Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East199- Digital Humanities for Arabic Islamic Studies

In Digital Humanities for Arabic and Islamic Studies, Maxim Romanov proposes a bold vision for bringing Arabic and Islamic Studies fully into the digital age. Building on the vast OpenITI corpus—over a billion words spanning 1,400 years—Romanov demonstrates how computational tools can illuminate long-term cultural and linguistic developments across the Islamic world. Through accessible case studies on terminology tracing, genre modeling, and linguistic change, the book shows how digital methods expand rather than replace traditional scholarship. Romanov argues that the field’s digital transformation must be led from within—by scholars who understand its texts, traditions, and questions. This book provides both a roadmap and an invitation to rethink how the Arabic and Islamic heritage can be studied in the twenty-first century.