Burgel was born in Poland in 1931 and then migrated to Germany. He had been professor of Islamic and Iranian studies and Persian language and literature of University of Bern for 25 years. He used to chair the university’s Institute of Islamic Studies.
Now retired, he is considered one of the noted figures in the Islamic world.
Burgel has written diverse and valuable works on Persian literature and has translated anthologies of the great Iranian poets such as Hafez, Nezami and Molana Jalaleddin Rumi into German language.
German rendering of Hafez Anthology and Nezami’s ‘Khosrow and Shirin’ are among the most read literary books in Germany and Switzerland.