The Analytical Database of Arabic Poetry will represent an important contribution to the emerging field of digital studies in Arabic philology. The database will include comprehensive data on the vocabulary of early Arabic poetry (6th-8th centuries A.D.) in the form of an electronic dictionary. With the help of the analytical tools of the database, each lexeme of the entire lexical corpus will be assessed in relation to the literary framework of its attestation including information on the genre of the relevant poetic text and on the tribal, chronological and geographical background of its author. Moreover, the database will record in detail the data of textual transmission of the works of early Arabic poetry in the context of Arab-Muslim scholarship of the 8th to 10th centuries. This comprehensive collection of data and its analytical classification will for the first time allow systematic investigation into the process of semantic change in the Arabic language and the development of a philological approach to the language.

A ground-breaking feature of the database results from the possibility of including cross-references to parallel linguistic material provided by inscriptions, papyri and the Qur’ān, which have never been studied in relation to each other. Thus, the Analytical Database of Arabic Poetry promises to become the cornerstone of the common digital platform of the Arabic language, which will bring together several current European projects in the field of digital Arabic philology, including the two ERC funded projects “Glossarium graeco-arabicum” (ERC Ideas Advanced Grant 249431, Cristina D’Ancona, Università di Pisa, Italy, Gerhard Endress, Universität Bochum, Germany) and “Digital Archive for the Study of pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions (DASI)” (ERC-AG-SH5 ERC Advanced Grant 269774-DASI, Alessandra Avanzini, Università di Pisa, Italy) as well as other initiatives, such as the “Safaitic Database Project” (Michael C. A. Macdonald, Oxford University, UK), the “South Arabian Lexicographical Database of the University of Jena” (Peter Stein, Jena, Germany), the “Arabic Papyrology Database” (Andreas Kaplony, LMU München, Germany, Johannes Thomann, Universität Zürich, CH), the “Corpus Coranicum” project (Michael Marx, BBAW, Berlin, Germany) and “Arabic and Latin Glossary” (Dag Nikolaus Hasse, Universität Würzburg, Germany).

Author: Kirill Dmitriev (St. Andrews)