The opinions of German Orientalist Ignaz Goldziher on the sources of Islamic Law and the evaluation of these opinions

Ignaz Goldziher is one of the most important oriantalists who lived inthe last century. Since Goldziher?s studies on the basic sources of Islam areaccepted as an important contribution to this field, I studied on his works as athesis.The main purpose of this study are to investigate the opinions ofGoldziher on the Quran, Sunnah, jmâ, Qıyas, and the influences of foreigncultures on the formation of Islamic Law and to evaluate his opinions on thissubject.Goldziher doesn?t accept the idea that Quran is a holy book which sentdown by revelation. According to him, The Quran is a book which was writtenby Muhammad who came as a prophet of Islam, and was a collection of theprinciples of some other traditions and religions before His time. Therefore,he asserted that the Quran was only a copy of other religions.Goldziher set forth some striking claims on the Sunnah, too. Accordingto Goldziher, the hadiths which reached to our time are not the sayings of theProphet but the Arabic culture. The principles which people accept as thesayings of the Prophet Muhammad are basically the legacy of the pastcustoms.Goldziher added a new principle to the sources of Islamic Law whichwas not described as a main source in the classical works. This new principleis the influences of foreign cultures on Islam and the Islamic Law. Goldziherclaimed that Islam and Islamic Law were formed by influences of variousreligion and cultures.The study examines the assertions of Goldziher by comparing with thesources of Islamic Law. As a result of this, it concludes that the Quran is adivine revelation, the authentic hadiths have been reached to our day, andIslam is not a copy or the combination of other religions and cultures.