Courts&Canons (CnC) is a suite of AI and other data science tools that facilitate research and insights into Islamic law and the motivating values behind it, across space and time. These tools allow researchers to organize and combine sources for legal canons, fatwās, and reports of early cases with key biographies of jurists and judges who produced them on a single online platform from all schools of Islamic law, with a focus on Islam’s generative ‘founding period’ (1st–5th/7th–11th centuries), and they also facilitate identifying and ‘meme-mapping’ canons, forging connections between canons and between other named entities (authors, titles, places), and collaborative research among scholars seeking to answer major questions in Islamic law and history. We experiment with ways in which the data science tools we are developing can aid in that research.
By Robert Shepard* This report documents insights from my tagging and review of Islamic legal canons in the SHARIAsource Canons Tagging Tool, focusing on the ranges #5330–5655 and #3457–5251 (with … Continue reading Data Report Two: Analysis of Islamic Legal Canons (#3457–5655)
By Robert Shepard* Throughout my analysis of canons #2700–2800, several notable patterns emerged in terms of the types of canons, tags applied, and their relevance to Islamic legal principles. Here, … Continue reading Data Report One: Trends in Islamic Legal Canons from SHARIAsource Lab Data
By Summar Khan* The data collection project I was assigned is canon tagging. As the course has come to an end, I have made 291 total edits in SHARIAsource. Throughout … Continue reading Lab Report
By Salah-Dean Satouri* As technology continues to evolve, artificial intelligence and machine learning will undoubtedly play a central role in advancing the study of Islamic law. This report will (1) … Continue reading Data Collection Report
By Hussain Awan* Making edits on nearly 350 canons over the course of the semester and reaching a net edit count of 471 has deepened my insights into the tagging … Continue reading Data Collection Report
By Hassan Ali* The legal system of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan encompasses a mixture of secular and Islamic law. There remains a distinct difference between its secular courts and … Continue reading Islamic and Common Law Principles in Pakistan: An Analysis of Unstated Influences
By Emma Westhoff* My data collection project consisted of matching variants for canons 5258–5358. The kinds and degree of variation within this dataset were interesting to me. Some canons were … Continue reading Data Collection Report
By Intisar Rabb This month, the Islamic Law Blog publishes student essays from the Fall 2024 “Islamic Law Lab” and the related course on Islamic Law at Harvard Law School, … Continue reading Experiments in Counting Islamic Legal Canons: Student Essays from the Islamic Law Lab
By SHARIAsource Lab* The SHARIAsource Courts & Canons (CnC) Annotation Suite leverages data science tools to explore questions in Islamic law and society historically through mapping the controversies and values … Continue reading Experiments in Mapping Islamic Legal Canons: Reports from the SHARIAsource Lab (Fall 2024)
By SHARIAsource Lab* The SHARIAsource Courts & Canons (CnC) Annotation Suite leverages data science tools to explore questions in Islamic law and society historically through mapping the controversies and values … Continue reading Experiments in Annotating Islamic Legal Canons
