The Digital Orientalist

www.islamwissenschaft.unibe.ch/e101652/e784...

📢 Call for Participation: Transcribathon on Ottoman Arabic Court Registers
Our contributor Ilyes Mechentel (@unibe.ch) is organizing a transcribathon dedicated to Arabic sources. If you are interested, please contact mohamed.mechentel@unibe.ch !

📅 20 Feb 2026
🏛️ University Bern & Online

Link below⬇️

The BADR Project (7th–21st c.) – A TEI-Based Approach to Premodern Islamic Texts This article was written by guest contributor Adrien de Jarmy (University of Strasbourg) and Clarck Junior Membourou Moimecheme (Sorbonne Nouvelle University). The author bio is below. The BADR Pro…

digitalorientalist.com/2026/02/03/t...

In our new blog post, Adrien de Jarmy ( @unistra.fr ) and Clarck Junior Membourou Moimecheme ( @sorbonnenouvelle.bsky.social ) introduce the BADR Project “Writing and Memory of the Battle of Badr (7th–21st c.)”, which uses TEI-XML, relational database, and quantitative visualization tools.

Link⬇️

Georgian-Persian Illuminated Historical Documents from K.Kekelidze Georgian National Centre of Manuscripts The digitization of Georgian-Persian illuminated documents represents an important and urgent cultural and research desideratum. These rare manuscripts remain exceptional, fundamental sources for t…

Georgian-Persian Illuminated Historical Documents from K.Kekelidze Georgian National Centre of Manuscripts
🔗 digitalorientalist.com/2023/09/22/g...

Persian Illuminated Historical Documents of Safavid Period from Georgian Depositories
🔗 digitalorientalist.com/2022/12/23/g...

Medieval Georgian Manuscripts of Shahnameh Translations with Miniatures at the National Centre of  Manuscripts  of  Georgia (“Rostomiani”) This is a post by Helen Giunashvili | George Tsereteli Institute of Oriental Studies/Ilia State University  The Georgian manuscript tradition and book art have a 16-century-long history. Their orig…

Medieval Georgian Manuscripts of Shahnameh Translations with Miniatures at the National Centre of Manuscripts of Georgia (“Rostomiani”)
🔗 digitalorientalist.com/2025/02/21/m...

Digitized Examples of the 17th-century Georgian-Persian Illuminated Historical Documents from Georgian Repositories This is a guest post by Helen Giunashvili | George Tsereteli Institute of Oriental Studies/Ilia State University  Introduction In the 16th-18th centuries, under conditions of the incorporation…

Digitized Examples of the 17th-century Georgian-Persian Illuminated Historical Documents from Georgian Repositories
🔗 digitalorientalist.com/2024/09/27/d...

Over the years, Helen Giunaishvili (Ilia State University) has written four posts on the digitization of Georgian and Persian manuscripts preserved at Georgia’s Korneli Kekelidze Georgian National Centre of Manuscripts.

Read more on our blog ⬇️

Sinhala Manuscripts at Wellcome Collection: Collaborative Practice and Cultural Heritage Over the last few years, a collaborative project has been developing between the Sinhala Buddhist organisations the International Centre for Theravada Buddhism (ICTB) UK and Paramaththa Foundation …

New post:
🔗 digitalorientalist.com/2026/01/30/s...

Adrian's post in 2021:
🔗 digitalorientalist.com/2021/12/17/l...

Our latest blog post by Adrian Plau presents the digitization project of Sinhala and Pali manuscripts at the Wellcome Collection. The project uses TEI for cataloguing and aims to be the Sri Lankan equivalent of Fihrist for Islamicate manuscripts and SAMHiTA for South Asian manuscripts.

Link below⬇️

Advanced #HTR for #Arabic significantly enhances Arabic #codicology. By automating the transcription of diverse scripts it allows us to analyze material features and scribal habits. Also, greater digital legibility means deeper insights into the physical and intellectual history of #manuscript.🔎

At the Dawn of Digital Studies on Arabic Script in France As Dominique Stutzmann points out in an article for the renowned French media outlet L’Histoire in 2017, paleography has undergone a “digital revolution” over the past ten years. The contribution o…

Part 1: digitalorientalist.com/2024/12/05/a...

Part 2: digitalorientalist.com/2025/04/22/a...

For #TBT this week, we’re revisiting Ilyes Mechentel’s (@unibe.ch ) two-part posts on the research history of Handwritten Text Recognition for Arabic texts in France. The posts survey past and ongoing research projects, including Callfront, Kraken, CALFA, and other research initiatives.

