diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/solr/request/StandardRequestHandler.java b/src/java/org/apache/solr/request/StandardRequestHandler.java
index 8b179665c14..b6e9b7c3999 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/solr/request/StandardRequestHandler.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/solr/request/StandardRequestHandler.java
@@ -64,6 +64,7 @@ public class StandardRequestHandler implements SolrRequestHandler, SolrInfoMBean
     try {
       String sreq = req.getQueryString();
       String debug = req.getParam("debugQuery");
+      String defaultField = req.getParam("df");
 
       // find fieldnames to return (fieldlist)
       String fl = req.getParam("fl");
@@ -86,7 +87,7 @@ public class StandardRequestHandler implements SolrRequestHandler, SolrInfoMBean
       List<String> commands = StrUtils.splitSmart(sreq,';');
 
       String qs = commands.size() >= 1 ? commands.get(0) : "";
-      Query query = QueryParsing.parseQuery(qs, req.getSchema());
+      Query query = QueryParsing.parseQuery(qs, defaultField, req.getSchema());
 
       // If the first non-query, non-filter command is a simple sort on an indexed field, then
       // we can use the Lucene sort ability.
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/solr/search/QueryParsing.java b/src/java/org/apache/solr/search/QueryParsing.java
index 5a844c593ad..f85feb85999 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/solr/search/QueryParsing.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/solr/search/QueryParsing.java
@@ -39,8 +39,12 @@ import java.io.IOException;
 public class QueryParsing {
 
   public static Query parseQuery(String qs, IndexSchema schema) {
+    return parseQuery(qs, null, schema);
+  }
+
+  public static Query parseQuery(String qs, String defaultField, IndexSchema schema) {
     try {
-      Query query = new SolrQueryParser(schema).parse(qs);
+      Query query = new SolrQueryParser(schema, defaultField).parse(qs);
 
       if (SolrCore.log.isLoggable(Level.FINEST)) {
         SolrCore.log.finest("After QueryParser:" + query);
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/solr/search/SolrQueryParser.java b/src/java/org/apache/solr/search/SolrQueryParser.java
index b8e2982eeca..297e002d06b 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/solr/search/SolrQueryParser.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/solr/search/SolrQueryParser.java
@@ -33,8 +33,8 @@ import org.apache.solr.schema.FieldType;
 public class SolrQueryParser extends QueryParser {
   protected final IndexSchema schema;
 
-  public SolrQueryParser(IndexSchema schema) {
-    super(schema.getDefaultSearchFieldName(), schema.getQueryAnalyzer());
+  public SolrQueryParser(IndexSchema schema, String defaultField) {
+    super(defaultField == null ? schema.getDefaultSearchFieldName() : defaultField, schema.getQueryAnalyzer());
     this.schema = schema;
     setLowercaseExpandedTerms(false);
   }