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RR 2010/105 The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World Editor in Chief John L. Esposito Oxford University Press New York, NY and Oxford 2009 Available online as part of Oxford Islamic Studies Online URL: www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/ Contact publisher for pricing information Also available as a six volume printed set (ISBN 978 0 19 530513 5 £375)
Keywords Electronic media, Encyclopedias, Islam
Review DOI 10.1108/09504121011030625
Almost certainly, any well-provided academic and college library will have a reference work on Islam, or at least information about Islam will be provided somewhere (and not merely by way of Wikipedia). Over the years, Oxford University Press has contributed in no small way to this, notably in the form of its encyclopedia The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World (Esposito, 1995). This appeared in four volumes and now, for all its continuing merits, looks rather tired today. Islamic studies is one of several fields where change has been astonishing - above all because of cultural and geo-political change - and this makes topicality one of the key features of relevance and street-credibility for such works now. The work under review here, in its electronic version as part of Oxford Islamic Studies Online, is the 2009 revision of that 1995 edition, also published as a six volume print version.
Readers of this review may work in a library that already has the two-volume Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World (Martin 2004) (RR 2004/362). Though easy to use and durably bound, and sound on perennial topics (like Ibn Rushd), its very strengths lie in historical rather than current issues, making it - like many works generally - in need of constant updating by the user. Entries there on Hizb Allah or Feminism, Secularism or Pakistan or West, Concept of in Islam) reveal the persistent challenge of staying current, as do further entries on Political Thought, Judaism and Islam, and Central Asian Culture and Islam. Its coverage of modern Turkey and of science creaks. We shall see that these criteria apply also to the work under review here.
Another slant on all this, above all for a modestly funded library, must be the intensity and level of use and consequently whether it is really worth paying out for an expensive comprehensive work,...