Introduction

The Encyclopedia of Ahlulbayt was established under supervision of Islamic Sciences and Culture Academy affiliated to Islamic Propagation Office Qom Seminary.
The Encyclopedia includes a collection of systematic and scientific information focusing on The Fourteen Infallibles. Therefore, figures, tribes, cities, and places, theological, Quranic, political, social, jurisprudential, and ethical concepts related to Ahlulbayt will be considered in this collection.  

The Necessity 
The need for easy and quick access to a valid and reliable reference in order to know figures and teachings of Ahlulbayt in the national and international level as well as to present a scientific and comprehensive collection in this field with regard to lacking such work with these features, make compiling the encyclopedia as necessary.

Objectives 

1. Documentary and dynamic explanation of Ahlulbayt figures and teachings in line with wise defense of them. 
2. Reviewing the teachings of Ahlulbayt with regard to the contemporary needs.
3. Developing and empowering the teachings of Ahlulbayt.
4. Wiping out the ignorance and superstitions of the Ahlulbayt's knowledge.
5. Explaining the place of Ahlulbayt in sciences.
6. Answering the questions and doubts in the national and international level systematically and scientifically, in the field of conduct and teachings of Ahlulbayt.
7. Recognizing the different aspects of Ahlulbayt's history and conduct.
8. Identifying and evaluating the scientific heritage of Ahlulbayt and their related works.

Policies
1. Considering the intellectual, social, and cultural needs in the international and national levels.
2. Using the scientific literature and avoiding verbal literature.
3. Having commitment to proximity of Islamic communities.
4. Considering the comparative topics when need.
5. Using the scientific capacities of universities and Islamic Seminary.
6. Sticking with innovation in the structure of topics, analyses, compilation, and conclusion.
7. Avoiding raising doubtful and humiliating ideas and perspectives unless in some cases that they are necessary to be raised or criticized.
8. Emphasizing the focus on Ahlulbayt in authoring the papers. 

Audiences
The encyclopedia is compiled with the aim of providing a credit and scientific reference for researchers, the experts of Islamic sciences and humanities and university students, presented in the level of world class. However, all the lovers can use it with regard to their appropriateness to their knowledge.

The Presentation of the Encyclopedia
1. The encyclopedia is presented in both printed and electronic forms.
2. All the papers of the encyclopedia will be uploaded gradually on the encyclopedia website after publishing in printed form.
3. The original copy of the encyclopedia is published gradually, volume after volume in Persian.

The Encyclopedia Website
1. The Encyclopedia Website has started its activities in autumn, 2014, with the aim of revealing the content of encyclopedia and introduction of appropriate resources for studies related to Ahlulbayt. Considering the following points shows the necessity of creating such website:
The necessity of being present on social media.
Lack of ideal richness of activities related to Ahlulbayt on social media.
Presenting the papers of the encyclopedia on social media.
Creating a website to propose, send, and receive the entries.
In addition, some objectives have been considered such as, providing accurate, ideal and timely notification on encyclopedia activities; ideal review of written activities of the encyclopedia on social media; and creating a scientific environment for authors of entries and other researchers in the field of Ahlulbayt history to have access to the related resources. 

An Introduction to sections of the website
The encyclopedia website has two general sections of "main menu" and" information bank". 
The main menu consists of the following items:
a. News
The encyclopedia website does not have any approach for news. However, it deals with the different sections of the encyclopedia and related news about honored research on Ahlulbayt. In this section, the news for research calls related to Ahlulbayt as well as the summary of the meetings on the Fourteen Infallibles are uploaded. 

Scientific Council
The scientific council of the encyclopedia consists of 13 members who are in charge of determining and approving the entries and macro-projects of the encyclopedia. In this section, the complete resumes of the council members are available and it is possible to download and view their papers.

Entries
In this section, the titles of the encyclopedia's entries are presented alphabetically and based on a thematic categorization. In addition, the original entries will be available in this section electronically, after having been authored and published. In addition, items related to each entry such as papers, theses, encyclopedias, etc. will be available in other sections so that the access to the materials related to the entries would be easier. 

The encyclopedia database consists of the following items:

Encyclopedias 
This section comprises five parts that are encyclopedias, Mawsu'a (a collection of works from scholars), lexicons, documents, and others, and its aim is the comprehensive introduction of the works related to Ahlulbayt; it deals with complete, brief, and comparative introduction of the aforementioned items. Meanwhile, three works of "The great Islamic encyclopedia, The Shia encyclopedia and the encyclopedia of Islamic world" have been comparatively examined. That is, the encyclopedia's entries are compared with the published volumes of these works and if some entries have the same title or are similar to the encyclopedia's entries in the works, the introduction and if possible, the full text will be available to the readers. This is done in order to avoid parallelism and it indicates that a large number of the encyclopedia's entries do not exist in these works. In addition to this comparative examination, we will deal with brief and detailed introduction of other works especially those encyclopedias with the titles of Ahlulbayt which are uploaded on the website gradually and they will be presented to the audiences. 

Papers
The section of papers consists of three Macro-parts which are "historical, socio-theological and jurisprudential-ethical" and each of these parts is categorized based on the topic and includes papers related to the entries of the Ahlulbayt encyclopedia. In addition, over 600 papers on Ahlulbayt have been collected so far, which are related to history. The articles are displayed in tables and by clicking on the title of each paper can have access to its abstract and keyword. However, it is completely free for viewers to download the full papers. One of the benefits of this section is the lovers' familiarity with studies on Ahlulbayt and particularly the honored papers in this field and In addition to citing the author and publication information, the paper's URL and research rank is available.
The first goal of the papers section is to collect the papers related to Ahlulbayt and then other papers of historical entries of the encyclopedia as well as theological and jurisprudential entries will be available on the website.

Theses 
The same categorization of papers can be seen in the section of theses, with a difference that in this section in addition to the complete information about theses, it is possible to study the abstract and keyword and in some cases the table of content of each thesis.
Since no original thesis can be inserted and displayed on any website, the encyclopedia website has tried to reflect the views of the authors of the theses as much as possible by posting papers related to each thesis.

Books
In the section of books, over 2000 books have been uploaded so far that after examining and choosing the best works among copies, will be introduced and recognized widely in the next website phases.

Websites
In this section, it has been tried to introduce the websites related to Ahlulbayt and to mention their scores.

Applications
In the section of applications, the two applications "Qaemiyyah" and "Sireh M'asumian" are highly considered as the most important applications that directly deal with Ahlulbayt. However, Qaemiyyah have been more welcomed and considered.

The website of the encyclopedia
 http://ahlebeitpedia.co