In August, we look back at some of our most read essays and roundtable contributions published in the past year that attracted a lot of interest. Each week, we focus on essays and posts that touch on a similar topic relating to Islamic law. This week, we take a look at Sohaib Baig's popular essay, "Islamic Law Collections across 14 North American Libraries," which arises from a simple yet profound question: how many books are there on Islamic law?
To provide a tentative answer to this question, Professor Baig "survey[s] a selected number of libraries in North America and share[s] some of the initial findings that emerge from their print collections of Islamic law." Focusing on 14 libraries in North America, ranging from Harvard to the Library of Congress, he counts a total of 152,048 books on Islamic law. The essay delves into this figure in greater detail by focusing on the number of unique titles among these books, as well as the breakdown of languages in which they are written. Among Baig's findings is that an overwhelming majority of Islamic law-related books are written in Arabic, followed by English, Persian, and Indonesian. He also finds, for example, that most of the books in the sample were published in Egypt, followed by Lebanon. Baig categorizes the books in his sample across other parameters, including the madhhab to which each book relates, their popularity, and date of publication.
All in all, Baig's essay serves as an illuminating example of how empirical methods can be woven into research on Islamic law to generate greater insights into the field.
Read Baig's full essay, "Islamic Law Collections across 14 North American Libraries," here.
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