Schacht, Joseph

Schacht, Joseph 

Born Mar. 15, 1902, in Ratibor (Racibórz); died Aug. 1,1969, in New Jersey. Islamic scholar; specialist in Islamic law. Editor and one of the founders of the journal Studia Islamica; editor of the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam. Of German extraction.

Schacht left fascist Germany in 1934 and moved to Egypt, where he taught at the University of Cairo until 1939. From 1946 to 1953 he was a professor of Islamic studies at Oxford, and from 1953 to 1959 he headed the Arabic studies department at the State University of Leiden. In 1959 he became a professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at Columbia University in New York City.

Schacht believed that the formation of the basic system of Islamic law had been completed by the eighth century. Although he dealt with Islamic law chiefly in a historical and sociological context, Schacht saw the law as self-contained.

WORKS

The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence. Oxford, 1967.