Introductory remarks

The history of the Master of Arts program “Intellectual Encounters of the Islamicate World” started in the early 2000s, when the Yad Hanadiv Foundation encouraged two of us – Sarah Stroumsa and Sari Nusseibeh – to come up with a project that would combine our fields of expertise, and that, by using modern technologies, would reach across political, religious, and disciplinary borders. Our point of departure was the common Arabic culture of the medieval Islamicate world, where Muslim, Christian and Jewish thinkers wrote in Arabic, polemicizing and at the same time exchanging philosophical and scientific knowledge with each other. We began by establishing a website that attempted to recreate the interconfessional scene of the medieval intellectual world. By providing materials from major thinkers of the three denominations, we hoped to encourage readers and students to discover interconnections between those thinkers.

In 2011, this website served as a platform for teaching students from the USA, Israel, Palestinian territories, and Germany, who subsequently met in a workshop in Marrakesh, generously funded by the Hermès Foundation. With Sabine Schmidtke, who had her own project on the “History of the Islamicate World” at the Freie Universität Berlin, we then thought of turning the modest success of the workshop into a full, stable, cutting-edge teaching program. The idea was to bring together Israeli, Palestinian and German students in a one-year, interdisciplinary MA program. Using modern techniques of online teaching, the program would, we hoped, overcome the many political and economic obstacles that real life imposed on these students.

Six years after its establishment at the Freie Universität Berlin, the program boasts 72 alumni, with an additional 19 students in the present cohort. Our graduates come from Israel, and Palestinian terrotories, and from Germany – but also from Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Syria, Peru, Iran, Afghanistan, the Netherlands, and the USA. The program has given them the opportunity to study their common intellectual past together, despite geographical obstacles and cultural differences.

For the three of us, the program turned out to be a gratifying, at times very moving, learning experience. We wish to express our deep gratitude for the support of the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) as well as for the generous funding from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, the Rothschild Foundation Jerusalem, an anonymous private donor, and the Frank Reinhard-Stiftung. We thank the Freie Universität Berlin, which rose up to the challenge of managing such an unusual program, requiring special arrangements and coordination. We are also thankful to the teachers of this program – internationally renowned scholars who have shared their expertise and academic passion with much spirit and dedication. An international degree program such as the MA Intellectual Encounters also depends on the support of political institutions, such as the German Foreign Ministry and the German Representative’s Office in Ramallah, whose proficient guidance has constituted an essential component in its success. Last, but not least, we wish to extend our heartfelt thanks to the Israeli and Palestinian tutors, to the organization team in Berlin, and to the many people who have been working tirelessly behind the scenes to make things happen.

We hope that this guide will be helpful for those who choose to enter equally new and promising terrains of academic cooperation and intercultural interaction through virtual teaching.

Professor Dr. Sabine Schmidtke,
Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton

Professor Sarah Stroumsa,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem

Professor Sari Nusseibeh,
Al-Quds University, Jerusalem