1. uluslararasi prof. Dr. Fuat sezgiN İSLÂM

Fuat Hoca’s Arrival in Germany

Fuat Hoca’s elder brother was one of the ministers arrested during the 1960 military coup that took place in Turkey. Using the arrest of his brother as a pretext, Fuat Hoca’s opponents in the Faculty of Literature at Istanbul University had his name smeared and consequently had him expelled from the university. Fuat Hoca told us that he found out about his expulsion via the newspapers.
In his memoirs, Fuat Hoca wrote about his routine at Istanbul University. Every week he would order new books for the Institute, which he would then put on display in a glass cabinet he had had especially constructed for this purpose. He would then work until evening with his research assistants, listening to classical music whilst doing so. Some were disturbed by the ambience he had created at the Institute, some even going so far as to rebuke him for putting Arabic texts up on display.
Distraught at the prospect of having to leave Istanbul, Fuat Hoca applied for posts at American and German universities. After receiving offers from both countries, he opted for Germany and after arriving in 1960 after the coup, he met a German lady, Ursula Hanım, a convert to Islam, and they wed in 1966. Their daughter, Hilal Sezgin, was born in 1970.

A noted orientalist in her own right with a PhD to her name, Ursula Hanım supported and assisted Fuat Hoca in all his endeavours throughout his life.

After his arrival in Germany, one of Fuat Hoca’s key tasks was to revise, develop, and update Carl Brockelmann’s 5-volume Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur (GAL; ‘History of Arabic Literature’). For a number of Westerners, especially Germans, the prospect of a Turk being a part of and indeed leading this renowned German school of thought – Helmut Ritter, Fuat Sezgin’s teacher and mentor and a student himself of Carl Brockelmann, had been a leading light of the school before Sezgin – was hard to accept and a number of committees were formed in order to prevent it from happening. A 6-man committee was formed, tasked with continuing Brockelmann’s grand work and convened in Holland. Upon hearing about the meeting, Sezgin gathered up the near-complete final version of the first volume and decided to join the meeting, during which he introduced his work to those present. Such was the magnitude of his achievement, that any objections to his appointment were summarily trounced and the first volume of the GAS was soon after published by Leiden Brill, one of Europe’s leading publishers in the humanities and social sciences. The writing and publishing of the book were paid for by Fuat Hoca using his own funds.

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