---
title: The Qaf library
description: 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](/reference/catalog/lookup-catalog), or the [`lookup_catalog`](/mcp/tools#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 |