ISLAMABAD, May 5: Pakistani intellectuals joined the world- wide surge in appreciating the work of Annemarie Schimmel (1922- 2003) by arranging a literary evening in memory of the great German orientalist here on Friday.

Jointly organised by the Pakistan Academy of Letters and the Islamabad Cultural Forum, the evening proved to be intellectually stimulating for the audience.

PAL chief Iftikhar Arif resolved that his Academy would celebrate Annemarie Schimmel’s birthday each year and publish her biography either in Urdu or English by a Pakistani scholar and translate her travelogues in German on Pakistan.

Everyone present at the evening brought out his or her own scrap book of memories to relate to the orientalist’s wonderful personality and great scholarship.

Prof Khwaja Masud called her a Sufi who had the gift of intuition. “It is difficult to forget a person who had done such distinctive service for my country and to introduce the world of Islam in Europe,” he remarked.

Iqbal Academy’s director Mohammad Suuheyl Umar said Annemarie Schimmel was a noted Iqbal scholar who undertook to unravel the genius and significance of Allama Iqbal’s poetry “in the new European ethos”.

She was building bridges and creating a bond between the European and the Muslim world. She acquired great insight into the Muslim mind because she approached it through poetry of the likes of Iqbal, Rumi and Shah Abdul Lateef Bhitai, interpreting them so remarkably well in her scholarship, he said.

Ikram Chughtai mentioned two controversies on orientalism which she handled with great aplomb - one launched by Edward Said, author of the famous treatise on Orientalism, and the other over Salman Rushdie’s profane Satanic Verses. She received scorn for her views regarding the two in the West, he said.