After approximately four decades the “battleship” of modern Islam studies, the Encyclopaedia of Islam (“EI”), was completed and published by the renowned publisher E.J. Brill in eleven large volumes and on CD-ROM. At the same time this publisher issued another encyclopedia: the Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an (“EQ”). One might wonder about the publication of an encyclopedia in addition to the EI. There seem to be two main reasons for this.