---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Iftikhar Zaman <iftikhar.za...@gmail.com> Date: Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 8:32 AM Subject: Re: Congratulations on work done, directions to expand and a place to discuss such expansion To: Kais Dukes <k...@kaisdukes.com>
Wa alaykumussalam and Eid Mubarak to you -- although we are still fasting in Pakistan. Without any hyprbole, I think this work you have done could be one of the major scholarly events of this century. What will make it or break it will be our abililty to develop appropriate uses for it. Kind of like DBase (I think it was DBase): the PC was a novelty until DBase made it something every businessman felt like he ought to have. People would show up at a store wanting to buy whatever it was that could run DBase! Computing in the Islamic world is essentially a matter of publishing. In the Western world computing started off as a research tool and then applications in publication developed. Publication is such a commercially strong thing that beginning with publication has swept aside all other uses of computing in the Muslim world (...pretty much). We need to develop an application that we could show traditional Muslim scholars, those who work with books, that would *enable* them to do things they couldn't do with their books. So far this ability to "search", powerful though it is, does not really impress our custodians of knowledge. Someone who has studied, for example, hadith, carefully, can find, say 50 versions of a hadith without the help of a computer. The additional twenty the computer will guide him to will not add to his knowledge significantly. The ability to search faster will be interesting, but not actually anything revolutionary. A major problem with using the computer for research in Islamic topics has been that one will have to massage the textual corpus significantly before we can come up with forms of using the data that are simply not available without electronic assistance. For example, I had started putting the chains of narration of Sahih Bukhari into a spreadhseet with Bukhari at the far left cell in each row, then his teacher, then his teacher and so forth. Sorting the columns alphabetically immmediately brought forth 250 narrations of Bukhari's teacher Abu l-Yamaan. Looking further, I saw that 50 of these narration were Abu l-Yaman--Abu Zinad--A'raj--Abu Hurayrah and another 200 were Abu l-Yaman--Shuayb--Zuhri and then a variety of chains. This makes it clear that Bukhari had two uses for this shaykh of his. Now this one insight is certainly useful. But to a traditional scholar, it is not groundbreaking. He might have read this somewhere in the literature. But if I could actually put the spreadsheet in front of him and let him ask questions that he had been wanting to ask for years (What are all the ways in which Bukhari gets to Malik's narrations? In the Sahih? In other books?). This might be something enticing. For tafsir I think an essential insight from our traditional scholars is that most of the material that was transferred into the tafsir literature in the third and, much more, in the fourth and fifth centuries, was preserved in the lexicographical tradition of the late first and the second and third centuries. Ulama of qiraa'aat were the lexicographers and the grammarians. The study of lexical oddities was tied to the study of the meanings of the Quran. So, I think the next step would be to bring this material into play in your corpus. I will need to think about how this could be done. But this two-step move, from the corpus, to the lexicographic tradition, to the finished forms of the tafsir tradition, might be something that would make this the DBase of Islamic research! Wassalam Iftikhar On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 12:05 PM, Kais Dukes <k...@kaisdukes.com> wrote: > Salam Iftikhar and Eid Mubarak, > > Thank you for the positive fedback, it's most appreciated. I've forwarded > your e-mail to the Quranic Arabic Corpus discussion mailing list (archived > here: http://www.mail-archive.com/comp-quran@comp.leeds.ac.uk/). I think > that you raise some interesting and valuable ideas about the use of the > corpus. I look forward to seeing this happen at some stage inshallah. > > I would be interested to know other's opinions on this? > > w/salam, > > -- Kais > > ------------------------------------------- > From: Iftikhar > Zaman[SMTP:iftikhar.za...@gmail.com<smtp%3aiftikhar.za...@gmail.com> > ] > Sent: Friday, September 10, 2010 7:31:25 AM > To: Kais Dukes > Subject: Congratulations on work done, directions to expand and a place to > discuss such expansion > Auto forwarded by a Rule > > Great work (http://corpus.quran.com)! I am sure you are busy wrapping up > things to finish your dissertation. I had actually put a young man to work > on this very thing (morphological and syntactical tagging of the Quran) > here--and he had done considerable work. But, alhamdulillah, yours is a > finished product and quite well done at that. > > I see no place on the site for discussions of where we could take this > project further: in terms of adding information and in terms of requested > features for people who would like to use this data in different > applications--so I am writing directly to you. > > So far I see people using this corpus to learn Arabic and the Quran. This > will probably remain the heaviest use. But maybe a more significant use > might be that of research. To begin with, you have put us in a position to > discuss the available English translation. The discussion of the translation > will bring the English user closer to the original. A gross example already > in the corpus is the use of the word "umm" as "fundamental" or "basic." > Comparing the way various translators translate this particular usage of the > word "umm" (as opposed to its other use in the sense of "mother") we would > bring the user of the corpus in front of the translator's problem and he > would see how this use of "mother" is metaphorical. > > But a feature would facilitate and even guide users to this kind of > examination of the corpus. We need to be able to get from a particular > translation of a word to the other usages of the word and the significant > differences in the translations of the word--both in that very ayah and > across the entire Quran. We would want a filter of some sort, to help focus > on (1) the differences in translation, (2) the significant differences in > translation, (3) the significantly different usages of that word. > > In any case. There is much more to say. This is an invaluable tool you have > developed. Once again, congratulations. > > Iftikhar > >
