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USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts

MSA-USC Qur'an Database

Warning (especially for Muslims)

Today, technology is helping bring Islam into the homes of millions of people, Muslim and otherwise. There is a blessing in all this of course, but there is a real danger that Muslims will fall under the impression that owning a book or having a database is equivalent to being a scholar of Islam. This is a great fallacy. Therefore, we would like to warn you that this database is merely a tool, and not a substitute for learning, much less scholarship in Islam.

Classic MSA-USC Search:

  • This database supports searching for complete words only. A query for the word "eat" will only return data containing that word, and not data containing "eaten", "eating", etc.
  • Queries can only contain characters from the following set: alphanumeric characters, dash "-", left parenthesis "(", and right parenthesis ")".
  • Boolean operations are supported: "and", "or", and "andnot".
  • Searches on this database are very fast, however the disadvantage is that more complex types of queries are not supported. In particular, if you need to use wildcards, please try the Verity Search below.
  • The results of searching on this database is a list of individual verse numbers. Each number is a link into a chapter from the Qur'an. By clicking onto the link, your browser will be positioned directly on top of that particular verse.
  • An example of a classic MSA-USC query string is: (kingdom and see) andnot dominion

New Ultraseek Search:

  • This database supports searching using USC's Ultraseek database. A powerful query language is supported. This language supports searching with stemmed variations, phrases, and boolean operators.
  • The results of searching on this database is a list of chapters from the Qur'an, each of which can be clicked to take your browser to that document. However, once there, you may have to look for your query term manually to isolate which verse is the matching one.
  • The search occurs over the entire chapter, and not by verse, hence it is more difficult to hone in a particular verse you are looking for.
  • An example of an Ultraseek query string is: +kingdom +see -dominion