Encyclopedia of Islam, 3While adhering to the rigorous scholarly standards of its predecessors, this third edition is explicitly innovative in a number of respects.
First, the entire compass of the Muslim world is being taken seriously, both geographically and chronologically.... Second, in response to the perceived need to reach out to a wider audience, topical entries (as opposed to those under proper nouns) will generally be presented with English, rather than Arabic, headwords.... Third, the ongoing computer revolution offers extraordinary new opportunities for both editors and readers.... A primary reason why the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam took forty-five years to complete was that it was shackled to the alphabet – delayed submission of a single entry could hold up an entire fascicule or volume.... But we will now be free to commission, and produce, urgent articles from anywhere in the alphabet, an option that will become increasingly important, and obvious, as the project proceeds. [Preface]
