The Zahiris

The scholar Ignác Goldziher was born in Székesfehérvár in the Hungarian kingdom of the Habsburg Empire. Pursuing a German university education in Berlin and Leiden, where he embarked on his study of Arabic and Islam, he also traveled in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. Over the nearly thirty years that followed, Goldziher became one of the pioneers of the serious study of Islam in Europe, even as he was forced by institutional antisemitism to work as an unpaid university lecturer. He supported himself by working as secretary of the Hungarian Neolog Jewish community. He finally was appointed professor at Budapest University in 1905, having already been elected to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and having received offers of professorships abroad. In the context of his deep interest in and admiration for Islam and the medieval Arab world, Goldziher also wrote about relations between Islam and Judaism and served on the editorial board of the Jewish Encyclopedia (1901–1906).