Text mining Islamic law

Christian Lange; Maksim Abdul Latif; Yusuf Celik; Melle Lyklema; Dafne Van Kuppevelt; Janneke Van der Zwaan

doi:10.1163/15685195-bja10009

Text mining Islamic law

Christian Lange, Maksim Abdul Latif, Yusuf Celik, Melle Lyklema, Dafne Van Kuppevelt, Janneke Van der Zwaan

OFR - Islam and Arabic

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Digital humanities has a venerable pedigree, stretching back to the middle of the twentieth century, but despite noteworthy pioneering contributions it has not become a mainstream practice in Islamic Studies. This essay applies humanities computing to the study of Islamic law. We analyze a representative corpus of works of Islamic substantive law (furu'al-fiqh) from the beginnings of Islamic legal jurisprudence to the early modern period (2nd/8th-13th/19th c.) using several computational tools and methods: text-reuse network analysis based on plain-text annotations and html tags, clustered frequency-based analysis, word clouds, and topic modeling. Applying machine-guided distant reading to Islamic legal texts over the longue-duree, we study (1) the role of the Qur'an, (2) patterns of normative qualifications (ahkam), and (3) the distribution of topics in our corpus. In certain instances the analysis confirms claims made in the scholarly literature on Islamic law, in other instances it corrects such claims.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	234-281
Number of pages	48
Journal	Islamic Law and Society
Volume	28
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-bja10009
Publication status	Published - 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors gratefully acknowledge support by the erc Consolidator Grant project "The senses of Islam" (project no. 724951), by the clariah/Netherlands eScience Center project, "Bridging the gap: Digital humanities and the Arabic- Islamic corpus" (project no. adah2016.014), and by the Digital Humanities Lab at Utrecht University during the research for, and writing of, this article. We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their thorough critique of the original version of this article, as well as all colleagues who generously provided advice and resources along the way.

Publisher Copyright:
© Christian Lange et al., 2021.

Keywords

Digital humanities
Islamic law
Qur'an
Schools of law in Islam

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10.1163/15685195-bja10009Licence: CC BY

[15685195 - Islamic Law and Society] Text Mining Islamic LawFinal published version, 91.7 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Text mining Islamic law",

abstract = "Digital humanities has a venerable pedigree, stretching back to the middle of the twentieth century, but despite noteworthy pioneering contributions it has not become a mainstream practice in Islamic Studies. This essay applies humanities computing to the study of Islamic law. We analyze a representative corpus of works of Islamic substantive law (furu'al-fiqh) from the beginnings of Islamic legal jurisprudence to the early modern period (2nd/8th-13th/19th c.) using several computational tools and methods: text-reuse network analysis based on plain-text annotations and html tags, clustered frequency-based analysis, word clouds, and topic modeling. Applying machine-guided distant reading to Islamic legal texts over the longue-duree, we study (1) the role of the Qur'an, (2) patterns of normative qualifications (ahkam), and (3) the distribution of topics in our corpus. In certain instances the analysis confirms claims made in the scholarly literature on Islamic law, in other instances it corrects such claims. ",

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author = "Christian Lange and {Abdul Latif}, Maksim and Yusuf Celik and Melle Lyklema and {Van Kuppevelt}, Dafne and {Van der Zwaan}, Janneke",

note = "Funding Information: The authors gratefully acknowledge support by the erc Consolidator Grant project {"}The senses of Islam{"} (project no. 724951), by the clariah/Netherlands eScience Center project, {"}Bridging the gap: Digital humanities and the Arabic- Islamic corpus{"} (project no. adah2016.014), and by the Digital Humanities Lab at Utrecht University during the research for, and writing of, this article. We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their thorough critique of the original version of this article, as well as all colleagues who generously provided advice and resources along the way. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} Christian Lange et al., 2021.",

year = "2021",

doi = "10.1163/15685195-bja10009",

language = "English",

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journal = "Islamic Law and Society",

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AU - Lange, Christian

AU - Abdul Latif, Maksim

AU - Celik, Yusuf

AU - Lyklema, Melle

AU - Van Kuppevelt, Dafne

AU - Van der Zwaan, Janneke

N1 - Funding Information: The authors gratefully acknowledge support by the erc Consolidator Grant project "The senses of Islam" (project no. 724951), by the clariah/Netherlands eScience Center project, "Bridging the gap: Digital humanities and the Arabic- Islamic corpus" (project no. adah2016.014), and by the Digital Humanities Lab at Utrecht University during the research for, and writing of, this article. We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their thorough critique of the original version of this article, as well as all colleagues who generously provided advice and resources along the way. Publisher Copyright: © Christian Lange et al., 2021.

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - Digital humanities has a venerable pedigree, stretching back to the middle of the twentieth century, but despite noteworthy pioneering contributions it has not become a mainstream practice in Islamic Studies. This essay applies humanities computing to the study of Islamic law. We analyze a representative corpus of works of Islamic substantive law (furu'al-fiqh) from the beginnings of Islamic legal jurisprudence to the early modern period (2nd/8th-13th/19th c.) using several computational tools and methods: text-reuse network analysis based on plain-text annotations and html tags, clustered frequency-based analysis, word clouds, and topic modeling. Applying machine-guided distant reading to Islamic legal texts over the longue-duree, we study (1) the role of the Qur'an, (2) patterns of normative qualifications (ahkam), and (3) the distribution of topics in our corpus. In certain instances the analysis confirms claims made in the scholarly literature on Islamic law, in other instances it corrects such claims.

AB - Digital humanities has a venerable pedigree, stretching back to the middle of the twentieth century, but despite noteworthy pioneering contributions it has not become a mainstream practice in Islamic Studies. This essay applies humanities computing to the study of Islamic law. We analyze a representative corpus of works of Islamic substantive law (furu'al-fiqh) from the beginnings of Islamic legal jurisprudence to the early modern period (2nd/8th-13th/19th c.) using several computational tools and methods: text-reuse network analysis based on plain-text annotations and html tags, clustered frequency-based analysis, word clouds, and topic modeling. Applying machine-guided distant reading to Islamic legal texts over the longue-duree, we study (1) the role of the Qur'an, (2) patterns of normative qualifications (ahkam), and (3) the distribution of topics in our corpus. In certain instances the analysis confirms claims made in the scholarly literature on Islamic law, in other instances it corrects such claims.

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KW - Schools of law in Islam

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JO - Islamic Law and Society

JF - Islamic Law and Society

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ER -

Text mining Islamic law

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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