolf Tschudi (1884–1960). In 1936/37 he did his doctorate with Tschudi with a dissertation on Abū Isḥāq al-Kāzarūnī, an Islamic mystic of the 10th and 11th. Century. Even before his doctorate, his teacher Tschudi arranged for him to stay in Istanbul with Hellmut Ritter (1892–1971), where Meier was introduced to the work of indexing Islamic manuscripts. The encounter with Ritter was decisive for his further academic career, and it shaped his working method, which was strictly based on the philological foundation of the source study.

In 1937 Fritz Meier traveled to Iran for the first time , where he stayed for several months for research purposes. In 1941 the habilitation followed with a study on the Persian poet Mahsatī , at the same time a trend-setting study of the origin and early history of the poetic short form of the quatrain (Rubā'ī) in Persian literature. The habilitation lecture "On the Nature of Islamic Mysticism" (1942) was again on Meier's other main research area, Sufism . In 1946 he was appointed associate professor at the University of Basel, in the same year he followed a call to the University of Alexandria (then Farouk University), where he taught Persian until 1948 as "maître de conférences". In 1949 Meier was appointed to the full professorial position in Oriental Philology in Basel as the successor to his teacher Rudolf Tschudi. In 1962 the professorial chair was converted into a legal chair for "Islamic Studies with special attention to the history of Islamic religion and Persian literature". Fritz Meier represented this subject in Basel until his retirement in 1982. He has received many awards for his research. Since 1986 he has been a corresponding member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences . The University of Tehran and the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg awarded him an honorary doctorate, and the German Oriental Society made him an honorary member.

Fritz Meier died on June 10, 1998, his 86th birthday. His academic papers are kept in the Basel University Library.

Create

Most of Fritz Meier's work takes up his investigations into the diverse forms of Islamic mysticism, Sufism. He dedicated four monographs to Islamic mystics of the Middle Ages. In addition to the founder of the order Abū Isḥāq al-Kāzarūnī, these are Naǧmaddīn al-Kubrā , whose bold color visions and rapture experiences Meier opened up through source studies and interpreted in their religious-scientific context, the cosmopolitan Abū Saʿīd-i Abū l-Ḫayr , “the similar to Francis of Assisi Making happiness in God a principle ”, and Bahā-i Walad, the father of Mawlānā-i Rūmī , who spoke about his spiritual experiences in his diary notes“ with unprecedented openness ”. Only Abū Saʿīd had already been treated in a monograph; Meier discovered the other three in terms of their importance for the history of Islamic religion. Another subject area, to which he had already devoted himself to his habilitation lecture (1942), and whose research he resumed in his last book, Two Essays on Naqšbandiyya (1994), was Sufi initiation, the mystical religious life and the relationship between masters and disciples.

Numerous articles in scientific journals and edited volumes document Meier's diverse research interests. The spectrum ranges from an analysis of the Yazidis' controversial name (in the festschrift for his teacher Rudolf Tschudi) to studies on the early history of the Almoravids , from the discovery of early evidence of Arabic speech therapy to the investigation of Islamic prayers for protection against evil spirits ( ǧinn ) with a comparative consideration of the herdsmen's calling in the Swiss Alps (Alpine blessing ). Meier enriched Persian linguistic research with a fundamental contribution, based on extensive source studies, on pronunciation issues in the New Persian language before the 13th century. A central research topic in his later years was the worship of the Prophet Mohammed . The extensive materials he collected on the blessing ( taṣliya ) on Mohammed were published from the estate in 2002.

Fonts (selection)

  • On the essence of Islamic mysticism . Schwabe, Basel 1943.
  • The Vita of Sheikh Abū Isḥāq al-Kāzarūnī in the Persian version of Maḥmūd b. ʿUṯmān (= Bibliotheca Islamica . Volume 14). Brockhaus, Leipzig 1948 (dissertation).
  • The Fawāʾiḥ al-ǧamāl wa-fawātiḥ al-ǧalāl of Naǧm ad-dīn al-Kubrā. A representation of mystical experiences in Islam from the period around 1200 n. Chr . Steiner, Wiesbaden 1957.
  • The beautiful Mahsatī. A contribution to the history of the Persian quatrain . Steiner, Wiesbaden 1963.
  • Abū Saʿīd-i Abū l-Ḫayr (357-440 / 967-1049). Reality and legend (= Acta Iranica . Volume 11). EJ Brill, Leiden 1976.
  • Bahāʾ-i Walad. Basics of his life and his mysticism (= Acta Iranica . Volume 27). EJ Brill, Leiden 1989.
  • Building blocks. Selected essays on Islamic studies . Edited by Erika Glassen and Gudrun Schubert (= Beirut texts and studies . Volume 53a-c). Komm. Franz Steiner Verlag, Istanbul / Stuttgart, 1992.
  • Two treatises on the Naqšbandiyya (= Beirut texts and studies . Volume 58). Komm. Franz Steiner Verlag, Istanbul / Stuttgart, 1994.
  • Comments on the veneration of Mohammed . Edited by Bernd Radtke and Gudrun Schubert (= Nachgelassene Schriften . Volume 1). EJ Brill, Leiden 2002.

