DIGITAL HUMANITIES IN ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION STUDIES: MAPPING CLASSICAL KNOWLEDGE THROUGH NETWORK ANALYSIS

Abstract

The rapid expansion of digital humanities has created new opportunities for reinterpreting classical Islamic scholarship through computational methodologies capable of addressing the scale and complexity of pre-modern textual corpora. Classical Islamic civilization produced vast interconnected networks of scholars, texts, and intellectual traditions, yet conventional historiographical methods struggle to capture their structural patterns comprehensively. This study aims to develop a network analysis framework for mapping relational structures within Islamic intellectual history and demonstrating the analytical value of digital humanities in Islamic civilization studies. A mixed qualitative–computational design was employed, integrating hermeneutic textual analysis with graph-based modeling derived from biographical dictionaries, transmission chains, and citation records. The findings reveal that classical Islamic knowledge is characterized by dense intellectual clusters, central scholarly authorities, and geographically shifting hubs that align with known historical developments. Network visualizations also uncover previously overlooked contributors and relational pathways, offering new insights into knowledge transmission across centuries. The study concludes that network analysis provides a rigorous and scalable methodological extension to classical Islamic studies, enhancing interpretive depth while enabling large-scale structural analysis. The proposed framework demonstrates the potential of digital humanities to transform the study of Islamic intellectual history and supports future development of computational tools for Islamic studies.