Islam and Literature

Bibliography

Literary Studies

Altoma, S. J. “Westernization and Islam in Modern Arabic Fiction,” Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 20 (1971): 81-88.

Arjana, Sophia Rose. Veiled Superheroes: Islam, Feminism, and Popular Culture. Lexington Books, 2018.

Arimbi, Diah Ariani. Reading Contemporary Indonesian Muslim Women Writers: Representation, Identity and Religion of Muslim Women in Indonesian Fiction. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009. 

Badawi, M. M. “Islam in Modern Egyptian Literature,” in Modern Arabic Literature and the West. London: Ithaca Press, 1985.

Bin Tyeer, Sarah. The Qur’an and the Aesthetics of Premodern Arabic Prose. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Brugman, J. An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature in Egypt. Leiden: Brill, 1984.

Gafaïti, Hafid, “Notes on Islam and Literature,” Religion and Literature 41. 2 (2009): 45-52.

Grunebaum, G. E. Von. “The Spirit of Islam as Shown in Its Literature,” Studia Islamica 1 (1953): 101-19.

Harrow, Kenneth, ed. Faces of Islam in African Literature. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991.

Hawley, John C. The Postcolonial Crescent: Islam’s Impact on Contemporary Literature. New York: Peter Lang, 1998.

Le Gassick, Trevor. “The Path of Islam in Modern Arabic Fiction,” Religion and Literature 20: 1 (1988): 97-109. 

Mahmood, Saba. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revolution and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Majed, Hasan S. Islamic Postcolonialism: Islam and Muslim Identities in Four Contemporary British Novels. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. 

Al-Musawi, Muhsin. Islam on the Street: Religion in Modern Arabic Literature. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009.

—–. The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Knowledge Construction. University of Notre Dame Press. 2015.

—–. Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition. London: Routledge, 2006.

—–. The Postcolonial Arabic Novel. Leiden: Brill, 2003.

—–. Scheherazade in England. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1981.

Najjar Fauzi M, “Islamic Fundamentalism and the Intellectuals: The Case of Naguib Mahfouz,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 25: 1 (1998): 139-68.

Skreslet, Paula Youngman and Rebecca Skreslet. The Literature of Islam: A Guide to the Primary Sources in English Translation. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2006.

Stetkevych, Suzanne Pinckney. The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender, and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode. Indiana University Press, 2002.

—–. The Mantle Odes: Arabic Praise Poems to the Prophet Muhammad. Indiana University Press, 2010.

Stetkevych, Yaroslav. The Modern Arabic Literary Language: Lexical and Stylistic Developments. Georgetown University Press. 2006.

—–. The Zephyrs of Najd: The Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasib.  University of Chicago Press. 1993.

Stewart, Tony K. Witness to Marvels: Sufism and Literary Imagination. University of California Press, 2019.

Toorawa, Shawkat M. “Hapless Hapaxes and Luckless Rhymes: The Qur’an as Literature.” Religion and Literature. 41.2 (2009): 221-227.

—–. “Modern Arabic Literature and the Qur’an: Creativity, Inimitability… Incompatibilities?” Religious Perspectives in Modern Muslim and Jewish Literatures. Eds. Glenda Abramson and Hilary Kilpatrick. London: Routledge, 2005. 239-257.

Helpful Context

Allen, Roger. An Introduction to Arabic Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Baldick, Julian. Mystical Islam: An Introduction to Sufism. New York: New York University Press, 1989.

Cacchia, Pierre: An Overview of Modern Arabic Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990.

Donohue, John and John Esposito, eds. Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Hitti, Philip K. Cities of Arab Islam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1973.

Kadi, Wadad and Billah, Victor. Islam and Education – Myths and Truths. University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Morrison, S. A. “Arab Nationalism and Islam,” Middle East Journal 2 (1984): 147-59.

Sharabi, Hisham. “Islam and Modernization in the Arab World,” in Modernization of the Arab World, ed. J. H. Thompson and Robert D. Reischauer. Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand, 1966.

Smith, Charles. “The ‘Crisis of Orientalism’: The Shift of Egyptian Intellectuals to Islamic Subjects in the 1930s,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 4 (1973): 382-410.

Stetkevych, Yaroslav. Muhammad and the Golden Bough: Reconstructing Arabian Myth. Indiana University Press, 1996.

—–. Arabic Poetry and Orientalism.  St. John’s College, 2004.

