The rich diversity of the Muslim world is strikingly expressed through its myriad of cities. Volume 3 of the MCA series presents abstracts of scholarship examining socio-cultural and cosmopolitan processes with aspects of material culture...
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Law within Muslim societies is not uniform; even within Muslim majority regions it can be interpreted differently according to different denominations and legal traditions. As law forms an integral part of normative social practice...
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Over the past 150 years, numerous encyclopaedias have been produced on Muslim civilisations, both by Muslims and non-Muslims, with different approaches to the organisation of knowledge and understanding of Muslim beliefs, cultures and...
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Global understanding depends crucially on the sharing of knowledge across linguistic and cultural divides.
Much valuable and original scholarly work published in Muslim contexts remains largely unknown in ’the West’, but also in Muslim societies due to linguistic barriers. Scholarship about Islam and Muslims has therefore proceeded without taking due account of the scholarship produced in Muslim societies.
The Muslim Civilisations Abstracts (MCA) project was conceived as a response to this intellectual gap. It identifies and collates a database of abstracts about works produced in Muslim contexts organised around specific themes.
The project is a comprehensive bibliographical resource of modern scholarship on Muslim civilisations, covering subjects such as law and ethics, cities as built and lived environments, governance and gender. Abstracts of these works are translated and searchable in multiple languages, maximising accessibility to, and cross-fertilisation of, knowledge about Muslim cultures.
The first three volumes were published with Edinburgh University Press, but from 2015 the project will be available online, making abstracts available through a free, open-access database hosted by AKU.
Aptin Khanbaghi, Editor
The rich diversity of the Muslim world is strikingly expressed through its myriad of cities.
Volume 3 of the MCA series presents abstracts of scholarship examining socio-cultural and cosmopolitan processes with aspects of material culture in contemporary and historic urban contexts. The abstracts, in English, Arabic and Turkish, examine cities as built (architecture and urban infrastructure) and lived (urban social life and culture) environments.
Crucial topics such as urban growth are included in abstracts about infrastructural and environmental issues, as well as migration from rural areas to cities.
The topics related to cities and urban life which are discussed in these abstracts demonstrate that concerns vary among Muslim majority countries, and from one decade to another.
Aptin Khanbaghi, Editor
Law within Muslim societies is not uniform; even within Muslim majority regions it can be interpreted differently according to different denominations and legal traditions. As law forms an integral part of normative social practice, reflecting the moral and ethical principles of a society, it is important to highlight the diversity of interpretations to better enable the study of law along with the ethical principles of a community.
Volume 2 of the MCA series brings together some of the many unheard voices of scholars studying law and ethics in languages other than English. It features 200 abstracts with bibliographical details in three languages (English, Arabic and Turkish), giving access to information about scholarly publications from Muslim contexts in the fields of law and sharia.
Aptin Khanbaghi, Editor
Over the past 150 years, numerous encyclopaedias have been produced on Muslim civilisations, both by Muslims and non-Muslims, with different approaches to the organisation of knowledge and understanding of Muslim beliefs, cultures and societies. Access to and knowledge of these reference works and databases have until now been hindered by language barriers. The first volume in the MCA series seeks to overcome this obstacle by presenting material in three languages: English, Arabic and Turkish.
This is a unique reference catalogue containing 200 annotated bibliographies and abstracts of encyclopaedias published during the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
