ARISING FROM A SUBJECTIVE AFFINITY with its people, Johann Wolfgang Goethe had a special predilection for the literature, religion, and culture of ancient Arabia. His gratitude toward Arabia is evident throughout his life and works. Yet very few scholars have been aware of this. The West-Eastern Divan (West-ostlicher Divan) appeared to indicate that his interest in the “Orient” was limited to Hafez and Persia. Relatively little notice was paid those aspects of the work stemming from Arabic and Islamic traditions. Goethe and World Literature (Goethe und die Weltliteratur), Fritz Strich’s fundamental study of the subject, does not touch on Goethe’s relationship to Arabic literature at all. Although Strich did not promise a “comprehensive” treatment, he stressed his intention to “consider every [literary phenomenon] of which Goethe became aware and which played a role in the development and essence of his conception of “world literature,” making his total omission of the question inexplicable, especially as Arabic literature engaged Goethe throughout his life, clearly stimulating his poetic creativity.

During many years of research for a documentary study on the genesis of the West-Eastern Divan, I came to realize that clarifying Goethe’s relationship to Arabian culture was an urgent task. My book Goethe and the Thousand and One Nights (Goethe und 1001 Nacht) already dealt with a work of Arabian literature. Earlier articles on Goethe’s interest in pre-Islamic Bedouin poetry and his attitude toward Muhammad have long been out of print, though I was pleased to hear that some had been translated into Arabic, Turkish, and Urdu. This is especially fitting in light of Goethe’s idea of “world literature” (Weltliteratur), an exchange of ideas between peoples as the means to bring about more accurate perceptions and improve mutual understanding.

In the present volume, I hope to represent as comprehensively as possible Goethe’s relationship to Arabian culture, a task not yet fulfilled, and to address these questions: What did Goethe think and say about the Arabs? Where are the influences of Arabian literature to be found in his works? How can Goethe’s affinity for Islam and Muhammad be explained? “The West’s” increasing interest for the world of Islam suggests that this topic deserves to be studied and discussed more widely than I could accomplish on numerous lecture tours in the Near and Middle East.