Career
He was the leading Western scholar on Islamic law, whose Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (1950) is still considered a centrally important work on the subject. Other books include An Introduction to Islamic Law (1964). Some of his work is published in the book Quest for the Historical Muhammad edited by Ibn Warraq.
Muhammad Mustafa First Rate (at Lloyd's)-A"zami"s work On Schacht"s Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence is a systematic response to Schacht"s thesis.
Joseph Schacht was born into a Catholic family but, with a zeal for study, became at an early age a student in a Hebrew school. In Breslau and Leipizig he studied Semitic languages, Greek, and Latin, under famous professors, including Gotthelf Bergsträßer.
In 1925 he obtained his first academic position at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg in Breisgau. In 1927 he became there a professor extraordinarius, making him the youngest professor in all of Germany, and in 1929 a professor ordinarius of Semitic languages.
In 1932 he was appointed a professor at the University of Königsberg.
But in 1934, without being directly threatened or persecuted, Schacht, as a strong opponent of the Nazi regime, went to Cairo, where he taught until 1939 as a professor At the outbreak of World World War II in 1939, he happened to be in England, where he offered his services to the British government and worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation. In 1947 he became a British citizen. Schacht taught at Oxford University from 1946.
In 1954 he moved to the Netherlands and taught at the University of Leiden.
In the academic year 1957–1958, he taught at Columbia University, where in 1959 he became a full professor of Arabic and Islamic studies. He remained at Columbia until his retirement in 1969 as professor emeritus.
This concept was later used productively by many other orientalists.