Nocturnal Music in the Land of the Sufis: Unheard Pakistan

Dr Jürgen Wasim Frembgen is an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. He has taught Anthropology and Islamic Studies at various universities in Germany and Austria. Since 1981 he has been conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Pakistan on an annual basis—including working in the Karakoram, Indus Kohistan, Punjab, and Sindh. In addition, he has been a visiting professor at the Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad (National Institute of Pakistan Studies), National College of Arts in Lahore, and Ohio State University in Columbus, USA. He recently retired from his position as senior curator at the Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich. Dr Frembgen has more than 130 English and German language publications to his credit. He has written extensively on the cultures of the Eastern Muslim world between Iran and India, focusing particularly on Pakistan. Many of his books and articles deal with Islam, the Sufi tradition, the veneration of Muslim saints, art and material culture, the anthropology of the body, social outsiders, and facets of popular culture. He has also curated numerous exhibitions dealing with cultures of the Muslim world. In 2011, he was awarded the Tamgha-i Imtiaz by the President of Pakistan for his distinguished merits in the field of science and literature.