Qur'anic Text: Toward a Retrieval System The feeling that Islamic literature deserves and requires an Islamic classification scheme has been met with widespread dissatisfaction among information scientists in the Muslim world. However, indexing the classical Qur'anic exegeses and Hadith collections still requires an initial operation list of both subject headings of both Qur'anic and Hadith texts. The book is based on an investigation of the terminology in the Qur'anic text for the purpose of designing a retrieval system. It makes use of conceptual verses and words as partial examples for the required task. These examples are used to test the factors affecting the design at both the documentary and computation levels. At the documentary level, the examples are used to examine the effects of Qur'anic terminology on the commentators and to see how it affects the performance of the retrieval system. It also examines the characteristics of the Qur'anic vocabulary, against the problems known to be encountered in constructing an efficient retrieval system. On the computation level, the examples are used to examine the possibility of the Qur'an in its stylistic form being processed by the computer. As a result, the study offers guidelines and recommendations with two examples for the natural and social sciences as a model for constructing a retrieval system for Qur'anic text. Hani M. 'Atiyah was born in Egypt in 1961. He received his BS in Physics from Cairo University in 1984, his MSC in Physics from Dundee University in Scotland in 1989, and his PhD in Islamic Informatics from University of Wales in 1991. This book is based on his dissertation for his PhD. He has worked as an assistant professor at the International Islamic University in Malaysia and is presently an assistant professor at Imam Muhammad ibn Sa’ud Islamic University. He has written a number of papers, has reviewed a selection of books in the field of Islamic informatics, and has had articles published in various academic journals. Some of his publications include: ‘Elements of the Theory of Knowledge in the Qur’an’ and ‘Classification schemes of Early Muslim Scholars.’

Paperback: 978-1-56564-213-3 / Price: $14.95 eBook: 978-1-56564-875-3 / Open Access Size: 6x9 inches Pages: 288 Year of Publication: 1996