What are some computational tools for isnad or matn analysis of hadith?

Question

Analyzing the chain (isnad) of hadith is essential for authentication. Comparison of the content (matn) of the hadiths can also be very helpful. I am looking for any computational tools that may exist for tracking chains of narrations or keeping up with all the different narrators, discontinuities, etc for different hadiths. Additionally, having a tool that could easily compare hadith contents would be helpful. I guess I could make my own for content analysis, I think, based on sunnah.con's API (IIRC).

Anything and everything that could be helpful would be appreciated! Even a family tree of narrators would be nice.

Answer 1

After some further investigation (with input from the comment above), here are my preliminary results.

Resources:

• Islamweb

• Muslim Scholars Database

People currently working on computational hadith analysis:

• Irene Kirchner, PhD student at Georgetown University
• Mairaj Syed, professor at UC Davis
• Others not listed that are included from the papers below

Relevant Academic Papers:

• "A Quantitative Analysis of Schacht's Hadith Backgrowth Theory"
• “Isnad Al-Hadith Computational Authentication: An Analysis Hierarchically"
• Comparative Study of Machine Learning Approach on Malay Translated Hadith Text Classification based on Sanad
• "Muhadith: A Cloud Based Distributed Expert System for Classification of Ahadith"
• "Computational and natural language processing based studies of hadith literature: a survey"
• "A Rich Arabic WordNet Resource for Al-Hadith Al-Shareef"
• “A Review and Analysis for A Hierarchy from Computational Hadith to Isnad Authenticity Examination”
• "Al-Hadith Text Classifier (pdf)