Ontology-Supported Approach for Judging Hadith Isnad

Abstract

Isnad is the chain of narrators attesting to the historical authenticity of a particular hadith. It helps differentiate between the accepted and rejected hadiths. In this paper we develop an ontology-based approach to support the process of judging isnad. The approach applies the rules followed by hadith isnad scholars and depends on the hadith domain specific ontology built specially to represent narrators' knowledge. We implement a prototype of the approach which is used to automatically generate a suggested judgment of hadith isnad. The accuracy of the approach in judging has reached 80% and is evaluated through hadith examples and comparisons with hadith scholars' judgments.