Volume 1 The first volume of Golziher's
Muslim Studies focused on tensions between Arab and non-Arab Muslims in early Islamic history, as well as the
shuʿūbiyya movement. Around the same time, Goldziher also published a separate paper in the journal
Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft about the
shuʿūbiyya in
Al-Andalus in the 11th century AD, with a special focus on the figure
Ibn Gharsiya. As a reaction to sentiments of Arab supremacy, the
shuʿūbiyya arose as a political faction and a genre of literature, especially among elements emphasizing Persian nationalism, that expressed the opposite: that non-Arabs were superior to Arabs. According to Goldziher, the non-Arabs and their traditions were depicted positively and used to contrast against the more negatively portrayed lifestyle and traditions of the Arabs.
Volume 2 The second volume of
Muslim Studies concerned the history, origins, and development of the
hadith literature. In contrast to earlier approaches, Goldziher thought to fundamentally rethink the origins of hadith and the role they can play as a source for Islamic history. Contrary to the traditional position (including how it had been taken in by the academics of his time), Goldziher did not believe that hadith stretched back to the time of Muhammad or the years that followed his death, but instead emerged in the second Islamic century in the context of the political and theological aspirations, debates, controversies, and polemics of the second Islamic century. Therefore, Goldziher underlined the utility of hadith in regards to their previously acknowledged, but greatly informative nature about the intellectual and social history of the Islamic religion during a still early, but more matured phase of it. Holtzman and Ovadia write, summarizing
Muslim Studies:In his monumental
Muhammedanische Studien (published in 1888–1890, two years after “Ueber Geberden”), Goldziher devoted the majority of the second volume to an exploration of the development of the
ḥadīth literature. Approaching the
ḥadīth as the reservoir of Arab memory, Goldziher noted that in his reading method "the Hadith will not serve as a document for the history of the infancy of Islam, but rather as a reflection of the tendencies which appeared in the community during the mature stages of its development." Goldziher saw the
ḥadīth as "the typical product of the religious spirit of the epoch." By "the epoch" Goldziher meant the first century of Islam, when "[t]he pious cultivated and disseminated in their orders the little that they had saved from early times or acquired by communication." He adds: "They also fabricated new material for which they could expect recognition." As is well known, the fabrication of
ḥadīth material, which is broadly discussed in
Muhammedanische Studien, became a cornerstone of Goldziher’s perception of the formation of the
ḥadīth. This perception, however, does not contradict Goldziher’s basic approach to the
ḥadīth as "a rich source for the intellectual history of early Islam and a record of how Muslims sought to establish their sense of self-identity as individuals and as a community of faith." And indeed, when he writes about gestures in the
ḥadīth, his approach is clearly non-skeptical: He does not criticize the sources but conveys their content faithfully. == Impact and reception in Islamic studies ==