Urdu Daira Maarif Islamiya
urdu encyclopedia of Islam (1954–1992)
Urdu Daira Maarif Islamiya or Urdu Encyclopaedia of Islam (Urdu: اردو دائرہ معارف اسلامیہ) is the largest Islamic encyclopedia published in Urdu by University of the Punjab. Originally it is a translated, expanded and revised version of Encyclopedia of Islam. Its composition began in the 1950s at University of the Punjab. Its completion was delayed due to various reasons including political unrest, death of the main editor, financial crisis. In 1989, a total of 23 volumes were completed.
History
The Urdu Encyclopaedia of Islam is the project of translating the Encyclopedia of Islam into Urdu.
It was started in the 1950s at University of the Punjab, as a project led by Muhammad Shafi. The editorial board worked on translating the Leiden Encyclopaedia into Urdu, amending, correcting, and adding to the Leiden text themselves.
The original plan for publication, as laid out by Shafi and others, was for the Encyclopaedia (which was to be entitled Urdu Da’ira Ma’arif-i-Islamiya) to span between 20 and 22 volumes, with roughly a hundred illustrations per volume, published at a rate of four volumes per year.
At the time of Shafi's death in 1963, one volume of the encyclopaedia had been published (in February 1954), and a second volume was in press.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Urdu Daira Maarif Islamiya” is urdu encyclopedia of Islam (1954–1992). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Urdu, Daira and Maarif, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “urdu encyclopedia of Islam (1954–1992)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7900330. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1963 and 1954.
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This entry incorporates text from “Urdu Daira Maarif Islamiya” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.