Islamic MCP servers compared: Shamela, hadith and Quran
Islamic MCP servers compared, dated: Quran Gallery, Shamela Link, official Shamela, alhoqbani, Makteb, Moheet, turath.io. Account, corpus, source, page.
On this page
Several MCP servers now serve Islamic texts, and they are not interchangeable. They differ in what they cover, whether they need an account, where they run, and whether a result tells you the printed page and the layer of the page it came from. This page compares them on the points people ask about.
Every figure for another project is that project’s own published claim, read on 2026-11-01, with a link. A cell marked † was last read on 2026-10-13 and was not read again. Projects change; check the source before you rely on a row. Where a page does not say something, or could not be read, the table says not stated or not verified rather than guessing. The Quran Gallery column is checked against its own tools/list on the same day.
Servers for classical Islamic books
Quran Gallery, Shamela Link, the official Shamela MCP, alhoqbani/shamela-mcp and themuhammad-personal/shamela-mcp serve the Maktabah al-Shamela library. Makteb and Moheet Corpus are listed because people ask about them; their own pages describe separate catalogues and do not mention Shamela.
| Server | Address | Where it runs | Account to connect | Source code |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quran Gallery | https://qurangallery.com/mcp/shamela | Hosted | None. An optional free key raises the limit | Not published |
| Shamela Link | https://shamela.link/mcp | Hosted | Free account, OAuth sign-in | Not stated |
| Official Shamela MCP | https://mcp.shamela.ws | Hosted by the Shamela project | None for the server, no API key. ChatGPT and Claude need their own accounts | Not stated |
| alhoqbani/shamela-mcp | Local extension for the Claude app (.mcpb) | On your computer, against the Shamela 4 library you install | None (local) | Yes, MIT licence |
| themuhammad-personal/shamela-mcp | https://shamela-mcp.themuhammadpersonal.workers.dev/mcp | Hosted as a Cloudflare Worker by an individual | Not verified | Yes, MIT licence, 0 stars |
| Makteb | https://api.makteb.org/mcp | Hosted | None stated | Not stated |
| Moheet Corpus | Not verified | Hosted | Not verified | Not stated |
What each one covers
| Server | Corpus (its own claim) | Tools |
|---|---|---|
| Quran Gallery | 8,594 works, 3,188 authors, 41 categories (Maktabah al-Shamela) | 14 |
| Shamela Link | 8,598 books, 3,190 authors, 41 categories (Shamela) | 34 |
| Official Shamela MCP | Shamela books; no count stated on the guide page | 4 in its tools/list on 2026-11-01: shamela_find, shamela_find_scoped, shamela_open, shamela_open_many |
| alhoqbani/shamela-mcp | Whatever you have installed in Shamela 4 | 34 (v1.3.0) † |
| themuhammad-personal | Shamela, through shamela.ws | Not verified |
| Makteb | 48,000+ books, Sunni and Shia (its own catalogue) | 5 |
| Moheet Corpus | 15,800 books and 12,579,226 indexed passages, Ahl al-Bayt library (its own) | Not verified |
How each one connects: Quran Gallery accepts any MCP client that supports remote servers over Streamable HTTP. Shamela Link has guides for Claude, ChatGPT and Hermes Agent. The official Shamela guide is in Arabic and covers ChatGPT (a plugin-store entry named «المكتبة الشاملة»), Claude and Antigravity. Makteb’s page shows setups for several editors and assistants and configures its address as an SSE endpoint. alhoqbani’s README lists Windows 10 and 11 and says macOS is “possible but not yet tested” †. Moheet Corpus is available in Arabic, English and Persian.
Sources: Quran Gallery what the server is; Shamela Link (home page for the counts, guide for the rest); official Shamela MCP (guide and a tools/list request to https://mcp.shamela.ws); alhoqbani/shamela-mcp README; themuhammad-personal/shamela-mcp README; Makteb MCP page; Moheet Corpus home page.
The alhoqbani README opens with a note that Shamela can now be reached remotely through shamela.link, so a person who does not want to install anything is pointed there.
