The MCA (Muslim Civilisations Abstracts) project is a new type of initiative designed to give impetus to a global awareness of the benefits that can flow from access to scholarship produced in Muslim contexts.

It seeks to enable scholarly exchange about the diverse heritages and cultures of Muslims, past and present through an open access initiative that reviews works from multiple contexts in multiple languages. The project brings to the forefront often overlooked publications in languages such as Arabic, Turkish and Persian, and will facilitate dialogue between scholars from Muslim contexts. It aims to bridge knowledge gaps created by language and financial barriers. Through this endeavour, perspectives from under-represented societies can be brought into the international domain of research.

Phase three of the MCA project focuses on scholarship examining socio-cultural and cosmopolitan processes along with aspects of material culture in contemporary and historic urban Muslim contexts. Cities reflect the material culture of their geographical context through their architecture, although invasions and colonisations have transformed these spaces and recent globalisation is changing further the faces of modern urban centres. Today more than ever the study of cities in the Muslim contexts requires our attention, since the urban growth in Muslim majority countries has surpassed that of cities in Europe and North America. While in 1950 there was just one city in the Muslim world with a population greater than two million residents, today there are at least nine megalopolises in the Muslim world. Perhaps nowhere else is the diversity of the Muslim world more tangible on such a magnified scale.

Learn about other phases of the project, Encyclopaedias, Law and Ethics, Gender, Government, and Education, at Aga Khan University eCommons.