literature

  • Hans-Lukas Kieser: Meier, Fritz. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  • Gudrun Schubert: Meier, Fritz . In: Ehsan Yarshater (Ed.): Encyclopædia Iranica , as of: July 20, 2002, accessed on June 5, 2011 (English, including references)
  • Miriam Baumeister: Fritz Meier . In: Personal Lexicon BL
  • Gudrun Schubert: Fritz Meier, Professor of Islamic Studies 1949-1982 . In: Claudia Bolliger, Renate Würsch (Ed.): View of the Orient. From the Oriental Seminar to the Seminar for Middle East Studies at the University of Basel (1919-2019) . Schwabe, Basel 2019, ISBN 978-3-7965-3935-0 , pp. 101-109.
  • Gudrun Schubert: Fritz Meier (1912-1998) . In: Journal of the German Oriental Society . Volume 150, 2000, pp. 5-10.
  • Annemarie Schimmel: In memoriam Fritz Meier . In: The world of Islam . Volume 39, 1999, pp. 144-148.
  • Josef van Ess: Fritz Meier (June 10, 1912-10 June 1998) . In: Yearbook of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences for 1998 , pp. 153–157. - Reprinted in: Josef van Ess: Kleine Schriften. Ed. by Hinrich Biesterfeldt. EJ Brill, Leiden / Boston 2017. Volume 1, pp. 107-112.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gudrun Schubert: Fritz Meier, Professor of Islamic Studies 1949-1982 . In: Claudia Bolliger, Renate Würsch (Ed.): View of the Orient. From the Oriental Seminar to the Seminar for Middle East Studies at the University of Basel (1919-2019) . Schwabe, Basel 2019, ISBN 978-3-7965-3935-0 , p. 101.
  2. ↑ The report "Meine Persienreise", which Fritz Meier wrote about his stay in Iran, is in his estate (Basel University Library, sign. NL 323: C 22).
  3. ^ Gudrun Schubert: Fritz Meier (1912-1998) , p. 7.
  4. ^ Gudrun Schubert: Fritz Meier, Professor of Islamic Studies 1949-1982 . In: Claudia Bolliger, Renate Würsch (Ed.): View of the Orient. From the Oriental Seminar to the Seminar for Middle East Studies at the University of Basel (1919-2019) . Schwabe, Basel 2019, ISBN 978-3-7965-3935-0 , p. 102.
  5. ^ Gudrun Schubert: Fritz Meier, Professor of Islamic Studies 1949-1982 . In: Claudia Bolliger, Renate Würsch (Ed.): View of the Orient. From the Oriental Seminar to the Seminar for Middle East Studies at the University of Basel (1919-2019) . Schwabe, Basel 2019, ISBN 978-3-7965-3935-0 , pp. 102-103.
  6. ^ Annemarie Schimmel: In memoriam Fritz Meier , p. 145.
  7. ^ Josef van Ess: Fritz Meier (June 10, 1912-10 June 1998), p. 154
  8. ^ Gudrun Schubert: Fritz Meier, Professor of Islamic Studies 1949-1982 . In: Claudia Bolliger, Renate Würsch (Ed.): View of the Orient. From the Oriental Seminar to the Seminar for Middle East Studies at the University of Basel (1919-2019) . Schwabe, Basel 2019, ISBN 978-3-7965-3935-0 , p. 103.
  9. ↑ The name of the Yazīdī’s . In: Fritz Meier (Ed.): West-eastern treatises, Rudolf Tschudi on his seventieth birthday presented by friends and students . Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1954, pp. 244-257.
  10. ↑ Almoravids and Marabuts . In: The world of Islam . Volume 21, 1983, pp. 80-163.
  11. ↑ The beginnings of Arabic speech therapy . In: Martin Forstner (Hrsg.): Festgabe for Hans-Rudolf Singer. Presented by his friends and colleagues for his 65th birthday on April 6, 1990 . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1991, Volume 1, 89-104.
  12. ↑ An Arabic “bet-ruf” . In: Asian Studies . Volume 33, 1979, pp. 153-198.
  13. ↑ Pronunciation questions of the older New Persian . In: Oriens . Volume 27-28, 1981, pp. 70-176.
  14. ↑ Comments on the veneration of Mohammed . Edited by Bernd Radtke and Gudrun Schubert (= Nachgelassene Schriften . Volume 1). EJ Brill, Leiden 2002.
personal data
SURNAME Meier, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss scholar of Islam
DATE OF BIRTH June 10, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH June 10, 1998
Place of death Dornach