The Evolution of Islamic Finance Research: A Bibliometric Analysis of Instruments, Infrastructure, and Global Collaboration

Islamic finance has expanded rapidly beyond its origins in Muslim-majority countries and has become an important component of the global financial system. This study aims to examine the evolution and intellectual structure of research on Islamic financial instruments through a comprehensive bibliometric analysis. The study employs a bibliometric approach using secondary data collected from the Scopus database. A total of publications from 1997 to 2026 were analyzed to identify research trends and scholarly contributions in Islamic finance. Bibliometric techniques such as citation analysis, co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, and co-authorship analysis were applied. Descriptive analysis and visualization tools were used to map the research landscape, including leading journals, influential authors, institutions, and collaboration networks. The findings reveal a significant increase in publications on Islamic financial instruments over the past decades, indicating growing global academic interest. The results highlight key contributing journals, influential scholars, and major institutions driving the research domain. The study also identifies emerging research themes and collaboration patterns that shape the development of Islamic finance scholarship. The study is limited to publications indexed in the Scopus database, excluding other databases and grey liter­ature, which may influence the comprehensiveness of the findings. Future studies can integrate multiple databases to provide a broader understanding of the field. The findings provide insights for researchers, policymakers, and financial institutions by identifying key research trends, influential contributors, and collaboration opportunities in Islamic finance. This study contributes to the literature by offering a systematic bibliometric overview of Islamic financial instruments research and mapping its intellectual structure and global development.