The Qaf library

Books, authors, passages, printed pages, IDs and genres in the Qaf library, as the MCP server and the API return them.

The MCP server and the API read the same library: more than 8,000 classical Islamic books of Qur’an exegesis, hadith, jurisprudence, theology, history, language and more. The terms on this page apply to both.

Passages

A passage is a short run of text from one book, the unit that search returns and that you read by ID. Every passage has:

Field	What it holds
`id`	A stable UUID. Read the passage with it, or skip it in a later search.
`title`	The book, the author and the first printed page, as one line: `Fayd al-Qadir — Abd al-Rauf al-Munawi, vol. 4, p. 233`.
`url`	A link that opens the printed page in the Turath reader. Cite this.
`text`	The passage’s Arabic text.
`footnotes`	The edition’s footnotes for the passage. Left out when there are none.
`pages`	The printed volume and page numbers the passage spans, in reading order: `[{"vol": "4", "page": 233}, {"vol": "4", "page": 234}]`. `vol` is a string because some editions label volumes; either value can be `null`.
`book`	`id`, `title` and `titleArabic`.
`author`	`id`, `name` and `nameArabic`.
`versionId`	The printed edition the passage comes from.
`sequenceNumber`	The passage’s position within that edition. Neighbouring passages have neighbouring numbers.

Passage text is always Arabic. When a page link can’t name a printed page, because the edition has no volume and page for the passage, url opens the book instead.

Books, editions and authors

Book: a work in the library, identified by a UUID such as 31f522f9-b85c-5c78-a8ff-dc48ebce183c.
Edition: the printed edition a passage was taken from, identified by versionId, an integer. The page numbers in pages and url refer to this edition.
Author: identified by a positive integer, such as 202 for Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani.

Look up an author’s or a book’s ID by name with catalog lookup, or the lookup_catalog tool. A passage also carries the IDs of its book and author.

Death years

Authors’ death years are Hijri years (AH). Lookup returns deathYearAH, and search filters on it with filters.deathYearAH. When the year is uncertain, deathInexactLabel gives the label the catalog uses instead.

A death-year filter leaves out authors with no recorded death year.

Names and languages

Queries: search accepts Arabic or English.
locale: en (the default) or ar. It picks the language of book and author names in title, book.title and author.name. The Arabic names in titleArabic and nameArabic are always included, and passage text stays Arabic.

Genres

A genre describes a book, such as hadith commentary or Hanafi jurisprudence. It doesn’t describe a passage’s topic: to find passages about patience, search for patience. Filter by genre only when you want results from books of that genre.

Search filters take the genre’s slug. Book lookup returns the genre’s ID as categoryId.

ID	Slug	Genre
1	`creed`	Creed
2	`sects-and-refutations`	Sects and refutations
3	`quran-commentary`	Qur’an commentary
4	`quranic-sciences-and-principles-of-exegesis`	Qur’anic sciences and principles of exegesis
5	`quran-recitation-and-readings`	Qur’an recitation and readings
6	`hadith-collections`	Hadith collections
7	`hadith-commentary`	Hadith commentary
8	`hadith-sourcing-and-indexes`	Hadith sourcing and indexes
9	`hadith-defects-and-scholarly-questions`	Hadith defects and scholarly questions
10	`hadith-sciences`	Hadith sciences
11	`principles-of-jurisprudence`	Principles of jurisprudence
12	`legal-maxims-and-jurisprudence`	Legal maxims and jurisprudence
13	`logic`	Logic
14	`hanafi-fiqh`	Hanafi fiqh
15	`maliki-fiqh`	Maliki fiqh
16	`shafii-fiqh`	Shafi‘i fiqh
17	`hanbali-fiqh`	Hanbali fiqh
18	`general-fiqh`	General fiqh
19	`fiqh-issues`	Fiqh issues
20	`islamic-governance-and-judiciary`	Islamic governance and judiciary
21	`inheritance-and-wills`	Inheritance and wills
22	`fatwas`	Fatwas
23	`spirituality-etiquette-and-remembrances`	Spirituality, etiquette and remembrances
24	`prophetic-biography`	Prophetic biography
25	`history`	History
26	`biographies-and-generations`	Biographies and generations
27	`genealogy`	Genealogy
28	`geography-and-travel`	Geography and travel
29	`arabic-language`	Arabic language
30	`rare-words-and-dictionaries`	Rare words and dictionaries
31	`grammar-and-morphology`	Grammar and morphology
32	`literature`	Literature
33	`prosody-and-rhyme`	Prosody and rhyme
34	`poetry`	Poetry
35	`rhetoric`	Rhetoric
36	`collected-works-and-compilations`	Collected works and compilations
37	`bibliographies-and-guides`	Bibliographies and guides
38	`medicine`	Medicine
39	`general-books`	General books
40	`other-sciences`	Other sciences