ABSTRACT
This chapter has a twofold focus – after a brief overview of Horovitz’s life and scholarship, it explores reception in the Middle East, where scholarship did not make a major impact, and then turns to connections between time in Aligarh and vision for Islamic Studies in Jerusalem. As Susannah Heschel has argues, Horovitz’s approach to the Qur’an restored “agency” to the Qur’an and anticolonial stance can be seen in scholarship – in which “Islam is not simply the colonized presence of Judaism or Christianity in Arabia but an autonomous religion. In interest in promoting modern Arabic at Aligarh, can see similarities to vision for Arabic Studies at Hebrew University – where also did not want to approach Arabic as merely a “classical” language. The inconsequential philological study of pre-modern Islamic texts, when practiced in both British India and Mandatory Palestine, Orientalism took on symbolic significance.
