GIST: Ginan Index & Search Tool

The purpose of this website is to make primary sources of ginans available to researchers and community in order to facilitate much-needed bibliographic and scholarly attention to this hidden corpus of ethnocultural knowledge. Most of the ginans were initially recorded using the Khojki script which is now at the brink of extinction as well. Visit Ginan Central for more resources on ginans.

GIST is part of a research study being led by Karim Tharani, tenured librarian and faculty at the University of Saskatchewan, in consultation with Dr. Ali Asani, Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures, Harvard University. For more information or questions, please contact

Perhaps the greatest obstacle for further studies on the ginan literature is the almost total absence of any kind of textual criticism on the literature. Thus far merely two out of the nearly one thousand compositions have been critically edited. Naturally, the availability of reliably edited texts is fundamental to any substantial scholarship in this field.

Professor Ali Asani
Harvard University
Source: The Harvard Collection of Ismaili Literature in Indic Languages: A Descriptive Catalog and Finding Aid, 1992.