Guide

Everything needed to connect, and what to know before quoting anything this server returns.

Connecting

Claude desktop app

Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, then paste the address above. A sign-in page opens in your browser.

claude.ai

Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector. The same address.

ChatGPT

Add an MCP server from connector settings, using the same address. Custom connectors require a plan that allows them.

What it can do

Search

Full-text search across the books: by phrase, by Arabic root, by boolean (and/or/not), and by title.

Browsing

Tables of contents, volumes, pages, and moving between a book's sections.

Quran and tafsir

Fetch a verse, and gather what the commentators say about it from the installed tafsirs.

Hadith

Find a hadith, and see which collections record it.

Citation

Build a citation to book, author, volume, and page — and verify a quotation you already have.

Usage limits

Everyone signed out shares a single allowance, and is told the server is busy when it empties. A registered account gets an allowance of its own. That is the only difference registering makes today.

Before you trust a result

Page numbers

Some books carry Shamela's automatic pagination rather than the printed edition's, and the citation tool says so. Do not pass it off as the edition's numbering.

Body and footnote

A footnote is the editor's or commentator's words, not the author's. Results keep them apart — do not attribute a footnote to the author of the book.

What is searched

Search reaches only the books installed on this server. An empty result does not mean the Shamela library is silent, let alone the scholarly tradition.

Judgements

This server issues no ruling on a hadith and no fatwa. Any judgement you see is quoted from the text, attributed to whoever said it.