The Chicago Online Encyclopedia of Mamluk Studies, one part of the
growing cluster of Mamluk Studies Resources being developed by MEDOC,
is now available in a preliminary form. It does not yet contain a
great number of articles, as we are still developing and testing its
features. More articles are now in progress, and will be added
periodically, as will new features. (A paragraph describing the
project follows this message, for those unfamiliar with it.)
We hope that this demonstration version will encourage scholars to
suggest topics and contribute articles (please contact the editors at
the address below) and will allow us to spot bugs in the
Encyclopedia's execution. As you experiment with its features and
read the articles, please feel free to comment.
In addition to the Encyclopedia itself, we have created a resource
page to help scholars and others work with complex scripts, Unicode,
diacritics, etc. The MEDOC site now hosts al-Husein N. Madhany's
well-known article explaining all aspects of enabling the writing and
reading of Arabic scripts on the PC (now with some additional
information for Mac users), and a PowerPoint tutorial he created to
demonstrate the process.
The new portal to MEDOC's Mamluk Studies Resources, including the Encyclopedia:
http://mamluk.uchicago.edu
The Encyclopedia itself:
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/mideast/encyclopedia/
Unicode, word processing, diacritics, the Alt-Latin keyboard, and
Arabicizing the PC:
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/mideast/encyclopedia/unicode.html
Thank you for your interest,
The Editors
This description of the Encyclopedia comes from the MEDOC page:
The Chicago Online Encyclopedia of Mamluk Studies will be a
definitive reference source for topics having to do with the study of
Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1517, and complements the existing
resources. It will fill lacunae in existing resources such as the
Encyclopedia of Islam. As an online resource, rather than print, the
Encyclopedia is able to grow indefinitely and change. The
Encyclopedia will eventually provide, in addtition to an unlimited
number of articles, materials which are difficult--or even
impossible--to contain and update in printed resources. These include
interactive maps, architectural plans and photos, archaeological
results and diagrams, searchable full-text Arabic sources from the
Mamluk period (including hundreds of documents and manuscripts which
remain unpublished and therefore unavailable to the scholarly
community), an ever-growing glossary of Mamluk terminology in Arabic
and English, and an index of names, terms, and other items in all
back issues of Mamluk Studies Review. The Encyclopedia is fully
searchable, and will feature topic indexes for browsing and
hyperlinked cross-references within articles.
--
Middle East Department
JRL 560
University of Chicago Library
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/mideast
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