Searching The Chicago Online Encyclopedia of Mamluk Studies
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(For information about typing diacritics, using Unicode, Arabicizing your computer, and so forth, click here.)
We have not used diacritics in the following examples, as they might not be
shown properly and would confuse the process further. In some examples, we use
capital letters in searches to indicate that the results would have diacritics
that would only be found by entering capital letters.
In examples on this page, words entered in the search box are between red curved
brackets: { }. DO NOT type these brackets
when you are searching!
First, some simple items:
To streamline things, al- (and az- etc.) can be ignored in searching. There
is no need to type {al-ZAhir}.
In fact, typing {ZAhir}
is better, as it will increase results by finding both al-Zahir and az-Zahir,
instead of just the former. If you type {al-ZAhir},
you are entering a phrase and the software will find only that exact
phrase.
Do not use quotation marks (" ") to make phrases for searching. Words entered are automatically considered phrases. (See below under Search Options for more information.)
Type an apostrophe (a single quotation mark) to represent `ayn or hamza.
Click Clear at any time to empty the search field and revert all settings back to their defaults, including search options.
Some punctuation marks will cause the search to fail, so it is best to avoid them.
Wildcard Characters
* (asterisk): matches any string of one or more characters. The search
{*ab*}
will hit on terms like `abd, jabal, Arabic, and qabaq; {*ab}
will find Arab, adab, muntakhab, etc.; {a*b}
finds such terms as ajlab, ahbab, arab and adab; {ab*}
finds abu, abi, about, above, etc. Using capital letters (such as {*AB})
in the search will retrieve many, many more words in which there is a macron
over the a. There are many instances of names and words which might appear under
multiple spellings (such as Khaldûn, Khaldun, or Khaldoun), so it would
be most effective to search with wildcards (such as {khald*}).
If you know that variations exist in the spelling of a name or word, use wildcards.
. (period): matches any single character (e.g., {ba.bars} will retrieve Baybars and Baibars). (This may not work if the single character is `ayn or hamza.) In most cases, using the asterisk will be as useful as--or more useful than--the period.
.? (period question mark): matches the characters entered or the characters entered plus one more character in place of the question mark (e.g., {sufi.?} matches both Sufi and Sufis, but not Sufism; {hono.?r} will find honor and honour).
ABCD etc. (capital letters): To find a letter in all its potential forms
(with accents, macrons, dots under, etc.), simply type a capital letter. For
example, {abu}
should retrieve no results, but {abU}
(or {ABU})
will find dozens of occurrences.
Note: If you are using wildcard characters and would like to see a full list
of the words matching your search-term, then run your search as a "Frequency
by Title" search. The results page of a "Frequency by Title" search lists all
the terms found in a database that match your search-term.
Boolean Operators
| (vertical bar): serves as the OR operator. For example, {sufi|mystic}
retrieves instances of either word. Combining this with the asterisk expands
the results: {sufi*|mystic*}
finds Sufi, Sufism, Sufis, mystic, mystics, mystical, and mysticism).
Space: serves as the AND operator in sentence and paragraph Proximity
Searching (this is chosen in the Select a Search Option area of the search page).
For example, {sufi sultan}
retrieves all cases where Sufi and sultan appear in the same specified sentence
or paragraph, depending on which option was chosen. (The space does not have
this function in phrase searches, which will be the majority of searches in
this encyclopedia.)
Most of these wildcards can be combined for more sophisticated searches. Experiment with them.
Selecting a search option
There are essentially two types of searches available: phrase or proximity.
The majority of searches will use the first option, which searches for a single term or a phrase. In some cases, it might be useful to search for two words that will be near each other, but not necessarily adjacent. If so, choose the "phrase separated by" option and decide how close together the words are likely to be. For example, searching for {malik ZAhir} within 2 words or fewer will find al-Malik al-Zahir and al-Malik az-Zahir. The same terms in the default single term or phrase search would find nothing.
Proximity searches look for occurences of two or more words in the same sentence or paragraph, without considering how close together the words are. It also does not matter in what order the words appear. Searching for {sufi sulTAn endow*} within a paragraph finds multiple examples from more than one article. In the results there are multiple endowments, sultans and Sufis mentioned.
Selecting a results format
At this time it seems unlikely that the second option (line by line) will be
useful for users of the Encyclopedia. Feel free to try it, however.
Limiting searches by using the author or title fields
Typing an author's name in the author field before clicking the Search button
tells the software to ignore results in any articles not written by that author.
Likewise, typing a title in the title field will tell the software to search
only that article. Multiple authors or titles can be entered. Clicking a Terms
button takes you to a list of all available terms that can be entered in that
field.
There is more detailed information, much of which is NOT relevant to this project, at http://philologic.uchicago.edu/manual.php. (As Philologic was originally designed for presenting the full text of printed works, some of the instructions on that page are geared toward using it to search books, plays, and other works that originally existed in print.)
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Feel free to use the questions and comments link, below, to contact MEDOC with comments or questions about the Encyclopedia or this help page. As with any publically available resource, there will be aspects of this that will only become apparent through sustained use, despite our testing. Our primary goal is the creation of a genuinely useful resource for scholarship, and we welcome your input. Please be aware that there are features still in development and there are many articles that have been assigned but not yet completed. To be notified when new features or content are added to the Encyclopedia, join the Mamluk Listserv.