Featured resource
Electronic Resources for Islamic Studies
The Library provides access to a range of electronic resources where you’ll find a wealth of high quality information about all aspects of Islam and the Muslim world, from history to theology, geography to contemporary social and political issues.
- Oxford Islamic Studies Online
- Index Islamicus
- Encyclopaedia of Islam Online
- Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an Online
- Early Western Korans
- Mingana Collection
Oxford Islamic Studies Online
Oxford Islamic Studies Online is a collection of over 4,000 A-Z reference entries, chapters from scholarly and introductory works, Qur’anic materials, maps, images and primary sources. It incorporates the text of several important reference works including:
- The Oxford History of Islam - essays by leading Muslim and non-Muslim scholars on the origins of the faith, arts, sciences, and history to the present-day situation of Islam.
- The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World - a new six-volume work covering the full geographical and historical extent of Islam. This is a major revision and expansion of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World.
- The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World - the full version plus access to archived articles that have been updated in the new Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World.
- The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art & Architecture - covering Islamic art throughout the world, beginning with the inception of Islam and continuing to the present day.
- The Islamic World: Past and Present - an A-Z reference covering key people, events and concepts in Islamic history.
- The Oxford Dictionary of Islam – an authoritative quick reference guide to all aspects of Islam.
- Two major English translations of the Qur’an and Hannis Kassis’s A Concordance of the Qur’an, which links English words and their corresponding transliterated Arabic terms to the Qur’an texts.
Oxford Islamic Studies Online can be accessed via MetaLib.
Index Islamicus
Index Islamicus is the leading bibliography on Islam and the Muslim world, it:
- Indexes literature in European languages from over 3,000 journals.
- Includes conference proceedings, monographs, multi-authored works and book reviews.
- Covers the Middle East, the main Muslim areas of Asia and Africa, and Muslim minorities elsewhere.
- Has records from as far back as 1906.
Index Islamicus can be accessed via MetaLib.
Encyclopaedia of Islam Online
- An authoritative source which incorporates the full text of the 12 volumes of the new or second printed edition published by Brill (available in the University Library).
- Over 13,000 entries cover all aspects of Islam and the Islamic world.
- Includes entries from the all-new third edition which began publication in 2007.
- Contains articles about distinguished Muslims of every era and origin, tribes and dynasties, crafts and sciences, political and religious institutions, the geography, ethnography, flora and fauna of the various Muslim countries, and the history, topography and monuments of major towns and cities.
The Encyclopaedia of Islam can be accessed via MetaLib.
Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an Online
- Incorporates the full text of the 5 volume print edition published by Brill (available in the University Library).
- Almost 1,000 entries covering Qur'anic terms, concepts, personalities, place names, cultural history and exegesis.
- Includes complementary essays on the most important themes and subjects within Qur'anic studies.
- Links to facsimile editions of early printed Qur’ans via Early Western Korans.
The Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an can be accessed via MetaLib.
Early Western Korans
This collection gives access to 62 Early Printed Western Qur'ans, which include all the Arabic Koran editions printed in Europe before 1850 and all complete translations directly from the Arabic (until about 1860). Among the secondary translations, only those into German and Dutch are offered completely. Also made available are partial editions of typographical or academic interest.
Where there are references to any of these editions in the Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an there are direct links to the facsimile in Early Western Korans.
Early Western Korans can also be accessed via MetaLib.
Mingana Collection
This collection presents digital facsimiles of 71 manuscripts from the Mingana Collection housed at the University of Birmingham. The Mingana Collection contains more than 3000 manuscripts in at least eleven languages, ranging from around the 6th to the 20th centuries and was acquired by Alphonse Mingana (1878-1937) in three trips to the Middle East between 1925 and 1929, with substantial support from Edward Cadbury.
The manuscripts freely available online are in Arabic, Syriac, Persian and Greek with a focus on illustrated manuscripts and early Islamic and Syraic materials, including two of the oldest known copies of the Qur'an in existence (one believed to date from 7th century), unique illustrated manuscripts from the 16th century, and early Arabic poetry.
The Mingana Collection can be accessed via http://vmr.bham.ac.uk/Collections/Mingana/ or MetaLib.
