Guides: Islamic sources: Sharia (Islamic law) studies

English and French sources

Please note this guide focuses primarily on resources in Arabic. For more English and French language resources, you may consult the Nahum Gelber Law Library Islamic Law subject guide.

Databases

Academic Search Complete (Ebsco) offers access to scholarly and general interest sources in business, medicine, humanities, social sciences, and science and technology.

Al-Manhal eLibrary gives access to over 100,000 full-text searchable publications (books, peer-reviewed journals, strategic studies, academic dissertations and educational videos) from the Arab world’s leading publishers on a wide-variety of topics including Law.

Eastlaws is a database of legal sources originating from 18 Arab countries such as court rulings, commercial arbitrations, treaties and conventions, fatwas, etc. All documents are in Arabic with basic translation into English generated by Google Translate. Eastlaws includes a Legal Dictionary.

Hathi Trust Digital Library is a repository of content digitized from numerous academic & research institutions libraries. Founded in 2008, it currently offers a collection of over 18 millions titles.

Index Islamicus Online is a classified bibliography of publications in European languages on Islam and the Muslim world including more than 590,000 records.

JSTOR is a subject searchable index of journals on-line with JSTOR. Retrieves full-text back files of scholarly journals, some of which date back to the 1800's. Does not include articles more recent than five years ago.

ProQuest Research Library is a multidisciplinary database covering disciplines within the humanities and social sciences.

A selected list of databases pertinent to Islamic Studies is available here, and a complete list of databases accessible to McGill affiliated researchers is available here.

Dictionaries

Faruqi's law dictionary, Arabic-English : containing terms of jurisprudence (ancient and modern), forensic medicine, commerce, banking, insurance, civil aviation, diplomacy and petroleum. by Harith Suleiman Faruqi.
Call Number: K52 A7 F37 1997
Publication Date: 1997
Law dictionary, English-Arabic : containing the basic terms and phrases in the various branches of law (civil, commercial, criminal, administrative and international) by Ibrahim I. al-Wahab.
Call Number: K52 A7 W3 1988
Publication Date: 1988
Arabic-English dictionary of legal terms by S.H. Amin ; compiled by Mary C. Armstrong.
Call Number: K52 A7 A55 1990
Publication Date: 1990

Encyclopedias

Encyclopaedia Islamica by Wilferd Madelung and Farhad Daftary.
Publication Date: 2007
"Encyclopaedia Islamica Online is based on the abridged and edited translation of the Persian Dāʼirat al-Maʿārif-i Buzurg-i Islāmī, one of the most comprehensive sources on Islam and the Muslim world. A unique feature of the Encyclopaedia Islamica Online lies in the attention given to Shiʿi Islam and its rich and diverse heritage. In addition to providing entries on important themes, subjects and personages in Islam generally, Encyclopaedia Islamica Online offers the Western reader an opportunity to appreciate the various dimensions of Shiʿi Islam, the Persian contribution to Islamic civilization, and the spiritual dimensions of the Islamic tradition."

Encyclopaedia of Islam. Second edition
Sets out the present state of our knowledge of the Islamic World. It is a unique and invaluable reference tool, an essential key to understanding the world of Islam, and the authoritative source not only for the religion, but also for the believers and the countries in which they live.
The Encyclopaedia of Islam : Three
This edition sets out the present state of our knowledge of the Islamic World. It is a unique and invaluable reference tool, an essential key to understanding the world of Islam, and the authoritative source not only for the religion, but also for the believers and the countries in which they live. The Third Edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam is an entirely new work, with new articles reflecting the great diversity of current scholarship. It is published in five substantial segments each year, both online and in print. The new scope includes comprehensive coverage of Islam in the twentieth century and of Muslim minorities all over the world.

Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World by Gale (Editor); Richard C. Martin (Editor)
ISBN: 9780028662695
Publication Date: 2016-01-27
This new edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World is a two-volume set containing over 540 new and revised alphabetically-arranged entries. This beautifully illustrated set features includes more than 350 maps, charts, and photos.
Encyclopedia of Islamic Law by Laleh Bakhtiar (Compiled by)
ISBN: 9781567444988
Publication Date: 1997-12-01
"The various schools of law are compared and contrasted on all issues of the Shariah including individual worship (purification, prescribed prayer, prescribed fasting, prescribed charity and prescribed pilgrimage), economic issues including inheritance, endowments, wills and bequests, legal disability and social issues of marriage and divorce."
Routledge Handbook of Islamic Law by Khaled Abou El Fadl (Editor); Ahmad Atif Ahmad (Editor); Said Fares Hassan (Editor)
ISBN: 9781317622444
Publication Date: 2019-05-10
This handbook is a detailed reference source comprising original articles covering the origins, history, theory and practice of Islamic law. (...) It covers a variety of disciplinary and pedagogical perspectives. One of its original features is that it treats Islamic law as a legal discipline by taking into account the historical functions and processes of legal cultures and the patterns of legal thought. With contributions from a selection of highly regarded and leading scholars in this field, the Routledge Handbook of Islamic Law is an essential resource for students and scholars who are interested in the field of Islamic Law.
The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History by Stanley N. Katz (Editor-In-Chief)
ISBN: 9780195134056
Publication Date: 2009-04-17
The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History is a comprehensive, international, interdisciplinary reference work that includes approximately 1,000 articles on all aspects of legal history throughout the world from ancient to modern times. Articles deal with private law, public law,and constitutional/higher law throughout the world and are written and signed by one of the many noteworthy contributors, which include major scholars and experts.

Journals

Available at McGill:

Open Access:

Dossiers is one of the many publications of Women living under Muslim Laws, an international solidarity network informing and supporting "women whose lives are shaped, conditioned or governed by laws and customs said to derive from Islam."
Electronic Journal of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (EJIMEL) has been published by the Center for Islamic and Middle Eastern Legal Studies (CIMELS) at the Faculty of Law, University of Zurich, Switzerland, since 2012. EJIMEL aims at enabling "the discussion of legal issues as well as associated political, social, cultural and philosophical topics relating to the Middle East and Islamic world."
Manchester Journal of Islamic State Practices in International Law has been published since 2005 by an international team of Islamic Law scholars and practitioners.
Studia Islamica "is one of the oldest academic journals published in the field of Islamic studies. Published in Paris since 1953, it has been co-edited by A. L. Udovitch and Houari Touati since 2003." It focuses on the history, religion, law, literature and language of Islamic lands around the Mediterranean Sea and in south-west Asia, for both the pre-modern and modern periods.
Young Muslim Digest Magazine is a monthly blog-based magazine providing information on Islam derived from the Qur'an, the teachings of Prophet Muhammad (peace on him), legal decisions of jurists and opinions of pious scholars who represent the mainstream of the Muslim Ummah (community). Based in Bangalore, India, YMD has been published since 1976.

Open Access digital collections

Internet Archives started archiving the Internet in 1996, and later expanded to other material types. Currently, it provides free access to 735 billions webpages, 41 million books and textual materials, as well as millions of audio recordings, videos, images and software programs.

Islamic Heritage Project is a Harvard University digital collection of heritage texts from the 10th to 20th centuries covering a wide range of topics (religious texts & commentaries, history & geography, law, sciences, poetry & literature, rhetoric, logic & philosophy, calligraphy, dictionaries & grammar, biographies & autobiographies) in numerous languages.

Muftiships Web Archive is an Ivy League Plus Libraries Confederation project aiming at preserving legal websites from the Islamic world to follow "responses of local judicial authorities to current events", see how "these authorities engage with the public", and how "Islamic law is administered in the digital age."

SHARIAsource is a "portal into the digital world of Islamic legal studies and related tools from data science and AI" maintained by the Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School.

Sunnah.com is a private initiative offering an "online, authentic, searchable, and multilingual (English/Arabic at the individual hadith level) database of collections of hadith.

Librarian

Anaïs Salamon

She / Her / Elle

Email me

Contact:

3485 McTavish Street
Montreal, QC
H3A 0E1

514-449-1952

Subjects: African studies, Islamic and Middle East studies