Link below⬇️

Le travail de l'ErC Langarchiv, dirigé par @camillelefebvre.bsky.social (EHESS/CNRS, IMAF) et plus particulièrement l'engagement dans la diffusion des connaissances sur les acteurs africains par Wikipedia sont à l'honneur dans ce billet :

Wikipedia as an Open Access Tool for Restituting Knowledge on African Past The Langarchiv project, officially titled “Language as Archive: European Linguistics and the Social History of the Sahara and Sahel in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century,” is an ambi…

digitalorientalist.com/2026/01/27/w...

In our new post, @transcrireada.bsky.social introduces the work of the Langarchiv project at IMAF Paris, which trains graduate students to write Wikipedia articles on African intellectuals and historical sources, addressing the encyclopedia's uneven representation of African history.

Link below ⬇️

私が大会委員長を務めました、令和7年5月開催の『The Digital Orientalist @digitalorientalist.bsky.social 』誌主催国際会議「AI and the Digital Humanities for the Study of Asia, Africa, and Oceania」のプロシーデイングス無料Web公開が進んでいます。今回は、神戸大学の清原萌歌先生による「Suggesting a Language-Specific Gender Perspective for AI Translation Research」です!

In our latest blog post, Moeka Kiyohara (University of East Anglia) discusses the relationship between gender-specific speech styles (女ことば and 男ことば) in Japanese and English-to-Japanese machine translation.

Read more on our blog:
🔗 digitalorientalist.com/2026/01/23/s...

and with it, your reminder that you can write for the #DO as guest contributor any time!

We want to publish your work! All info here digitalorientalist.com/submit-your-...

AABC – African Alphabets of the Bayreuth Cluster This is a post by our guest contributors, Ulrich Rebstock and Marvin Müller The application AABC (African Alphabets of the Bayreuth Cluster) was developed for desktop devices and mobiles to provide…

digitalorientalist.com/2022/01/21/a...

#tbt #otd 2022: a #guestpost by Ulrich Rebstock and Marvin Müller, introducing the AABC – African Alphabets of the Bayreuth Cluster, an application to provide a common linguistic base for all kinds of communication and transfer of information about African vernacular affairs

Check it out 👇

From Text to Map: A Reproducible Geocoding Pipeline for Ottoman Studies This paper presents a computational pipeline for working with spatial data in Ottoman Turkish, from extracting place names via named-entity recognition (NER) to geocoding and, finally, mapping topo…

🔗 digitalorientalist.com/2026/01/20/f...

Our latest blog post by Enes Yılandiloğlu presents a computational pipeline for Ottoman Turkish spatial data. From extracting place names with NER to mapping toponyms, Enes highlights hurdles like the absence of punctuation and the complexities of geographic disambiguation.

Link below⬇️

#OnThisDay
On 2024 Jan 19, Maddalena Poli @madpoli.bsky.social shared with us several new online resources and databases for the study of ancient Chinese manuscripts, including 戰國竹簡全文資料庫, 中國古代簡帛字形辭例數據庫 , 開放古文字字型庫, and 漢語多功能字型庫.

Read more:
🔗 digitalorientalist.com/2024/01/19/o...

Our latest blog post summarizes the proceedings of The Digital Orientalist’s Virtual Conference 2025. This year’s materials include both written papers and video recordings!

Find out more: 🔗 digitalorientalist.com/2026/01/16/a...

#onthisday
Following up Zach Butler's new post for us yesterday, a year ago, in his post on January 14th 2025, Zach introduced to us Apatosaurus, a tool created by David Flood (Harvard) for creating, editing, visualizing, and analyzing digital apparatus.

🔗 digitalorientalist.com/2025/01/14/a...

@labhd-ilc.bsky.social

In our latest blog post, Zach Butler guides us through Marimo, a tool similar to Jupyter Notebooks and Google Colab, but one that can be saved and executed directly as Python files!

Find out more on our website:
🔗 digitalorientalist.com/2026/01/13/m...
#digitalhumanities #python

The #DO was started with the idea of brining to a wide audience developments and topics in the #DH worlds of Asian, N. African and Middle Eastern fields. It is currently the only platform that does so, as open-access resource.

Write for us!

In today’s post, Raúl Cervera Álvarez (Universitat de Barcelona) introduces the REDIF Database, an ongoing project that allows users to learn about and research different agents of the Hispanic Monarchy across the globe.

🔗 www.ub.edu/redif/
🔗 digitalorientalist.com/2026/01/09/t...