Josef Horovitz was a Jewish German orientalist. A son of Markus Horovitz (1844–1910), an Orthodox rabbi, Josef Horovitz studied with Eduard Sachau at the University of Berlin and was there since 1902 as a docent. From 1907 to 1915, he worked in India, at the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh and taught Arabic at the request of the Indian government curator for Islamic inscriptions. In this role, he prepared the collection Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica (1909–1912). After his return to Germany he was from 1914 until his death professor of Semitic languages at the Oriental Seminar of the University of Frankfurt.