The article considers training and methodological materials for the course “Islam: history, culture and practice”. The course has been taught during the firyear of the implementation of the program for the training of specialists with indepth knowledge of history and culture of Islam at the Faculty of Asian and African Studies, St. Petersburg State University. In order to achieve  high-quality training, the latedevelopments in the field of education have been used, in particular the Blackboard e-learning system. Combination of innovative approaches to the organization of educational process and traditional forms of teaching activities provides positive results and allows us to talk about strong students’ intereto the subject and their motivation to acquire new knowledge as well as skills of self- education and self-study.