Networks of Knowledge Production: South Asian Muslims and German Scholars in Berlin (1915–30)

In 1934, Abdul Sattar Kheiri, who was at that time a teacher of German and French at Aligarh Muslim University and the founder of the German Society at that university, published an article in the Aligarh Journal of the German Society detailing the establishment of "Islamic studies" (Islamwissenschaft) in 1929 as an independent academic subject at the University of Berlin. The author described the everyday life and atmosphere at a German university, and the role of German professors as teachers and iconic leaders for youth, and discussed the meaning of "Islamic studies" as an academic subject dif erent from and independent of the discipline of philology. In his article, Kheiri appealed to the students of Aligarh University to learn German in order to partake in the important German academic debates on Islam and Muslim societies. Kheiri concluded by emphasizing the role he and his brother, Abdul Jabbar Kheiri, allegedly played in the process of establishing Islamic studies at Berlin University:

It is not with motive of self-praise if it is pointed out here that the writer and his elder brother endeavoured constantly from 1919 on to have at the Berlin University the subject of Islamic Studies as an independent examination subject. It was due to their letter to the Faculty of Philosophy that it adopted at once Islamic Philology as a subject, postponing Islamic Studies on account of having no professors solely for it. Professor Becker being still a minister, could give very little time. Professor Sachau sympathized very much with the idea, but he was retiring. Prof. Kampfmeyer, the President of the German Society for Islamic Studies, supported it very warmly. Professors Mittwoch and Herzfeld were also in favour.¹

This journal article raises a number of questions about the writer's and his brother's role within German academic circles in the 1920s in general, and their position within debates on Islam in particular. The names of the German scholars mentioned in Sattar Kheiri's article read like a "who's who" of Arabic language and Islamic studies in Weimar Germany. Did the German scholarly community in fact attach such high importance to the opinion of the Kheiri brothers? Or was this statement rather an expression of Sattar Kheiri's self-overestimation, or a tactical step toward strengthening his own academic position at Aligarh, where he had been working since 1930 af er years of exile in Europe?

The aim of this article is to trace the contacts and interactions of the Kheiri brothers with German academic circles, from the First World War until the end of the 1920s, when the brothers lef Berlin. The main focus is on their involvement in debates on Islam and on India in various scholarly disciplines. Thus, the article looks at the intellectual networks of these two Indian Muslims to shed light on the changing German interest in the "Orient" af er the First World War in Weimar Germany. Besides classical oriental studies, which foregrounded research on religious, linguistic, and philosophical issues, new themes concerning economic and social realities emerged at this time. Consequently, not only German orientalists were interested in exchanging views with South Asian intellectuals in exile, like the Kheiris, but so were representatives of other disciplines such as sociology and economics.

I will first discuss how the Kheiri brothers came in contact with German academia and their involvement in scholarly networks and political propaganda activities during the First World War. Second, I will ask how, based on these early contacts, they got involved in debates on the role of Islam as a religious and political force in Berlin in the 1920s, as well as how they contributed to the knowledge production on and the perception of India in Germany. I will conclude by following the traces of these academic contacts into the 1930s, when the Kheiris were back in India.

The Kheiri Brothers and German Orientalists during the First World War

With the outbreak of the First World War in July 1914, and with the entry of the Ottoman Empire into the coalition of Central Powers and Sultan...