Josef Horovitz
Encyclopedia
Josef Horovitz was a Jewish German
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 orientalist
Oriental studies
Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...

.

A son of Markus Horovitz
Markus Horovitz
Markus Horovitz was a Hungarian rabbi and historian.He was born at Ladány , Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County, Hungary. The descendant of an ancient family of scholars, he pursued his rabbinical studies at the yeshivot of Ujhely, Verbé, and Eisenstadt...

 (1844–1910), an Orthodox
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...

 rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...

, Josef Horovitz studied with Eduard Sachau
Eduard Sachau
Karl Eduard Sachau was a German orientalist.-Biography:Sachau became professor extraordinary 1869 and full professor 1872 at the University of Vienna, and in 1876, professor at the University of Berlin, where he was appointed director of the new Seminar of Oriental languages in 1887. He travelled...

 at the University of Berlin and was there since 1902 as a docent
Docent
Docent is a title at some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks below professor . Docent is also used at some universities generically for a person who has the right to teach...

. From 1907 to 1915 he worked in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, in MAO College
MAO College
MAO College was founded by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the leader of Muslim renaissance in Indian subcontinent, in 1875 at Aligarh. This later became Aligarh Muslim University in 1920....

 at Aligarh (later Aligarh Muslim University) and taught Arabic at the request of the Indian government curator
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...

 for Islamic inscriptions. In this role, he prepared the collection Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica (1909–1912). After his return to Germany
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...

 he was from 1914 until his death professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 of Semitic languages
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...

 at the Oriental Seminar of the University of Frankfurt.

Since the foundation of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...

 Horovitz was a member of its Board of Trustees. He founded there the Department of Oriental Studies, and was its director. He focused his studies initially on Arabic historical literature. Then he published a concordance
Concordance (publishing)
A concordance is an alphabetical list of the principal words used in a book or body of work, with their immediate contexts. Because of the time and difficulty and expense involved in creating a concordance in the pre-computer era, only works of special importance, such as the Vedas, Bible, Qur'an...

 of earlier Arabic poetry. His main work was a commentary
Commentary
Commentary may refer to:*Play-by-play commentary, describing sporting events on TV or radio**colour commentary, supplementing play-by-play commentary with talk not directly about play*Commentary or narration, the words in a documentary film...

on the Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...

, which remained unfinished. In his Qur'anic Studies (1926), he used his method of detailed analysis of the language of Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...

 and his followers, and historical insights from his own study of early texts (Hebrew Union College Annual 2, Cincinnati 1925), and in the Qur'anic paradise (Jerusalem 1923) he examined the relationship between Islam and Judaism. His work on India under British rule appeared in 1928 (Leipzig: BG Teubner) and extends from the first dynasty of Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...

 Muslims until the emergence of Gandhi.

In response to Ignaz Goldziher
Ignaz Goldziher
Ignác Goldziher , often credited as Ignaz Goldziher, was a Hungarian scholar of Islam. Along with the German Theodore Noldeke and the Dutch Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, he is considered the founder of modern Islamic studies in Europe.-Biography:Born in Székesfehérvár of Jewish heritage, he was...

 theory that Hadith
Hadith
The term Hadīth is used to denote a saying or an act or tacit approval or criticism ascribed either validly or invalidly to the Islamic prophet Muhammad....

traditions were recorded late in 2nd and 3rd Hijri centuries, Horovitz showed that the collection and writing of Hadiths started in the first quarter of the 2nd century.
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