@unpublished{Nassourou2011, author = {Nassourou, Mohamadou}, title = {Assisting Understanding, Retention, and Dissemination of Religious Texts Knowledge with Modeling, and Visualization Techniques: The Case of The Quran}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-55927}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Learning a book in general involves reading it, underlining important words, adding comments, summarizing some passages, and marking up some text or concepts. Once deeper understanding is achieved, one would like to organize and manage her/his knowledge in such a way that, it could be easily remembered and efficiently transmitted to others. In this paper, books organized in terms of chapters consisting of verses, are considered as the source of knowledge to be modeled. The knowledge model consists of verses with their metadata and semantic annotations. The metadata represent the multiple perspectives of knowledge modeling. Verses with their metadata and annotations form a meta-model, which will be published on a web Mashup. The meta-model with linking between its elements constitute a knowledge base. An XML-based annotation system breaking down the learning process into specific tasks, helps constructing the desired meta-model. The system is made up of user interfaces for creating metadata, annotating chapters' contents according to user selected semantics, and templates for publishing the generated knowledge on the Internet. The proposed software system improves comprehension and retention of knowledge contained in religious texts through modeling and visualization. The system has been applied to the Quran, and the result obtained shows that multiple perspectives of information modeling can be successfully applied to religious texts. It is expected that this short ongoing study would motivate others to engage in devising and offering software systems for cross-religions learning.}, subject = {Wissensmanagement}, language = {en} } @unpublished{Nassourou2011, author = {Nassourou, Mohamadou}, title = {Assisting Analysis and Understanding of Quran Search Results with Interactive Scatter Plots and Tables}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-55840}, year = {2011}, abstract = {The Quran is the holy book of Islam consisting of 6236 verses divided into 114 chapters called suras. Many verses are similar and even identical. Searching for similar texts (e.g verses) could return thousands of verses, that when displayed completely or partly as textual list would make analysis and understanding difficult and confusing. Moreover it would be visually impossible to instantly figure out the overall distribution of the retrieved verses in the Quran. As consequence reading and analyzing the verses would be tedious and unintuitive. In this study a combination of interactive scatter plots and tables has been developed to assist analysis and understanding of the search result. Retrieved verses are clustered by chapters, and a weight is assigned to each cluster according to number of verses it contains, so that users could visually identify most relevant areas, and figure out the places of revelation of the verses. Users visualize the complete result and can select a region of the plot to zoom in, click on a marker to display a table containing verses with English translation side by side.}, subject = {Text Mining}, language = {en} } @unpublished{Nassourou2011, author = {Nassourou, Mohamadou}, title = {Using Machine Learning Algorithms for Categorizing Quranic Chaptersby Major Phases of Prophet Mohammad's Messengership}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-66862}, year = {2011}, abstract = {This paper discusses the categorization of Quranic chapters by major phases of Prophet Mohammad's messengership using machine learning algorithms. First, the chapters were categorized by places of revelation using Support Vector Machine and na{\"i}ve Bayesian classifiers separately, and their results were compared to each other, as well as to the existing traditional Islamic and western orientalists classifications. The chapters were categorized into Meccan (revealed in Mecca) and Medinan (revealed in Medina). After that, chapters of each category were clustered using a kind of fuzzy-single linkage clustering approach, in order to correspond to the major phases of Prophet Mohammad's life. The major phases of the Prophet's life were manually derived from the Quranic text, as well as from the secondary Islamic literature e.g hadiths, exegesis. Previous studies on computing the places of revelation of Quranic chapters relied heavily on features extracted from existing background knowledge of the chapters. For instance, it is known that Meccan chapters contain mostly verses about faith and related problems, while Medinan ones encompass verses dealing with social issues, battles…etc. These features are by themselves insufficient as a basis for assigning the chapters to their respective places of revelation. In fact, there are exceptions, since some chapters do contain both Meccan and Medinan features. In this study, features of each category were automatically created from very few chapters, whose places of revelation have been determined through identification of historical facts and events such as battles, migration to Medina…etc. Chapters having unanimously agreed places of revelation were used as the initial training set, while the remaining chapters formed the testing set. The classification process was made recursive by regularly augmenting the training set with correctly classified chapters, in order to classify the whole testing set. Each chapter was preprocessed by removing unimportant words, stemming, and representation with vector space model. The result of this study shows that, the two classifiers have produced useable results, with an outperformance of the support vector machine classifier. This study indicates that, the proposed methodology yields encouraging results for arranging Quranic chapters by phases of Prophet Mohammad's messengership.