Muhammad Asad (Leopold Weiss) at the Saudi court, 1927-1932

The central figure of this research project is the Austrian Jewish convert to Islam Leopold Weiss alias Muhammad Asad (b. 1900 in Lemberg, then part of the Habsburg Empire, today L`viv, Ukraine; d. 1992 in Mijas, Spain). Subsequent to an early career as a Middle East correspondent for leading continental newspapers, Asad contributed to the foundation of Pakistan and served as that country`s Minister Plenipotentiary to the UN in 1952. With his theoretical works, including an annotated English translation of the Koran, Asad not only became an influential intellectual and author of 20th century Islam, but also an important mediatior between Islam and the West. Despite the increasing research interest in Asad`s life and work in recent times, the book "Leopold Weiss alias Muhammad Asad. Von Galizien nach Arabien, 1900-1927" (2002) by the applicant is the only monography until today. The present research application ties up to this work, and focuses on Asad`s period from 1927 to 1932, which he spent as a correspondent on the territory of today`s Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (proclaimed 1932). As a close confident of King Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, i. e. the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Asad was able to enter spheres in geographical, social, and political ways that had been inaccessible for most other Europeans before. The objective of this research is to prepare the first comprehensive documentation on Asad`s life and work in Saudi Arabia. By means of archival research, his writings will be registered bibliographically as comprehensively as possible. This will form the corpus of primary sources which will serve for biographic reconstruction, as well as for a source-critical ethnographic analysis. The present research thus aims to clear up Asad`s activities at the Saudi court, his attitude towards Wahhabism, and his positioning within the specific constellation of power and religion. With a critical approach to his autobiography "The Road to Mecca" (1954) and based on social anthropological identity theories, Asad`s agency and politics of identity will be analyzed. To shed light upon this nearly unexplored period, public record offices and private archives will be consulted and interviews with relatives and contemporary witnesses will be carried out. As the result of this project, a densely researched yet transparent monography is planned, which will contribute decisevely not only to our knowledge of M. Asad, but also of the cultural history of Saudi Arabia.

The central figure of this research project is the Austrian Jewish convert to Islam Leopold Weiss alias Muhammad Asad (b. 1900 in Lemberg, then part of the Habsburg Empire, today L`viv, Ukraine; d. 1992 in Mijas, Spain). Subsequent to an early career as a Middle East correspondent for leading continental newspapers, Asad contributed to the foundation of Pakistan and served as that country`s Minister Plenipotentiary to the UN in 1952. With his theoretical works, including an annotated English translation of the Koran, Asad not only became an influential intellectual and author of 20th century Islam, but also an important mediatior between Islam and the West. Despite the increasing research interest in Asad`s life and work in recent times, the book "Leopold Weiss alias Muhammad Asad. Von Galizien nach Arabien, 1900-1927" (2002) by the applicant is the only monography until today. The present research application ties up to this work, and focuses on Asad`s period from 1927 to 1932, which he spent as a correspondent on the territory of today`s Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (proclaimed 1932). As a close confident of King Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, i. e. the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Asad was able to enter spheres in geographical, social, and political ways that had been inaccessible for most other Europeans before. The objective of this research is to prepare the first comprehensive documentation on Asad`s life and work in Saudi Arabia. By means of archival research, his writings will be registered bibliographically as comprehensively as possible. This will form the corpus of primary sources which will serve for biographic reconstruction, as well as for a source-critical ethnographic analysis. The present research thus aims to clear up Asad`s activities at the Saudi court, his attitude towards Wahhabism, and his positioning within the specific constellation of power and religion. With a critical approach to his autobiography "The Road to Mecca" (1954) and based on social anthropological identity theories, Asad`s agency and politics of identity will be analyzed. To shed light upon this nearly unexplored period, public record offices and private archives will be consulted and interviews with relatives and contemporary witnesses will be carried out. As the result of this project, a densely researched yet transparent monography is planned, which will contribute decisevely not only to our knowledge of M. Asad, but also of the cultural history of Saudi Arabia.