PROJECTS
MIDDLE EAST

LOCALITY AND PIETY IN ISLAMIC NORTH AFRICA AND WEST ASIA
(1) Gebhard Fartacek | Zones of Uncertainty: Ritual and Taboo in the Near East from the Perspectives of Space and Time.
(2) Gebhard Fartacek | Pilgrimage Cities in the Syrian Periphery. An Ethnographic Study of the Cognitive Construction of Sacred Places and their Practical Relevance.
(3) Günther Windhager | From Lemberg to Mecca (1900-1927).The early biography of Leopold Weiss, alias Muhammad Asad.
(4) Barbara Danczul | “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?” Local Strategies for Conflict Resolution of Violence and Revenge in Egypt.
(5) Ines Kohl | Identities between Boundaries: Strategies of Belonging among the Imajeghen (Tuareg) of Libya.
(6) Gudrun Kroner | Beyond the Ties of Home. A Comparison of Female Refugees in the Arabic-Islamic world.
(7) Johann Heiss | Anthropological Interpretations in Southwest Arabia.
 
 
 
GÜNTHER WINDHAGER | FROM LEMBERG TO MECCA (1900-1927)
The early biography of Leopold Weiss, alias Muhammad Asad.
 
Muhammad Asad (Leopold Weiss) was born in 1900 in the Galician town of Lemberg, which at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. He came from a Jewish family that relocated to Vienna at the outbreak of the First World War. An invitation from an uncle living in Jerusalem in 1922 was his first, unplanned introduction to the Middle East, but this encounter with the Muslim world became the turning point in his life.
 
As the Middle East correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung, Weiss spent the next several years traversing the region from Egypt to Afghanistan. Upon his return to Europe in 1926 he converted to Islam and took the name Muhammad Asad. The subsequent phases of his professional development were closely tied to the formation of two states − Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. At the end of his first pilgrimage he spent several years at the court of the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi-Arabia, King Ibn Sa’ûd. Later he participated in the formation of the Islamic state of Pakistan, and served as the country’s Minister Plenipotentiary to the United Nations in 1952.
 
In addition to his political and diplomatic activities, Muhammad Asad was a significant force within modernist thought in 20th century Islam. Among his major works are Islam at the Crossroads (1934), his autobiographical bestseller, The Road to Mecca (1954), and the Message of the Qur’ân (1980), which was a translation, with commentary, of the Quran into English. Asad died in 1992 in Andalusia.
Windhager has created the first scholarly biography of this important cultural mediator, concentrating on the first phase of Weiss’/Asad’s life until shortly after his conversion to Islam. His book, Leopold Weiss alias Muhammad Asad. Von Galizien nach Arabien 1900-1927, received the Böhlau Jubilee Prize from the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2003.



Windhager, Günther (2006): Vom Kaffeehaus an den saudischen Königshof. Leopold Weiss’ (später Muhammad Asad) Begegnungen in Wien und Berlin auf seinem Weg zum Islam. In: Heuer, Gottfried (ed.) Utopie und Eros. Der Traum von der Moderne. 5th International Otto Gross Congress, Cabaret Voltaire, Dada-Haus Zürich, 16th–18th of September 2005. Marburg/Lahn: LiteraturWissenschaft.de, 209–228
 
 Windhager, Günther (2002): Leopold Weiss alias Muhammad Asad. Von Galizien nach Arabien 1900-1927. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag.
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