Ignaz Goldziher
Hungarian-Jewish Orientalist (1850–1921). His Muhammedanische Studien (Halle, 1889–1890) founded the critical study of ḥadīth — arguing that a large fraction of prophetic traditions reflect 2nd- and 3rd-century Islamic doctrinal and legal disputes projected backward onto the Prophet. Every modern academic discussion of isnāds traces to this work.
Read the source
Muhammedanische Studien
Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1889–1890 · German · 2 volumes
The original German text. Public domain worldwide. Hosted as a Google-digitised scan on the Internet Archive.
Muslim Studies
Barber & Stern English translation, Allen & Unwin, 1967–1971 · 2 volumes
The canonical English translation. Still under copyright in both the UK and US (US renewal through ~2062). Available as a read-only borrow on archive.org; fair-use excerpts only.
Why Goldziher still matters
Goldziher's central argument in Volume II of Muhammedanische Studien is the backward projection thesis: many hadiths that appear to settle 2nd–3rd Islamic-century disputes (Umayyad vs ʿAbbāsid politics, the Murjiʾite and Khārijite schisms, the emergence of the legal schools) purport to quote the Prophet himself but almost certainly reflect the debates of generations after him. Isnāds were fabricated and refined to give these hadiths prophetic authority.
The traditional Sunni response — that the isnād-critical sciences (ʿilm al-rijāl, ʿilm al-ḥadīth) weed out fabrications — is exactly what Goldziher's evidence undercuts: the early ḥadīth community's own rijāl material shows prolific fabrication, and many forgeries passed the filters. Joseph Schacht built directly on Goldziher in The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (1950).
Entries in the catalog citing Goldziher reference the English pagination of Barber & Stern's Muslim Studies. The German page numbers are preserved in square brackets in every English edition.