Current Projects
Saudi-Palestinian Relations and 1948
I am currently in the process of exploring avenues for a new research project, which investigates Gulf-Palestine relations in the first half of the twentieth century. I am particularly interested in notions of holy war, sacrifice, and martyrdom, on the one hand, as well as conceptions of solidarity and the umma, the community of Muslim believers, on the other hand. How have these concepts emerged and changed over the course of the 20th century? I explore these questions through charity activism and cultural activities on the Arabian Peninsula for Palestine as well as through the lens of those Saudi and Bahraini fighters who went to fight in the 1948 war for Palestine against the Israeli Defense Forces. Starting point of the investigation is the Penny for Palestine Society (Jam’iyya Khayriyya Qirsh li-l-Filistin), which was established in 1935 in the Hijaz and has been a hub for all sorts of cultural activities and support for Palestine. Another angle are the biographies of those fighters from the Arabian Peninsula, whose graves can be found in Palestine/Israel today. The research is based on local newspaper archives together with an oral history approach to capture the perspective of ‘ordinary’ men involved in the 1948 war (as opposed to the common view of Arab states versus Israel). This research is part of my broad interest in the question how Palestine as a symbol of the umma, the Muslim community, has emerged and changed over time.
Islam as an ‘Epistemic Field’: Travel and Transfer, Knowledge Production and Dissemination in the Long 19th Century
My current book project, Islam at the Margins: Heinrich von Maltzan, a Life in Fragments (working title) examines knowledge production of Islam in the German-speaking 19th century, through the life and works of the German traveler and writer Heinrich von Maltzan (1826-1874), Reichsfreiherr zu Wartenberg und Penzlin. In my research, I use biography as method to shed light on the significant contribution of travelers and travel writing to the production of Islam knowledge and the emergence of an epistemic field of Islam. Through following Maltzan’s career as traveler and writer, as a scholar but academic outsider, the research shifts the perspective on Orientalism as theory towards understanding Orientalism as embodied practice. In addition to offering the first biography of one of the most important ‘Islam experts’ of the German-speaking 19th century, the book offers a new perspective on the disciplinary history of Oriental studies from the position of the outsider.
In the German-speaking 19th century, most university scholars of the Orient never set foot on the lands they studied. Instead, travelers provided the materials available for study at the universities, as well as ideas about Islam, available to the wider public. Travelers were important intermediaries. Amateur explorers and travelers like Heinrich von Maltzan made the maps and geographies of little-known territories, they undertook archaeological discoveries, gathered manuscripts and collected artefacts. Their travel narratives and eyewitness accounts, published in the new mass media of the 19th century – the newspaper and the journal – made them ‘Islam experts’ in the eyes of a wide audience.
I discuss some aspects of Maltzan’s journey to Aden in 1870 in a presentation, recorded for the inspiring conference “Imperial Lives” (March 2023): “A ‘German Orientalist’ in Aden: Decolonizing Methodologies Through the Biographic Approach“. In Aden, Maltzan studied the language of the Mahra tribes of Southern Arabia, which he then analyzed in the ZDMG. But what did philology look like on the ground? How did Maltzan gather the language material, which formed the basis of his studies? Who were Maltzan’s informants and how did he recruit them?
In his most famous publication, Meine Wallfahrt nach Mekka: Reise in die Küstengegend und im Innern von Heschas (1865), Heinrich von Maltzan claims to have performed the pilgrimage to Mecca around 1860 disguised as an Algerian Muslim. The book marked the breakthrough in Maltzan’s career as writer and ‘Islam expert’. For years to come, it served contemporaries as a point of reference, marking the authority of this German Orientalist. Only in 2017, Ulrike Freitag questioned the veracity of this particular journey.
In addition to examining Maltzan’s publications, the research is based on a rich and original body of archival materials, which have not been examined before. At the heart of the analysis are four diaries of Maltzan, which cover the period 1851–1872 on a total of 1.237 pages, written in old German Kurrent with patches of Arabic and Hebrew. The diaries are held in the custody of the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin. In the context of this research project, Rafet Koca at the ZMO scanned the diaries and the formidable handwriting expert Günter Bräuhofer, who is based in Vienna, transcribed the diaries. It is planned to make both, diaries and transcripts, available to the wider public, once this research project has been published. Furthermore, the research project builds on eight travel notebooks of Maltzan, two of his Carte-de-Visit albums, a working portfolio, and personal artefacts, all of which have been gathered from Maltzan’s estate (Nachlass), thanks to the Lindenberg family in Hamburg, who kindly shared the materials in support of the research project. Furthermore, the analysis relies on Maltzan’s extensive correspondence with scholars, travelers, and writers, as well as letters exchanged with private acquaintances, which I gathered from state archives and national libraries throughout Germany.
