Map of the world by Al-Idrisi in 1154, with south at top -- Library of Congress

Here are the requirements for the research paper, as described in the syllabus:

A 10-12 page term paper covering a topic of your choice is due towards the end of the semester. It is expected that this paper will display students' knowledge of critical apparatus and scholarly notation. Research sources can consist of internet entries, books, periodicals, music, art, etc. -- with full notation. As writing a solid paper is a process, parts of the assignment is requested earlier in the semester.

This page is a guide to researching medieval Islamic civilization. The page is divided into five sections:

• Overviews
• Books
• Articles
• Primary sources
• Finding sources in class on March 21st

I recommend bookmarking this page.

Read overviews to quickly grasp the basics of your topic, and to find clues to follow up on (such as citations to other sources).

Don't cite overviews.

In Simpson Library, find overviews in the Reference section on the first floor. I recommend these Reference books:

Find books using the library search box.

Each book is tagged with subject headings. Click on a subject heading to find more books on the same subject.

• Subject headings can have various subdivisions to make them more specific. For example, the subject heading Seljuks is subdivided into Seljuks -- Civilization and Seljuks -- Politics and government and Seljuks -- Social life and customs.
• To find subdivisions of a given subject, use the Browse by Subject tool.

The library search box only searches the library record for each book, not the full text of the book. To search the full text of books, use Google Books. This is especially helpful when searching for obscure people, places, or concepts.

For a 300-level class, it's normal to request books from other libraries via interlibrary loan. Usually, the books you request are books that you saw in citations or in Google Books. However, you might also want to use WorldCat to search for books at other libraries.

Here at Simpson Library, try browsing the shelves at these locations on the 3rd floor:

• History of Islam: BP 50 through BP 68
• The Islamic world: DS 35.3 through DS 35.77
• Arab countries (in general): DS 38.1 through DS 38.7

For a complete breakdown of the call numbers in the B section and the D section, see these PDFs:

The simplest way to find journal articles is to use the library search box, which searches many databases at the same time.

You might also want to try searching one database at a time. Here's a list of UMW's history databases.

I particularly recommend the database Historical Abstracts:

Primary sources are historical documents from the time that you're studying. They provide evidence to establish what is true or false.

Here are three ways to discover primary sources:

1. Read secondary sources and look at their citations to see which primary sources they cite.
   • Citations sometimes point to non-English texts. For citations that point to English translations, see this list on Wikipedia.
2. Search for library books that contain primary sources. Most of these books, but not all, are tagged with subject headings that include the term Sources. Here are some examples of library books about the Islamic world that are tagged with the term Sources.
3. Browse online archives such as these:

There are more archives than the ones listed above. For more archives, see these lists from Christopher Newport University:

In class today, please find five sources for your topic, either primary or secondary, that you have not seen before today. Then, show those five sources to me or to Dr. Al-Tikriti.

• You're not committing to using these five sources in your bibliography or your final paper -- you're just finding possibilities today.
• I recommend that you start with an overview of your topic, or of the context surrounding your topic. Read through the overview, and write down words you could use as search terms. You might also want to write down the titles of sources cited in the overview.

When you find a good source, save it so you can get back to it later. Here are some ways to save sources:

• Download a PDF to your computer.
• Bookmark a URL.
• Write down a title.
• Check out a physical book.

Feel free to leave this room to browse the shelves or to check out books, but remember to come back to show us what you found.