Shaykh Dr. Abdel-Hadi Honerkamp

Professor Honerkamp teaches Modern Standard Arabic as a second language and in-depth textual study for advanced students. He is involved in research in Arabic manuscripts, particularly those found in the less often referred to manuscript collections of Morocco.

He does research in the fields of Islamic Law and the integral relationship of Shariah and Islamic mysticism, or Sufism. His recent study and translation of two texts by Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami al-Naysapuri (d. 1021) and the Malamatiyya was published by Fons Vitae Publishers in early 2003. His critical edition and study of the Greater Collection of the Letters of Ibn Abbad of Ronda (d. 1390) is forthcoming in 2004.

Professor Honerkamp is a graduate of the Al-Qarawiyine University of Morocco. This university is part of the traditional education system of Morocco - where the traditional Islamic sciences are taught by the foremost scholars in their respective fields. He is also a graduate of the University of Aix-en-Provence, France where he completed his Ph.D. in 1999 after having earned a Master’s degree in religion from the University of Georgia at Athens in 1995.

Professor Honerkamp has brought to the Department of Religion at UGA his experience gained in the North-West Frontier of Pakistan where he studied with Islamic scholars of Islamic Law, Qur’an commentary and Arabic grammar. His years in Morocco as a student and then a professor at the Faculty of Arabic Letters provided him with an intimate knowledge of the traditional education system of Morocco as it exists today.

His degrees from western institutions of higher education in the US and France have given him hands on experience in dealing with the difficulties and frustration that so often plague the learner of Arabic as a foreign language. His years of residency in the Muslim world have afforded him an understanding of Islamic faith and practice on the level of everyday practice that he is able to communicate to his students. In his classes his students come to appreciate the multi-faceted Islamic culture in as a living tradition.

Now he has brought his years hosting and lecturing to international programs abroad in Morocco to the newly instituted Maymester in Morocco Program. This accredited program takes 18 students from UGA to a month long journey of discovery from the royal cities of Marrakesh, Fes and Rabat to the High Atlas Mountains to the Sahara Desert.

JazakAllahu Khair to:

www.hnrkmp.myweb.uga.edu/