What each result tells you
This is the part that decides whether a quotation can be checked.
| Server | Printed volume and page | Main text vs footnote | Verify a quotation you already have |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quran Gallery | Yes, per hit (printedPage). shamela_find (kind: 'work') and shamela_cite (mode: 'printed_page') return a citable flag that says whether a book’s numbering matches a real printed edition | Yes, on every hit (matchedIn), and searchable by layer (guide) | No single tool. A short sequence does it (guide) |
| Shamela Link | Yes. Its home page says it cites down to the book, volume and page, and its guide says some books carry Shamela’s automatic pagination and the citation tool says so | Yes. Its guide says results keep them apart | Yes, per its guide |
| Official Shamela MCP | Not verified | Not verified | Not verified |
| alhoqbani/shamela-mcp | Yes. Its README says results show the printed page number † | Yes. Its README says it separates main text from the footnote † | Yes, shamela_verify_quote (named in its README) † |
| themuhammad-personal | Yes. Its README lists volume and printed page numbers | Yes. Its README lists footnotes as separated | Not verified |
| Makteb | Its page says read_book_pages returns exact volume, page and unit citations | Not stated | Not stated |
| Moheet Corpus | Its home page says each result returns book, volume and page | Its home page says editors’ notes appear in place | Not verified |
Quran Gallery also returns edition, editor and publisher when the library records them, never invented (details), and a sourceUrl that links to the page on shamela.ws. The other servers’ pages did not state either one; that is not stated, not a statement that they lack it.
Servers for turath.io books
turath.io is a separate digital library of classical Islamic books (a project by Nuqayah), not the Shamela library. Several open-source projects wrap it. They are small and MIT licensed, and run on your computer. adelpro/turath-mcp can also be started as an HTTP server that you host yourself.
| Project | What it is | Facts it states |
|---|---|---|
| opin22/turath-mcp | MCP server over the public turath.io API | 5 tools (book info, page, search, author, book file), “8,500+ books”, no API key, started from a clone with Node.js 22 or later; 4 stars |
| adelpro/turath-mcp | MCP server over turath.io through the turath-sdk package | 5 tools, stdio (npx -y turath-mcp) or Streamable HTTP, responses cached for 30 days; 1 star |
| mwijanarko1/nusus | TypeScript SDK, command-line tool and an optional local MCP server (nusus-mcp) | 5 MCP tools (find_books, find_authors, retrieve, get_context, get_book), stdio, no key. Its README says its page-id is Turath’s internal page, not the printed page † |
Quran Gallery is hosted, so nothing runs on your machine; it serves the Shamela library; and every hit carries the printed volume and page and the layer (main text or footnote) as separate fields.
Servers for other texts
These are good at different jobs. They do not cover the Shamela library.
| Server | What it is | Facts it states |
|---|---|---|
| hadith-mcp.org | Hadith collections | GPL-3.0; 6 tools, 50,000+ hadith from Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim and 15 more collections, no authentication † |
| mcp.quran.ai | The Quran with tafsir and translations (source) | 16 tools, remote at https://mcp.quran.ai, no key † |
| tafsircenter/tafsir-mcp | The Quran with five classical tafsirs and word-level analysis | Hosted at https://mcp.tafsir.net/mcp, MIT code; 13 tools † |
ragaeeb/shamela on GitHub is a library for working with Shamela data from code, not an MCP server. OpenITI, a corpus of Arabic texts, is the usual starting point for building your own system; see Quran Gallery versus building your own.
Choosing
- You want to paste a URL and be done. Quran Gallery needs no account, no key and no install. The official Shamela MCP needs no key either. Shamela Link is hosted too, and asks for a free account and an OAuth sign-in first.
- You want everything on your own machine, with source code you can read. alhoqbani/shamela-mcp is MIT licensed and runs locally against your Shamela install. Quran Gallery’s source is not public.
- You want one tool that checks a quotation. Shamela Link and alhoqbani/shamela-mcp document one. Quran Gallery gives you the pieces instead: an exact search, a printed-page resolver and a page reader. That works, but it is a few calls, not one.
- You need a catalogue larger than Shamela, including Shia works. Makteb states 48,000+ books and Moheet Corpus states 15,800 books in the Ahl al-Bayt tradition. Quran Gallery serves only the Shamela library.
- You want something small you can read and run yourself against turath.io. The open-source turath.io projects above do that. They are a different library with their own result fields, so read each README for what a hit returns.
- You only need hadith or only the Quran. The specialist servers above are narrower on purpose.
Why the shape of a hit matters
A search hit can be a block of text, or it can be a set of fields. When your words were found in a footnote, a block of text hides that, and an assistant will tend to attribute the sentence to the book’s author. Shamela Link and alhoqbani/shamela-mcp both say they keep the main text and the footnote apart; what differs between servers is which other facts come with each hit. Quran Gallery returns the layer, the edition, the printed page and the source link as separate fields, so the assistant has no need to infer them and a reader can check each one. Reading a result shows a real case: the same hadith found in the main text of Sahih al-Bukhari and in an editor’s footnote in Sunan Abi Dawud.
What Quran Gallery does not claim
It does not grade hadith, issue rulings, or replace a scholar. It is not open source. It does not cover texts outside the Shamela library. It is run by Quran Gallery and is not a service of shamela.ws.