Structure
The content on this platform may be divided in the following categories:
- Publications
- Works
- Versions
- Passages
Publications
A publication is the product to which your library may subscribe. For instance, Classic Arabic Texts Online is a publication, and Ammianus Marcellinus Online is too. You can find the complete list of publications on the page ‘Publications’. If you want to perform a search across the entire platform, please go to ‘Search all’.
Works
A publication (usually) contains a specific edition of a work. For example, Classic Arabic Texts Online contains an edition of the work Kitāb Futūḥ al-buldān written by Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā al-Balādhūrī.
Versions
A work exists in different versions. For example, the work Kitāb Futūḥ al-buldān exists as a text in several manuscripts. It also exists in the text edition published by Michael Jan de Goeje in 1866, which is the version included in Classic Arabic Texts Online and now available on Brill Scholarly Editions**. The English translation by Philip Khuri Hitti and Francis Clark Murgotten, with the title The Origins of the Islamic State, is another version, also included in Classic Arabic Texts Online:
Therefore, the filter ‘versions’ includes all editions, translations, commentaries and critical apparatuses of a particular work.
Passages
A work consists of passages, the nature of which depends on the publication. In the case of Kitāb Futūḥ al-buldān, the passages equal the pages of De Goeje's edition. This is because the work is organized by place (it is a geographical survey of the Caliphate’s territories), but references to the work follow the page (and line) in De Goeje’s edition, which was thus adopted as the organizing principle for this text on Brill Scholarly Editions.
Other works may have passages of different types. For example, the passages of Ammianus Marcellinus’ Res Gestae are phrases (themselves grouped into chapters and books) as this is the way in which this work is usually referenced:
In exceptional cases (Classic Arabic Texts Online and Context of Scriptures) an additional layer is added, called ‘Text Groups.’ For instance, the text group Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā al-Balādhūrī contains all works by this author, including the work Kitāb Futūḥ al-buldān.