Qurʾan Gateway Available For All: Here’s How To Get Access

Time is precious, isn’t it? Oh, some who work in the fast-paced world of modern business might look over the fence at the academic world and think to themselves, “I wish I could live that quiet life of a scholar, pursuing what interests me at whatever pace seems reasonable.” But time is precious for scholars, too.

Most Masters Degree programs allow a scholar only two to three years to become expert in a very broad base of knowledge. Doctoral candidates have only a year or two to examine an immense range of information and reduce the scope of their study to a precise and narrow set of questions. Afterward, they are required to master extant scholarship on those questions, while performing their own original research.

Even tenured professors must balance the demands of teaching, developing students, keeping aware of new scholarship in their own area of expertise and related scholastic subjects, and, of course, continue their own research.

Time is indeed precious, even in—especially in—the academy.

The founders of Qurʾan Gateway developed a tool that, among its many excellent qualities, can redeem valuable research time for those interested in critical examination of the Qurʾan’s text and its early manuscripts. Our very powerful search software allows a scholar to limit search of a word (or sets of words) by root, lemma, or exact inflection. It also allows searches by use, case, gender, number, person, or any of the 12 verb forms of Arabic. One can also limit searches to just the Meccan or Medinan suras. Once scholars see initial results, on-page tools direct them to additional uses and forms of a word, or sets of words, just by hovering a cursor over the word in the displayed text. It is the most powerful, fastest way we know to get a comprehensive picture of how words are used in the Qurʾan.

Qurʾan Gateway also contains significant research results for others interested in sets of formulaic phrases that repeat within the text of the Qurʾan. In addition, it contains a database of known early manuscripts of the Qurʾan, their location, contents and other data on each manuscript. Our scholars have examined some of these manuscripts to show how scribal changes have occurred over time.

Now, Qurʾan Gateway is available to all. Here are two ways to get access to this incredible tool:

• We believe the best option for Qurʾan Gateway is for universities and other educational institutions to provide it as one of their electronic resources. We are prepared to provide it that way and are in test, or have tests planned for its use in a half dozen institutions. If you are associated with an educational institution, we would be most happy to come demonstrate our capability to librarians or electronic resources professionals who make those decisions.
• For those who do not have access to educational institutions, on our site we offer an unrestricted fourteen day free trial and then full access to the system for the low price of just $10 (USD) per month.

For either of those options, or just to pose questions, we’d be very happy to hear from you at info@qurangateway.org. We are committed to answering in less than 24 hours of hearing from you.

Until then, we at Qurʾan Gateway wish you the very best in whatever your current work brings your way.