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Josef HOBOVITZ, The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and their Authors, ed. Lawrence I. CONRAD, Princeton 2002. The Darwin Press. Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, 11. xxxviii + 158 pp. ISBN 0-87850-118-5
Josef HOROVITZ' Habilitationsschrift entitled Die alteste geschichtliche Literatur der Araber, 1904 (The oldest historical literature of the Arabs) has never been published in its original language. Instead, it appeared as a series of English articles in the Indian journal Islamic Culture in 1927-28. For decades scholars of early Islamic history and historiography had to struggle with a text often obscured by translation and printing errors.
Through the efforts of L. CONRAD we now have HOBOVITZ' study in a new and elegant garb. The typographical and translation errors were corrected, the notes were expanded and updated, and a fine introduction was added by the editor. It deals with the development of slra studies in Europe before HOROVITZ and the contribution of HOROVITZ himself. The bibliography was updated to include the latest publications in the field. Another volume of articles by HOHOVITZ on historical and cultural themes, also edited by CONRAD, is forthcoming in the same series.
In his introduction the editor reassuringly refers to Orientalists without being apologetic. Indeed,...