Muslim Studies ranks high among the classics of the scholarly literature on Islam. Indeed this work, originally published in German in 1889–1890, can be justly counted among those which laid the foundations of the modern study of Islam as a religion and a civilization. The first volume of the English translation was published in 1967.

This second volume contains the famous study on the development of the Hadith, the "Traditions" ascribed to Muhammad, in which the Hadith is shown to reflect the various trends of early Islam, and in which its collection, and the subsequent literature devoted to it, is described. Another essay concerns the cult of saints, which though contrary to the spirit and the letter of the earliest Islam, yet played a very important part in its subsequent development. A final section contains a number of brief studies on varied subjects.

These essays, with the author's marvelous richness of information, profound historical sense, and sympathetic insight into the motive forces of religion and civilization, are today as fresh as at the time of their original publication and are indispensible for all students of Islam. The editor, S. M. Stern, has brought the annotation up-to-date by completing the references, when necessary, by making relevant additions and by indicating the most important later literature dealing with the subjects treated in the studies.