Use our online catalog to find books and e-books (and DVDs). You'll find many circulating books on Islam in the Stacks on the lower level, especially in the call number ranges DS 35-DS 38 and BP. But check the online catalog also; we have more e-books than print books. You can also access our catalog on Facebook; click the link for "Library search."
Determine subject headings ("Islamic civilization," "Islamic empire," "Islamic countries--History," "Crusades") for your topic; the subject heading may not be what you expect. Look for subdivisions by time (Islam--History--To 1500) or country (Islam--Africa--History). The truncation symbol in the catalog is $; Islam$ retrieves "Islam," "Islamic," "Islamist," etc.
Tip: You can sometimes find primary sources by including the words "sources" in the subject box ("crusades and sources," "islam$ and sources:).
Here are a few titles that may be of interest (including some with primary sources):
The New Cambridge Medieval History. (D 117 .C300 1995, 7 volumes)
The Norton Anthology of World Religions. (BL 74 .N67 2015, 2 vols.; vol. 1 includes primary sources on Islam)
The Cambridge History of Islam. Ed. P.M. Holt et al. (DS 35.6 .C3 1980)
The Seventh Crusade, 1244-1254: Sources and Documents. Transl. Peter Jackson. (D 167 .S48 2007)
Catlos, Brian A. Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom c. 1050-1614. Cambridge University Press, 2014. (BP 65 .A1 C38 2015)
Christie, Niall. Muslims and Crusaders: Christianity’s Wars in the Middle East, 1095-1382, from the Islamic Sources. NY: Routledge, 2014. (D 157 .C474 2014)
Classical Islam: A Sourcebook of Religious Literature. Ed. N. Calder et al. (BP 89 .C56 2013)
Cobb, Paul M. The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades. Oxford University Press, 2014. (D 157 .C58 2014)
Esposito, John L. The Oxford History of Islam. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. (BP 50 .O955 1999)
Goffman, Faniel. The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe. (DR 486 .G622 2002)
Goody, Jack. Islam in Europe. (BP 65 .A100 G66 2004)
Hillenbrand, Carol. The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives. NY: Routledge, 2000. DS38.6 .H555 2000
Hillenbrand, Carol. Introduction to Islam: Beliefs and Practices in Historical Perspective. London: Thames & Hudson, 2015. (BP 161.3 .H553 2015)
The History of Islam in Africa. Ed. N. Levtzion and R. Pouwels. Athens: Ohio UP, 2000. (BP 64 .A100 H62 2000)
Hourani, Albert. A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2002. (DS 37.7 .H67 1991)
Karpat, Kehmel H. The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. (DR572 .K288 2001)
Kennedy, Hugh. Armies of the Caliphs. London: Routledge, 2001. (DS35.687 .K466 2001, also as e-book)
Lapidus, Ira M. A History of Islamic Societies. 3rd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2014. (DS 38.53 .L37 2014)
Lindsay, James E. Daily Life in the Medieval Islamic World. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. (DS 36.855 .L56 2005)
Loimeier, Roman. Muslim Societies in Africa: A Historical Anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. (BP 64 .A1 L65 2013)
Medieval Political Society: A Sourcebook. NY: Free Press, 1963. (JA 82 .L4; Part One, pp. 22-186, is "Political Philosophy in Islam")
Nirenberg, David. Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today. University of Chicago Press,2014. (BL 410 .N57 2014)
Penn, Michael Phillip. When Christians First Met Muslims: A Sourcebook of the Earliest Syriac Writings on Islam. University of California Press, 2015. (BP 160 .P46 2015)
Robinson, Chase F. Islamic Civilization in Thirty Lives: The First 1,000 Years. University of California Press, 2016. (DS 36.85 .R63 2016)
Windows on the House of Islam: Muslim Sources on Spirituality and Religious Life. Ed. John Renard. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1998. (BP 161.2 .W577 1988;also available as an e-book)
The following are e-books; click on the titles to access them.
Berger, Maurits S. A Brief History of Islam in Europe: Thirteen Centuries of Creed, Conflict and Coexistence. Leiden University Press, 2013.
Freely, John. The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II – Conqueror of Constantinople…. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009.
Levi, Scott. Islamic Central Asia: An Anthology of Historical Sources. Indiana University Press, 2010.
Sonn, Tamara. Islam: History, Religion, and Politics. John Wiley, 2016.
Von Grunebaum, Gustave E. Medieval Islam: A Study in Cultural Orientation. University of Chicago Press, 2014.
Additional e-books are available from Ebook Central (ProQuest) (or use the "Find eBooks" link on the library home page).
