Research project Prophetic Relics in Transformation: A Large-Scale, AI-Augmented Genealogical Discourse Analysis
How have Muslim views of the Prophet Muhammad’s relics changed over more than a thousand years? This project combines Islamic Studies with generative AI to analyse large collections of Arabic texts and trace changing ideas about relics, religious authority and legitimate Islamic practice.
Objects associated with the Prophet Muhammad, such as strands of hair, clothing, weapons and footprints, have played important roles in Muslim religious life and in claims to religious and political authority. At the same time, their status and proper use have been debated throughout Islamic history.
The project traces these debates from around 850 to the present through large collections of Arabic texts. We investigate what has changed, what has remained surprisingly stable, and how arguments about relics have been connected to wider struggles over religious authority and the definition of legitimate Islam.
The project also explores new methods for humanities research. Generative AI is used to locate, organise and extract relevant material from collections far larger than researchers could process manually. The interpretation remains the work of the researchers. In this way, the project combines traditional critical and historically contextualised scholarship with new digital methods.
From early Islam to the digital age
The project is divided into three parts covering different periods in Islamic history.
The first examines the classical period, approximately 850–1800, using sources ranging from hadith collections and historical works to legal and theological writings. The second examines Islamic reform movements from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century and asks how ideas about modernity, progress and religious reform affected attitudes towards prophetic relics. The third turns to contemporary debates. Here we study large online collections of religious rulings as well as material from digital platforms such as YouTube to investigate how Muslims today debate relics, religious authenticity and authority.
AI as a tool for humanities research
A second major aim is methodological. Recent advances in large language models make it possible to search and process very large collections of Arabic texts in ways that were previously impossible.
AI does not replace scholarly interpretation in the project. Instead, it helps researchers identify sources and locate relevant passages in extensive collections of material. The researchers then critically verify, contextualise and interpret the results using established methods in the humanities.
The project will develop reproducible methods and open tools that can also be useful to researchers working with other large collections of historical and contemporary texts.