Al Maktaba Shamela __top__ Today

: Created by an Egyptian developer known as Nafiʿ (or "Brother Nafiʿ"), the project began as a volunteer-driven initiative shared on religious forums.

At its core, Shamela is a free, downloadable software (available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS) that hosts over in a single, searchable database. It covers virtually every classical discipline: al maktaba shamela

Shamela works best when you search without diacritics. For example, searching for محمد (no vowels) will find all instances of Muḥammad, Muḥammadan, etc. : Created by an Egyptian developer known as

Users can create and annotated bibliographies across the entire library. This "long feature" includes: For example, searching for محمد (no vowels) will

chain required physical access to massive multi-volume sets, which were often expensive or only available in specialized university libraries. Shamela has democratized this access, allowing a student in any part of the world to perform high-level academic research.

The project began under the name Al-Mawsu'at Al-Shamela (The Comprehensive Encyclopedia) and was originally created by a member of an online forum dedicated to the religious community.