}, subject = {Koran}, language = {en} } @unpublished{Nassourou2012, author = {Nassourou, Mohamadou}, title = {Towards a Knowledge-Based Learning System for The Quranic Text}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-70003}, year = {2012}, abstract = {In this research, an attempt to create a knowledge-based learning system for the Quranic text has been performed. The knowledge base is made up of the Quranic text along with detailed information about each chapter and verse, and some rules. The system offers the possibility to study the Quran through web-based interfaces, implementing novel visualization techniques for browsing, querying, consulting, and testing the acquired knowledge. Additionally the system possesses knowledge acquisition facilities for maintaining the knowledge base.}, subject = {Wissensbanksystem}, language = {en} } @unpublished{Nassourou2011, author = {Nassourou, Mohamadou}, title = {Computing Generic Causes of Revelation of the Quranic Verses Using Machine Learning Techniques}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-66083}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Because many verses of the holy Quran are similar, there is high probability that, similar verses addressing same issues share same generic causes of revelation. In this study, machine learning techniques have been employed in order to automatically derive causes of revelation of Quranic verses. The derivation of the causes of revelation is viewed as a classification problem. Initially the categories are based on the verses with known causes of revelation, and the testing set consists of the remaining verses. Based on a computed threshold value, a na{\"i}ve Bayesian classifier is used to categorize some verses. After that, using a decision tree classifier the remaining uncategorized verses are separated into verses that contain indicators (resultative connectors, causative expressions…), and those that do not. As for those verses having indicators, each one is segmented into its constituent clauses by identification of the linking indicators. Then a dominant clause is extracted and considered either as the cause of revelation, or post-processed by adding or subtracting some terms to form a causal clause that constitutes the cause of revelation. Concerning remaining unclassified verses without indicators, a naive Bayesian classifier is again used to assign each one of them to one of the existing classes based on features and topics similarity. As for verses that could not be classified so far, manual classification was made by considering each verse as a category on its own. The result obtained in this study is encouraging, and shows that automatic derivation of Quranic verses' generic causes of revelation is achievable, and reasonably reliable for understanding and implementing the teachings of the Quran.}, subject = {Text Mining}, language = {en} } @unpublished{Nassourou2011, author = {Nassourou, Mohamadou}, title = {Design and Implementation of a Model-driven XML-based Integrated System Architecture for Assisting Analysis, Understanding, and Retention of Religious Texts:The Case of The Quran}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-65737}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Learning a book in general involves reading it, underlining important words, adding comments, summarizing some passages, and marking up some text or concepts. Once deeper understanding is achieved, one would like to organize and manage her/his knowledge in such a way that, it could be easily remembered and efficiently transmitted to others. This paper discusses about modeling religious texts using semantic XML markup based on frame-based knowledge representation, with the purpose of assisting understanding, retention, and sharing of knowledge they contain. In this study, books organized in terms of chapters made up of verses are considered as the source of knowledge to model. Some metadata representing the multiple perspectives of knowledge modeling are assigned to each chapter and verse. Chapters and verses with their metadata form a meta-model, which is represented using frames, and published on a web mashup. An XML-based annotation and visualization system equipped with user interfaces for creating static and dynamic metadata, annotating chapters' contents according to user selected semantics, and templates for publishing generated knowledge on the Internet, has been developed. The system has been applied to the Quran, and the result obtained shows that multiple perspectives of information modeling can be successfully applied to religious texts, in order to support analysis, understanding, and retention of the texts.}, subject = {Wissensrepr{\"a}sentation}, language = {en} } @unpublished{Nassourou2011, author = {Nassourou, Mohamadou}, title = {Philosophical and Computational Approaches for Estimating and Visualizing Months of Revelations of Quranic Chapters}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-65784}, year = {2011}, abstract = {The question of why the Quran structure does not follow its chronology of revelation is a recurring one. Some Islamic scholars such as [1] have answered the question using hadiths, as well as other philosophical reasons based on internal evidences of the Quran itself. Unfortunately till today many are still wondering about this issue. Muslims believe that the Quran is a summary and a copy of the content of a preserved tablet called Lawhul-Mahfuz located in the heaven. Logically speaking, this suggests that the arrangement of the verses and chapters is expected to be similar to that of the Lawhul-Mahfuz. As for the arrangement of the verses in each chapter, there is unanimity that it was carried out by the Prophet himself under the guidance of Angel Gabriel with the recommendation of God. But concerning the ordering of the chapters, there are reports about some divergences [3] among the Prophet's companions as to which chapter should precede which one. This paper argues that Quranic chapters might have been arranged according to months and seasons of revelation. In fact, based on some verses of the Quran, it is defendable that the Lawhul-Mahfuz itself is understood to have been structured in terms of the months of the year. In this study, philosophical and mathematical arguments for computing chapters' months of revelation are discussed, and the result is displayed on an interactive scatter plot.}, subject = {Text Mining}, language = {en} }