Islamic Tools
Hijri date converters
Online Hijri–Gregorian date converters are accurate enough for most purposes. However, note that some conversion programmes have a error margin of 1 day. If your argument hinges on the correct conversion of a date, or if you need to quote a reference to authenticate your result, you should refer to: Wüstenfeld, F.: Wüstenfeld-Mahler'sche Vergleichungs-Tabellen zur muslimischen und iranischen Zeitrechnung. 3rd ed. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1961. This work also provides tables for converting dates in other Oriental calendars.
When converting Islamic dates, remember that days in the Islamic calendar begin at sunset, that the beginning of new months must be verified by a sighting of the new moon, and that—as is sometimes the case for Ramadan—different states may set the beginning of the month at different dates. Finally, beware of the imprecision inherent in backward-dating of the format: 'n number of nights remaining in the month of ... ' ; dates assigned in this way may not be correct because the total number of days in the month is not fixed until its end (cf. 'Tārīkh' in EI²).
More information on the Islamic, the Iranian, the Jewish and other calendars is available from Fourmilab (http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/calendar/). The last link in the list below offers visibility curves of the new moon and detailed information on Islamic aspects of astronomy.
Islamic gateways
The subject gateway al-Misbah (http://ssgdoc.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/vlib/ssgfi/), created and maintained at the University Library of Halle in Germany, is probably the most comprehensive gateway to Islamic and Middle Eastern resources on the Internet. Its coverage is huge, and ranges from links to major organizations to lists of obscure publishers in Armenia. The gateway has a browse and a search function, but because of the sheer number of records, it may take a while to find what one is looking for.
Other gateways
Islamic Law ( http://www.soas.ac.uk/Centres/IslamicLaw/Materials.html)
Maintained by the Centre for Islamic and Middle Eastern Law al-London's SOAS. This website offers source material on the law of Arab states, and links to other sites with further resources in the field. It does not contain any translations or original versions of classical texts.
Islamic Philosophy ( http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/)
… is a specialized gateway for those interested in the work of (medieval) Arab philosophers. It includes an online dictionary of philosophical terms (http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/pd/default.htm), a discussion board, and other features.
In addition to specialized gateways like the one above, there are many 'Islam-related' general websites that which are maintained by various Muslim organizations in Europe and the world. These offer links to sites of more local interest, and commentaries on current affairs from the perspective of those organizations. The following list contains a random selection with a few examples of this particular genre of websites; those of other organizations can easily be found with any search engine.
* Islam.de (www.islam.de/) (Germany)
* Islam Online (www.islamonline.net/english/index.shtml) (International; EN / AR)
* Islam-online (www.islam-online.it/) (Italy)
* Islamische Gemeinschaft in Deutschland (www.i-g-d.com/) (Germany)
* Islamiska (www.islamiska.org/) (Sweden)
* Muslim Council of Britain (www.mcb.org.uk/)(UK; website unavailable at the time of writing)
Mailing lists and groups
By subscribing to a professional mailing list, one can keep up to date with job opportunities, scholarships, calls for papers, and announcements of all sorts. The two list-operators below are probably the most important in the Anglophone sphere, as they serve the academic community in the United Kingdom and North America. In addition to these academic lists and groups, there are those of a more 'popular' nature. Yahoo! groups (http://groups.yahoo.com/), for instance, offers a vast number of lists on Islam (Religion & Beliefs > Islam). The content of these ranges from the polemic and trivial to the sophisticated and technical [e.g. the Shafii fiqh list]. Make sure you check the content of the list before subscribing.
* JISC (UK) (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/index.htm)
* Listserv (http://www.lsoft.com/lists/listref.html)
Prayer time calculators
The Internet offers a large number of prayer time calculators; however some of these have to be used with caution ( why? ( http://moonsighting.com/prayer.html)). The links below point to two relatively sophisticated products, which enable users to select their location from a drop-down menu, thus allowing the programme to calculate on the basis of the correct latitude and longitude. You may also be interested to read about the mathematical and astronomical bases for calculation methods (http://www.ummah.net/astronomy/saltime/).
Qiblah direction
There seem to be no sophisticated tools for Qiblah calculation on the web, but there are a few websites that discuss the technicalities of Qiblah calculation. The same sites also offer instructions on how to find the direction for prayer without calculations.
* Moonsighting http://moonsighting.com/qibla.html
* Columbia Univ. Muslim Students’ Association http://www.islamworld.net/qibla.html (mathematical method)
* Islaah publishing http://members.tripod.com/alislaah4/id33.htm (non-mathematical)
May 13, 2006
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