Thematic Encyclopedias

İSAM completed Türkiye's largest encyclopedia project, the Diyanet Encyclopedia of Islam, the product of 33 years of effort, in 2016 as a service to the readers. Taking into account the rapid changes taking place today and the information and findings revealed by new research and publications, İSAM attaches importance to keeping the content of the Diyanet Encyclopedia of Islam accurate and up-to-date and continues to work in this direction.

Within the framework of the goal of providing the encyclopedia with a meaningful and holistic richness in all fields and constantly updating it in accordance with today’s needs, the idea of preparing thematic encyclopedias (specialization encyclopedias) that focus on emerging questions and problems and cover traditional Islamic disciplines and modern social sciences was developed.

Accordingly, the thematic encyclopedia project aims to shed light on the challenges of the contemporary world by focusing on the fundamental sources of Islam, such as the Qur’an and hadith, disciplinary fields that intersect with the social sciences and humanities, such as Islamic economics and Islamic political thought, Muslim communities and Islamic states in different regions, scientific and technological developments of the 21st century, and current issues, such as bioethics, food safety, environmental problems, and global climate change.

It is anticipated that encyclopedias covering different specialized fields will have different volumes depending on the field, but will conform to the high standards of the Diyanet Encyclopedia of Islam in terms of content. The collective work to be carried out by scholars specialized in their fields will be completed in a short period of time, approximately within four or five years, and will result in an encyclopedia collection that will present comprehensive, up-to-date, and reliable information in a digestible package. These encyclopedias will also constitute an important resource that will allow for the updating of the Diyanet Encyclopedia of Islam.

Thematic encyclopedias will facilitate access to information for both experts and the general population, in addition to constituting a major step towards the goal of raising the level of knowledge of society and producing a cultural wealth.