Further readings on the Qu’ran as Literature can be found in the full Bibliography

Online Resources

The Quran

• Quran.com
  • Verse by verse Qur’anic text with numerous translations and recitations

Digitized Books, Manuscripts, and Periodicals: Islamic Sources in Arabic

• Al-Furqan
  • Website featuring access to the written heritage of the Islamic world. See especially the Manuscript Center under the Publications tab. Website available in English and Arabic.
• Al-Maktabah al-Shamilah المكتبة الشاملة | Shamela
  • Thousands of Arabic books (including various editions of important classical texts) available for browsing, download, and search. An essential library for scholars and students, with classical Arabic texts spanning Hadith, Fiqh (jurisprudence), Tafsir (exegesis), and language. Arabic language resource.
• Al-Waraq 
  • A repository of classical Arabic sources, searchable or navigable via a subject tree. The texts are transcribed onto the website itself, so information about the edition, notes, and references are absent, but the texts are fully searchable. It is recommended that this be used in conjunction with published scholarly editions in print or digitized form. The Website is in Arabic.
• المكتبة الشاملة الحديثة

مشروع تقني يهدف لتوفير خدمات بحث وتصفح متقدمة لمحتوى المكتبة الشاملة          

• المكتبة الوقفية
  • A vast collection of digitized Arabic books and manuscripts relevant for Islamic studies, including numerous classical texts.
• شبكة المشكاة الاسلامية
  • Platform with a multitude of digitized Islamic texts (drawn from various editions) and reference works on a range of subjects including tafsīr, fiqh, ʻaqāʾid, and more.
• Arabic Collections Online
  • An open digital library of Arabic language content in the public domain drawn from collections at distinguished research libraries. Includes scholarly editions of classical works (histories, geographies, scientific texts, etc.). Search available in Arabic or English.
• HadithCollection.com
  • Portal for browsing and searching several hadith collections in English translation
• Islamic Heritage Project (Harvard)
  • A collection of digitized manuscripts, published books, and maps in Islamic languages from Harvard University’s libraries and museums. Materials range from the tenth century CE to today, and include works on history, geography, law, rhetoric, logic, philosophy, grammar, biographies, and scientific texts.
• Jara’id: A Chronology of Arabic Periodicals (1800-1929).

• Open Islamicate Texts Initiative (OpenITI).
• Sunnah.com
  • Database of several hadith collections searchable in Arabic and English taken from numerous unspecified editions.

Additional Digital Resources

• Access to Mideast and Islamic Resources (AMIR)
• Black Islam Syllabus (curated by Kayla Renée Wheeler)
  • “The goal of this project is to provide teachers, professors, researchers, journalists, and people interested in learning more about Islam with resources on Black Muslims to promote a more inclusive approach to the study of Islam…”
• The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’an
• Dictionary of Qur’anic Usage
• Digital Islamic Humanities Project (Elias Muhanna, Brown University)
• E-Kitap (PDF) Kütüphanesi
  • Publications of the Türkiye Yazma Eserler Kurumu Başkanlığı available for browsing and PDF download.
• The Great Debate: Critical Race Theory and Muslims | Sapelo/Maydan Series on CRT
• Guide to Research in Islamic Art and Architecture (András Riedlmayer, Harvard)
• The Islamic Liberation Reading List (Asad Dandia)
• Islamic Liberation Theology Reading List (Asad Dandia and Sharmin Hossain)
• Islamic Philosophy Online
• The MAYDAN
  • “an online publication of Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University, offering expert analysis on a wide variety of issues in the field of Islamic Studies for academic and public audiences alike, and serving as a resource hub and a platform for informed conversation, featuring original articles and visual media from diverse perspectives.”
• Muftiships Web Archive
  • “These websites cover the responses of leading judicial authorities to current events in their respective countries (and in some cases well beyond).”
• Oxford Islamic Studies Online
• Persian E-Books Miras Maktoob
  • Persian and Arabic books on Islamic history and culture, published by the Written Heritage Research Institute (Miras Maktoob), available through Brill Online.
• Race and Slavery in Muslim Societies Bibliography (Margari Aziza)
• Sapelo Square
  • “…Sapelo Square intervenes in the marginalization and erasure of Black Muslims in the public square by building an online forum that places Black Muslims at the center. Our mission is to celebrate and analyze the experiences of Black Muslims in the United States to create new understandings of who they are, what they have done, and why that matters.”
• SHARIASource (Harvard Law School)
  • Platform to house primary sources of Islamic law.
• The Wiley Blackwell Concise Companion to the Hadith (2020)

Introductory Guides to Islamic Manuscript Studies

• Resources for the Study of Islamic Books
  • This list of books, websites, and other digital tools developed by Dagmar A. Riedl contains a wealth of information on manuscript studies. Especially helpful are the resources listed under the headings “Digital Databases of Manuscripts in Arabic Script,” and “Resource Websites.”
• List of Open Access Manuscript Collections
  • A regularly updated list of collections of Islamic manuscripts with open access material, maintained by AMIR (Access to Middle East and Islamic Resources).
• The Best Editions of Arabic Books
  • This post on the Islamic Studies blog is an introduction to trustworthy editions of Arabic manuscripts. It is important to understand the difference between commercial and academic presses before starting primary source research, and the post names some commercial presses to avoid. The blog also has a wealth of information on primary sources for Islamic studies in Arabic, as well as lists of the most important sources for topics not covered here (hadith, Qur’an, fiqh, etc.).

• Resource List (Middle East Librarians Association Digital Scholarship Interest Group = MELA DSIG)

General Research Collections of Note

• Cornell University Library Guide
  • Middle East and Islamic Studies Databases, including university-level Arabic and Islamic institutional archives.
• Hathi Trust
  • A repository of digitized texts from libraries and other institutions worldwide. Note that to find all books by one author with an Arabic name, it might be necessary to search using different spellings.
• World Digital Library (Arabic Materials, 500-1900) (Library of Congress)
  • Repository of digitized items from around the world hosted by the Library of Congress. The link above filters the materials in Arabic dated between 500 and 1900 CE, but these filters can easily be adjusted using the panels on top and on the left-hand side of the screen. Image quality is excellent, as is usability. The text search function does not work for Arabic script.
• Internet Archive Text and eBooks 
  • Archive.org is a growing collection of digitized texts. Searching can be difficult since Metadata for digitized objects varies substantially depending on the institution or person who uploaded the material. For Arabic materials, a simple search by author name or title in Latin characters is recommended.

OCR Resources

• BL Digital Scholarship Efforts with OCR for handwritten Arabic
• Important New Developments in Arabographic Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
• Islamicate Digital Humanities
• Middle East Librarians Association | Digital Scholarship Interest Group
• The Open Islamicate Texts Initiative Arabic-script OCR Catalyst Project (OpenITI AOCP)
• QATIP – An Optical Character Recognition System for Arabic Heritage Collections in Libraries

Encyclopedias, Indices, and Dictionaries

• Arabic Almanac (ejtaal.net) 
  • Aggregator tool that searches several root-based Arabic dictionaries at once, including J.G. Hava’s Arabic-English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, Hans Wehr’s Arabic-English Dictionary, and Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon. Type in a root and search all simultaneously.
• al-Bahith al-Arabi (http://www.araboo.com/site/arab-baheth-128845)
  • Website featuring digitized and fully searchable texts of five of the most important classical Arabic-language dictionaries: Lisān al-‘arab (Ibn Manẓūr, d. 1312/711 AH); Maqāyis al-lugha (Ibn Fāris, d. 1004/395 AH); al-Saḥḥāḥ fī al-lugha (Jawharī, d. ca. 1009-1010/400 AH); al-Qāmūs al-Muḥīṭ (Fīrūzābādī, d. 1415/817 AH); al-‘Abāb al-zākhir (Saghānī, d. ca. 1252/650 AH). Type an Arabic word in the search bar at the top of the screen to return every instance of its usage in these five dictionaries.
• Crone, Patricia, et al. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought. Princeton University Press, 2012.
• Encyclopedia of Canonical Hadīth (Juynboll)
• Encyclopaedia of Islam
  • (Restricted Access) The authoritative English-language source for information on people, places, and events in the history of Islam. Note that this publication uses a unique transliteration system. For Arabic letter qaf use “k” and for Arabic letter jim use “dj” (e.g. “Kur’an” and “Djazira” instead of “Qur’an” and “Jazira”). Access: full access to Encyclopaedia of Islam is limited to subscribers or subscribing institutions. You may freely search the database without a login but only partial articles are visible.
• Encyclopaedia Iranica 
  • Encyclopedia dedicated to Iranian civilization in the Middle East throughout the ages. Excellent source of information for places and people in greater Iran. Online content is accessible to all.
• Encyclopaedia Islamica
• Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān
• Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures 2010-2020
• Gibb, H.A. R, Kramers, J. H. Concise Encyclopedia of Islam. Brill, 2001.
• Kalin, Ibraim, ed. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science, and Technology in Islam. Oxford University Press, 2014.
• Index Islamicus (Brill)
• Index Islamicus (EBSCO)
• Islam Ansiklopedisi 
  • Turkish version of the Encyclopedia of Islam, including many significant additions, especially of Ottoman and Turkish subjects. Open access and fully searchable text in Turkish.
• Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon
  • Digitized version of Edward William Lane, Arabic English Lexicon (London: Williams and Norgate, 1863). Lane’s dictionary is considered a good source for classical and archaic Arabic usage. The digitized book is not fully searchable, but one can navigate through letters and page headings (the first word root on the page).
• Lughatuna
  • Online Arabic-English dictionary for modern usage. Users can search for roots, words, or English translations in Fusha (MSA) as well as Moroccan, Levantine, and Egyptian dialects. This is a one-of-a-kind resource.

Graduate Programs

Grants

This is a list of external funders that provide grants for graduate students:

American Research Center in Egypt (pre-dissertation and dissertation research grants)

American Institute for Maghrib Studies (short-term and long-term grants)

Cosmos Club Foundation (research grants for students at Washington area universities)

Council of American Overseas Research Centers

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Program

Fulbright U.S. Student Program

Institute of Turkish Studies

Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowships

Orient Institute Beirut

Palestinian American Research Center

Social Science Research Council (Dissertation Proposal Development Program, Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship)