[2] His most important work is the two-volume Muhammedanische Studien (Muslim Studies), especially its second volume, which addresses questions of the origins, evolution, and development of hadith.

[3][4] Born in Székesfehérvár of German Jewish heritage, he was educated at the universities of Budapest, Berlin, Leipzig and Leiden with the support of József Eötvös, Hungarian minister of culture.

In the next year, under the auspices of the Hungarian government, he began a journey through Syria, Palestine and Egypt, and took the opportunity of attending lectures of Muslim sheiks in the mosque of al-Azhar in Cairo.

Goldziher viewed Zionism as an ethno-nationalist sentiment and a distinctly separate ideology from the religion of Judaism or what makes one a Jew, stating: "Jewishness is a religious term and not an ethnographical one.

In this work, Goldziher became the first academic in the West to understand the corpus of hadith texts within the purview of the conflicting political, religious, and social interests that was faced by the Islamic community in the initial centuries of its existence.

[12] Thus, Goldziher "inaugurated the critical study" of the hadith's authenticity and concluded that "the great majority of traditions from the Prophet are documents not of the time to which they claim to belong" but created "during the first centuries of Islam,"[13][14] i.e. were fraudulent.

This included hadith "accepted even in the most rigorously critical Muslim collections", which meant that "the meticulous isnads which supported them were utterly fictitious" (R. Stephen Humphreys).

[17] Goldziher also observed replete anachronism in the hadith literature, including in:[18]reports supporting the legitimacy of dynasties; traditions addressing how believers should respond to ungodly rulers; hadith supporting particular positions in theological controversies; reports giving voice to local patriotism; reports praising the merits of particular localities, tribes or families; apocalyptic prophecies of conquests and rebellions; and hadith praising the descendants of ʿAlī or, conversely, seeking to limit Alid legitimacy.As for isnads, Goldziher viewed them as a secondary attempt at justifying the traditions that particular actors cited during their controversies.

[19] Goldziher's influence was a result of his careful investigation of pre-Islamic and Islamic law, tradition, religion and poetry, in connection with which he published a large number of treatises, review articles and essays contributed to the collections of the Hungarian Academy.

Goldziher's work was an exception in that he appreciated 'Islam's tolerance towards other religions', though this was undermined by his dislike of anthropomorphism in Mohammad's thought, and what Said calls 'Islam's too exterior theology and jurisprudence'.