WorldCat: The WorldCat database in GALILEO lets you search nearly all US libraries. You can then order books on interlibrary loan (ILL), by e-mail or in person. Try to allow two weeks (we can usually get books within a week and articles in a couple of days, but some take a while).
As with the online catalog, determine the subject heading(s) for your topic. Again, you may find that including "sources" as a subject term will help you identify primary sources.
Use GALILEO to find articles. For articles from scholarly journals, it’s usually better to select a specific database than to use the “Search GALILEO” box on the GALILEO home page (but that sometimes works).
See our Quick Links page for links to many GALILEO databases for History. Usually the best databases for articles from History journals are Historical Abstracts and America: History & Life, but these cover mainly the period after 1450. For this course, you may want to try the following:
JSTOR - full text for many journals, all scholarly, up to about five years ago. See below for tips.
History Reference Center
Academic Search Complete - a general database, but includes some good History journals
ATLAS - the best database for Religion journals
All journals in JSTOR for scholarly; for the other databases, click on the box that says “peer reviewed” or “scholarly journal” to restrict your search to scholarly journals.
Database searching tips: In most databases, you’ll be searching the article titles, abstracts (summaries), and subject terms (also called “descriptors”), rather than the full text; so use as few search terms as possible. See our Reference library guide to review tips on database searching and Boolean operators.
JSTOR tips: Since JSTOR does search full text, it works differently. Some tips on using JSTOR:
Some other databases that may be useful for this course:
Access World News (NewsBank) - to find recent articles from newspapers of other countries. Select the country or region you want.
CQ Researcher - a good source for reports on current issues, such as ISIS (ISIL/Islamic State).
Oxford Reference Online - has full text for many one-volume reference books (including the Oxford Dictionary of Islam), and a few multi-volume works such as the Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages (we also have this in print) and the Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology.
Journal Locator - if you have a citation for a journal article but need full text, Journal Locator will inform you whether we have full text in any of our 340 databases. If not, consult the reference librarian. We may have the journal on the shelf, or we can order an article (or book) you need on interlibrary loan.
This library research guide is designed for Dr. Shirley’s History 3305 class, “Islamic World to 1500.”
Most books on Islam will be in the call number ranges DS 35-38 (for history and civilization) or BP (for religion). Among the reference books relevant to Islam in Lewis Library are:
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World (REF DS 35.53 .O955 2009, 6 volumes)
The Islamic World Past and Present (REF DS 35.53 .I866 2004, 3 vols.)
The Muslim Diaspora. (REF BP 50 .J46 1999; 2 vols; vol. 1, 570-1550)
The Cultural Atlas of Islam (REF DS 36.85 .A39 1986)
Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam (REF DS 37 .E52)
The New Encyclopedia of Islam (REF BP 40 .G42 2013; 2008 edition in Stacks)
The Oxford Dictionary of Islam (REF BP 40 .O955 2003; also available online)
The Muslim Almanac (REF BP 40 .M83 1996)
Historical Dictionary of Islamic Fundamentalism (REF BP 166.14 .F85 G85 2012; chronology on p. xlvii)
The Qu’ran: An Encyclopedia (REF BP 133 .Q87 2006)
Milestone Documents in World History (REF D 5 M53 2010, 4 vols.)
Encyclopedia of Ancient History (REF D 54 .E53 2013, 13 vols.)
Dictionary of the Middle Ages (REF D 114 .D5 1982, 13 vols.)
Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages (REF D 114 .O94 2010, 4 vols.; also available in Oxford Reference Online)
Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (REF DF521 .O93 1991, 3 vols.)
Historical Dictionary of the Crusades (REF D 155 .S533 2003)
Encyclopedia of Asian History (REF DS 31 .E53 1988, 6 vols.)
Historical Dictionary of Saudi Arabia (REF DS 221 .P488 2003)
Historical Dictionary of Iran (REF DS 270 .L67 2007; chronology of "Islamic Period" 570-1477 pp xxvii-xxix)
Europe 1450 to 1789 (REF D 209 .E977 2004, 2 vols.)
Dictionary of Battles and Sieges (REF D 25 .J33 2007; other military history books in this area)
Encyclopedia of Religion (REF BL 31 .E466 2005, 15 vols.; also online in the Gale Virtual Reference Library)
Religions of the World (REF BL 80.3 .R455 2002, 4 vols.)
Remember that many Internet sources are unreliable; it’s usually better to use published sources (in print or online) than to Google or use Wikipedia. But Dr. Shirley recommends the following online sources, so… Go crazy!
Internet Islamic History Sourcebook
Islam and Islamic Studies Resources
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