History

Index Islamicus was founded by Professor J.D. Pearson (1911-97), the celebrated Orientalist librarian and bibliographer, who started his career in Cambridge University Library in 1928. In 1950 he became Librarian of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, and soon decided that, in addition to maintaining the normal catalogue of books in the SOAS Library, it would be useful also to compile a catalogue of the articles contained in the Library's periodicals and other collective volumes. He reasoned that, in Islamic studies especially, a very important part of the scholarly literature is produced in this form, and that this material is of lasting importance to researchers. If left uncatalogued, much of it, especially in the less obvious sources, would tend to be overlooked, and work would be duplicated. Now, in the first decade of the 21st century, it is undeniably the case that this trend is stronger than ever, making the work of Professor Pearson's successors indispensable for any serious scholarly research.

Pearson eventually compiled a register of more than 25,000 articles in this field, published in the fifty years from 1906 to 1955. Although conceived initially as a catalogue, rather than a bibliography, the holdings of libraries other than SOAS came to be included, and so the obvious next step was to arrange the list in classified form, and to publish it, for the benefit of scholars world-wide. Thus emerged the first volume of Index Islamicus, containing details of 26,076 articles, and published in 1958.

The volume was well received, and soon found its way on to the reference shelves of nearly all libraries with interests in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies. Pearson was therefore encouraged to continue the project, and a series of five-year supplements was produced. It is interesting to note that the first of these, covering the period 1956-1960, listed 7296 articles, which is 28% of the total in the main volume, for only 10% of the time-span. This reflected both improved coverage, and the rapid increase in the output of articles on Islamic subjects.

The figure rose to 8135 entries for 1961-1965, and in the last five-year cumulation, for 1981-1985, it reached over 22,000 articles. These five years of coverage thus yielded more than 80% of the total for the 50 years of the original volume. Moreover, the total of entries for this period showed an increase of more than 50% over the previous five-year period, and this confirms what other surveys have also indicated: that by the 1980s the number of European-language publications in this field was more than doubling every ten years. This acceleration has continued into the 21st century, and the present rate of increase is considerably higher, with an estimate of a 14% increase of academic output each year.

The publication of Index Islamicus has a complex history. In 1977, a new regular three-monthly listing was started, called The Quarterly Index Islamicus. In this, for the first time, books were listed as well as articles, so that the project now assumed the character of a comprehensive bibliography. The five-yearly volumes for 1976-1980 and 1981-1985, and all subsequent volumes and parts, have contained entries for monographs, which are now a permanent part of Index Islamicus.

In 1982 Professor Pearson, after a quarter of a century of devoted work on it, finally retired from the editorship of Index Islamicus, and handed over responsibility for its continuation to the Cambridge University Library: this was where he had done most of the work on it since retiring from London three years earlier. The Library created an Islamic Bibliography Unit to carry on the compilation and editing of the bibliography. For ten years this continued to be the work of just one person, Dr Geoffrey Roper, with only occasional assistance, until in 1993 joined Ms Heather Bleaney took up work on the project and the editorial team was increased to two.

At the same time a new pattern of publication was adopted, with annual bound volumes, each preceded by three advance issues. This is the publication format still in use today. Also, a new Reviews section was created, filling the gap created by the discontinuation of Wolfgang Behn's Islamic Book Review Index. It is interesting to note that recent one-year volumes contain more than 50% of the number of entries in the original fifty-year compilation. Recent Yearbooks contain well over 12,000 entries.

At the end of 2003 Dr Roper retired from the editorship. His long-serving co-editor, Heather Bleaney, now heads a team of part-time scholars, continuing the tradition of the excellent work done by their predecessors.

At the same time, the Index Islamicus office returned to the London School of Oriental and African Studies, where Professor Pearson had started the project at the beginning of the twentieth century. From this office, the Index Islamicus team, using customised state-of-the-art technology, daily adds new records to this massive bibliographical database of Islamic Studies.

The database is the source for the Index Islamicus publications in print [click here], on CD-ROM [click here], or On-line [click here].