Ignác Goldziher

Ignác Goldziher (1850–1921) was a Hungarian orientalist and one of the founders of the modern academic study of Islam. Born into a Jewish family in Székesfehérvár, he studied in Budapest, Berlin and Leipzig, spent a year in Syria, Palestine and Egypt, attending lectures at al-Azhar in Cairo, and returned to Budapest in 1874. Barred from a professorship for thirty years, he supported himself as secretary of the Jewish community while producing his Muslim Studies, the Lectures on Islam and the Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, works on the hadith and Islamic sects that remain fundamental. His early Mythology among the Hebrews belongs to his first, comparative phase.