To accompany the existing Index of Persons, Brill has prepared an Index of Subjects, intended as an extra aid when using the Encyclopédie de l'Islam. The sheer amount of information contained in the EI, and the fact that the entries are given in their Arabic form, require a good deal of searching on the part of the user, which the Index of Persons can only partially alleviate.
The Index des Matières, now fully covering Volumes I-X of the Encyclopédie de l'Islam, aims to lighten the user's work by providing a guide to the EI in the form of a thesaurus. Entries are given in French and are followed by the titles of the relevant EI-articles, as well as cross-references to articles which are not primarily about that subject, but include information which could be useful.
The student and scholar of Islam are hereby given a boost in unravelling the enormous richness of Encyclopédie de l'Islam.
