ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of Orientalist motifs in European architecture was not limited to synagogues, as some public buildings, such as the waterworks of Potsdam, were also constructed in Orientalist style; yet, Moorish architecture did not spread to churches. A generation before Goldziher, the identification of Judaism with Islam is defines by Abraham Geiger and Gustav Weil, two of the earliest and most influential German Jewish scholars of early Islam. The argument Geiger develops concerned not only the ways Muhammad composed the Qur’an to solidify own position of leadership, but also concerned the transmission of Jewish learning. The Jews could turn themselves more realistically into the object of European Orientalist fascination; Jews were now in the East and turned to the Arabs for an authentic identity they could appropriate. The studies of Islam constituted an ideological effort to demonstrate Judaism’s significance in the production of Western culture.
