What’s in the book?

Three Chapters

1. A Pitch for the DH
2. Digital Avatars and Metaobjects
3. Computational Inquiries

In short, this book asks: What does it mean for our field when the entire library becomes a vademecum—something that, quite literally, “goes with me” everywhere? What new possibilities and responsibilities does this transformation bring?

Tracing Concepts over time with The Secret Weapon

“Why would he? These weren’t ‘real’ books. Only books needed to be cited.”

Not the first revolution, not the last…

Unlike classicists — who have been digitizing Greek and Latin texts since the 1980s — scholars of Arabic and Islamic studies had almost nothing to do with the appearance of our digital corpus.

“A scan through recent academic publications can easily leave the impression that our digital corpus does not exist at all, or if it does, it is of relatively little consequence.” — Travis Zadeh, 2016

The Library That Arrived Unexpected

A treasure without a map. A library without a methodology.
A field that found itself unprepared.

What do we do when the entire library becomes a vademecum?!

OpenITI, v. 2023.1.8 — “clean”

But a corpus is also a historical source

• Survival bias — what reached us
• Editorial / digitization bias — what modern scholars chose to publish
• Uneven genre and chronological coverage

Source criticism begins with the instrument.

The Proposition: Four Domains

Each domain depends entirely on the success of the preceding ones — no shortcuts.

Digital Pragmatism: born from necessity, not ideology

It is truly sustainable only if you can do it alone.

• — Bare minimum technologies: limit without compromising necessary complexity
• — Learn them deeply: no dependency on external technical support
• — Automate repetition: your time is better spent elsewhere

“Simple, but not simpler.”
“Laziness is the engine of the progress.”

Digital Pragmatism: born from necessity, not ideology

It is truly sustainable only if you can do it alone.

• — Bare minimum technologies: limit without compromising necessary complexity
• — Learn them deeply: no dependency on external technical support
• — Automate repetition: your time is better spent elsewhere

“Simple, but not simpler.”
“Laziness is the engine of the progress.”

Case Study 1: Tracing Term Usage

Case Study 2. Modeling Textual Typology

1. [B] Biographical type (tarājim): mostly collections of biographies
2. [E] Exegetical type: interpretations of the Qurʾān (tafsīr)
3. [G] Graeco-Arabic (“Greek-esque”) type (yūnāniyyāt): translations from Greek and works on the development of Greek philosophy in Arabic (falsafat, predominantly Aristotelian)
4. [H] Historical type (tawārīḫ): mainly chronicles
5. [F] Legal type (fiqh): a broad variety of legal texts
6. [L] Linguistic type: a broad variety of grammatical, rhetorical, and lexicographical texts (balāġat, naḥw, maʿājim luġawiyyat)
7. [M] Medical type (ṭibb): mainly texts on Galenic medicine
8. [P] Poetic type (šiʿr): mainly collections of poetry (dīwāns)
9. [K] “Scholastic-theological” type: works of kalām
10. [Ḥ] Tradition-based type: collections of ḥadīṯ

Case Study 3. Charting Linguistic Evolution

• The pre-classical period lasts from the appearance of Islam until the end of the Umayyad period (c. 1–132/622–750).
• The classical period corresponds roughly to the ʿAbbāsid period (132–656/750–1258).
• The postclassical period encompasses the reign of the Mamlūks (648–923/1250–1517) and most of that of the Ottomans.
• The modern period (from Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1213/1798), extending to the present day.

A model the field built impressionistically

What if we ask the written tradition itself?

The obvious casualty: the Mamluk centuries

Does the corpus itself see a coherent middle period?

Two lenses on change

Major periods

• The early macroperiod (622–1200)
• The middle macroperiod (1200–1540)
• The late macroperiod (1540–1980)

The middle macroperiod (c. 1200–1540)

• Thematic profiles isolate it as a distinct period
• Stylometric profiles often attach it to the early macroperiod
• The language evolves slower than the written tradition: new distinct themes, but older language

Two clocks: themes shift faster than language.

A different macrohistory of the written tradition

• Early: c. 622–1200
• Middle: c. 1200–1540
• Late: c. 1540–1980
• Boundaries are transition zones, not event dates

Second witness: 8,800 authors

Two transitions: 1200–1300 and 1500–1600

• Westward movement from Iraq and Iran begins before the Mongol conquest
• Andalusi scholars move east as Christian expansion advances in Iberia

Two transitions: 1200–1300 and 1500–1600

• The rise of the Ottoman Empire marks the emergence of a Turco-Arabic world under Ottoman control
• and the parallel development of an Indo-Iranian sphere.

Two independent witnesses

Different biases. Different assumptions. Similar macro-boundaries.

Three long cultural regimes (macroperiods)

1. The early Iraqi-Iranian  ·  c. 622–1200
2. The middle Syrian-Egyptian  ·  c. 1200–1540
3. The late Turco-Indian  ·  c. 1540–1980

(with discernable sub-periods inside each)

Periods are also places

• Traditional periodization assumes universality
• Computational periodization demonstrates that language and textual production are aligned in time with changing cultural geography *

Each period gets not just a name, but also a map.

(* to be redone on the EIS1600 data: 600,000 bios > c. 130,000 individuals)

What changes if we accept this model?

• The Mamluk centuries become a coherent middle period, not the beginning of decline
• 1258 is recontextualized as an event within a longer transition (1200–1300)
• c. 1540 emerges as a major structural break (essentially, the end of the Mamluk period)
• Chronology & geography become part of the same explanation

Afterword: farḍ al-kifāyaŧ

A communal duty in Islamic law: if enough members of a community fulfill it, the rest are absolved. If all neglect it, the entire community is accountable.