The book was originally published as a series of three essays in the magazine ‘Mir islama’ (The World of Islam) (St. Petersburg, 1912. Vol. 1, No 1, pp. 32-55; No 2, pp. 185-202; No 3, pp. 562- 581), edited by V. V. Bartold. This work gives an idea of the results of scholarly research in the field of Islam and the history of Islam in the European and Russian research community. In the introduction, Schmidt indicates that the work is based on Ignaz Goldzier’s Lectures on Islam (1850-1921), but, at the same time, he notes that the emphasis was placed on the history of Islamic law, which was not in the lectures by the Hungarian scholar. In the first essay, S. pays considerable attention to the personality of the Prophet Muhammad as the founder of the new religion, the years of his stay, first in Mecca, and then in Medina. In addition, he studies the origin of the Hadith in detail, using the data of Goldzier. Particularly, he emphasizes the difference between the Sunnah and the Hadith, stating that the latter are the ‘documents’ of the Sunnah and the basis for the formation of the law. The second essay by Schmidt is devoted to Islamic law. He writes about Hadith and Ijma, about ijtihad and taklid, and concludes that Islamic law is stuck in its evolution and has lost the ability to adjust to the conditions of practical life. However, at the end of this essay, Schmidt stipulates that lately, and especially among Russian Moslems, there has been a desire to overcome the traditionalist stiffness, which was reflected in the incorporation of general subjects into the program and the introduction of a new teaching method (usuli-jadid). Speaking of the dogmas of Islam in the third essay, S. emphasizes the historical conditionality of the development of theology in the Moslem world. He examines the problem of the free will and the predestination, which was of great importance in the era of the Umayyad dynasty, and the controversy surrounding those issues between Dzhabarites and Cadarians, going over to the founders of the school of speculative theology (Kalam) - mutakallim. The author reveals the main contradictions between the two groups in Kalam: Mutazilites and Asharites, and also dwells in detail on the consideration of the ‘sects’ of the Kharijites and Shiites in Islam. The third essay is concluded with the following words: ‘Such a dry rationality of Islamic dogma, such a complete lack of any ethical elements in it, such as the concept of absolutely good and absolutely bad, did not give any food to the inner spiritual life of religiously-inclined people, and this prepared the ground for perceptions of mystical ideas, which, in the form of a reaction against the dry dogmatism that prevails in Islam, began to penetrate into it already in the ninth century’, giving, by that, unconditional preference to Sufism.
The work allows to get a holistic view of Islam and the main motives of its study by European and domestic orientalists in the first decades of the twentieth century.