The arrangement of Islamic libraries.

In mosque libraries, the most prevalent type of Islamic library, the top shelf of any shelving for books is devoted to copies of the Quran.  This superior placement helps diplomatically with ongoing controversies about whether books other than the Quran are of value.  I’ll say more about this topic in the next blog post.  

According to Adams (2003), a typical arrangement of books in an early Islamic library was the one laid out by Al-Nadim in 987 A.D. in a library catalogue known as the al-Fihrist.   This catalogue listed Quran copies as the top-ranking volumes.  In descending order of importance, and also in descending elevation in bookshelves (though, closely ranked items other than Qurans might be placed on the same shelf together), were five more topics related to Islamic literature, followed by four general topics.  The five Islamic topics were; grammar, history, poetry, dogmatics and jurisprudence.  The four general topics were philosophy, light literature, miscellaneous religion and alchemy. 

Grammar is an Islamic topic because the Quran is written in a classical form of Arabic that has an elaborate, Latin-like grammatical structure than popularly spoken Arabic dialects (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_grammar).  The Quran rhymes and scans as poetry in its original form and therefore can’t be translated into contemporary language without suffering severe literary damage.  Also, it is believed to be the word of God (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran),

and, in some schools of thought, even to have pre-existed throughout eternity.  Technically, all Quran versions not in the original Arabic are considered to be interpretations, not translations.  The Quran is held to be untranslatable, and to imply that a linguistically altered edition is a reliably faithful translation may be considered legally punishable blasphemy in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_blasphemy).  The Quranic grammar shelf in the library is thus literally a resource for understanding the verbal logic of God. 

Jurisprudence (fiqh) is a major topic: it forms the basis of the currently much debated Sharia laws.  There are several differing schools of Islamic jurisprudence greatly differing in their legal interpretations.  The effect of this can be highly consequential.  For example, the Hanafi fiqh, prevalent in countries such as Turkey, Bosnia and Egypt, is opposed to the death penalty for women convicted of apostasy (rejection of Islam), whereas in the Shiite and Hanbali fiqhs, in Iran and Saudi Arabia, respectively, a woman may be put to death if convicted (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam).  Thus the library shelf related to the fiqhs is the law library of the Islamic world.  

Arabic grammer, Wikipedia, viewed 4 november 2011 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_grammar

Quran, Wikipedia, viewed 4 november 2011 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran

Islam and Blasphemy, Wikipedia, viewed 4 november 2011http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_blasphemy

Apostasy in Islam, Wikipedia, viewed 4 november 2011 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam