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Resources on Individual Religions in the SOAS Library

Sites have been selected by Library staff. Please refer to the main Study of Religions web resources page for general gateways and resources for the Study of Religions.

African religions

Buddhism & East Asian religions (Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto)

Christianity

  • Catholic Information Network
  • Catholic Online
  • Catholic Web Directory
  • The Vatican web-site
  • Church of England web-site
  • Russian Orthodox Church - Pravmir.com
  • Watchtower The official web-site of Jehovah's Witnesses.
  • Bible Gateway Bible search engine in ten languages. Includes several versions of English language Bible translations.
  • HMML Chronicle Blog from Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, St John's University, Minnesota on manuscripts and the languages, literature, and history of Christianity in the Middle East (including material in Arabic, Armenian, Syriac and Ge'ez). See also the Library's main website at http://www.hmml.org/index.asp
  • Goussen Library (Universität Bonn)
    The Goussen Library on Oriental church history was collected by Heinrich Goussen (d.1927) and has been the subject of a digitisation project by the Universität Bonn since 2007.
    This open access collection comprises over 1,000 digitised documents and books dating from the 16th – 20th centuries in Western languages, and also in Syrian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian and Georgian, among others.
  • Coptica This website created by Pierre Cherix of the University of Geneva gives access to over 100 digitized texts of European studies on Coptic language and literature dating from the 19th century onward. Some of the texts are hosted by different collections such as the Internet Archive.
    There are over 30 texts on ancient and Oriental Christianity, including Manichaeism.
  • Coptic publications of Oscar von Lemm
    The Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow has made available a range of publications by the distinguished Russian Coptologist and Egyptologist, Oscar von Lemm (1856-1918). The collection includes 35 documents (Koptische Miscellen and other Coptic studies) appearing in the Bulletin de l'Académie Impériale des Sciences de St.-Pétersbourg between 1898 and 1915. Click on the links to view PDFs of the articles.
  • Resources for Syriac Studies
    Compiled at Dumbarton Oaks (a research institute of Harvard University), this database brings together "an annotated collection of free and open-source books, journals, and more related to the study of Syriac." It includes histories, dictionaries, grammars, journals and works of historic scholarship dating back to the 16th century

Hinduism

Islam

Gateways and General Websites
Electronic Publications and Texts Online
  • al-Waraq - الوراق
    Al-Waraq provides over a million pages of Arabic and Islamic works (the whole site is in Arabic). It provides extensive information on Arabic literature and humanities (philosophy, theology…) and also the full-text version of a number of texts for free. You’ll need to register first.
  • Digital Islam Theses
    This project from JISC allows users to access the full-text of over 900 UK PhD theses on Islamic Studies through the ETHOS (Electronic Theses Online Service) supported by the British Library. Most materials date from 1999 onwards and topics covered include the economics, politics, history and culture of Islam and Islamic nations from the earliest times to the present day. Free registration is required  before downloading and theses not available for immediate download may take up to 30 days for digitization. The site is currently in Beta mode.
  • l-Mawsu‘ah al-Shamilah - الموسوعة الشاملة
    This site currently makes more than 3300 books on various fields of Islamic and Arabic studies available online.The entire site is in Arabic. The search form and the whole site are very clear and user-friendly. You can also browse the list of books in each discipline.
  • Altafsir.com
    This is a comprehensive online Quranic resource.
  • Islamic Heritage Project - Harvard University
    Digital Library of over 260 Islamic manuscripts, 270 printed books, 50 maps and other key texts relating to the heritage and contribution of Islamic nations from the 13th to the 20th centuries.
  • Koran: Holy Qur'an Resources on the Internet
  • Hadith: Hadith Search
Centres / Organisations / Other libraries

Judaism

  • Jewish Studies Network
  • Center for Israel & Jewish Studies at Columbia
  • Jewish Virtual Library
  • Judaism and Jewish Resources
  • HaReshima This is a Jewish internet portal.
  • Rambi (index of articles on Jewish studies)
  • North American Jewish Data Bank
    Maintained by the Mandell L. Berman Institute American Jewish Data Bank Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life (University of Connecticut), providing free access to scientific studies and research on the politics, economics and history of the North American Jewish community. Statistics can be downloaded and the full text of the American Jewish Yearbook is available from 1899 onwards, with articles and surveys on all aspects of North American Jewry, including religion, immigration, identity and culture.
  • Diarna : mapping Mizrahi heritage
    'Diarna' is Judeo-Arabic for 'our homes' and the website gathers multimedia resources such as videos, digital images and oral histories of the Jewish communities of the Arab world, from North Africa to Iran. Archive material is drawn in part from the Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Beit Hatfusot (Museum of the Jewish People)

Baha'i Faith

Sikhism

  • Sikhism One of the earliest Sikh websites. useful for exploring Sikhism from diverse religious, cultural and historical angles.
  • SikhNet Online resources for the Sikh community, based in the USA.

Zoroastrianism