The Flow: From Deep Learning to Digital Analysis of the Ottoman World
Join Dr. Sefer Korkmaz, a doctoral researcher at the University of Bern, for a talk on “The Flow: From Deep-Learning to Digital Analysis of the Ottoman World.” This session explores how machine learning and digital humanities tools are transforming the study of Ottoman Jerusalem’s Shari‘a court records (Sijills), revealing insights into law, society, and legal pluralism in the Ottoman periphery.
About This Event
Project Overview
The Flow examines the sijill records of the Shariʿa courts of Ottoman Jerusalem dating from the 16th and early 17th centuries. Spanning nearly three centuries, these records represent a significant corpus for understanding the legal history of the Ottoman periphery.
The project focuses on customary legal practices (ʿurf) within the broader Ottoman legal framework, contributing to ongoing scholarly debates on how law was interpreted and applied by various actors—judges, litigants, and court officials—and how Ottoman jurisprudential authority shaped the lawmaking process.
Beyond the legal dimension, The Flow investigates how these judicial sources reflect social realities in regions often regarded as peripheral to the Ottoman Empire’s central domains—particularly Palestine. Simultaneously, it pioneers the use of machine-learning-based workflows for processing Arabic and Ottoman Turkish manuscripts.
Objectives
To construct a comprehensive digital dataset of the judicial corpus of Ottoman Jerusalem.
To examine the frequency and characteristics of various case types for contextual legal and social analysis.
To develop Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) models tailored for Arabic and Ottoman Turkish scripts.
To apply Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools for large-scale comparative analysis of court cases.
To deepen the understanding of Jerusalem’s pluralistic legal system, its judicial transformations, and their interactions with social life over time.
About the Speaker
Dr. Sefer Korkmaz
(Doctoral Researcher, University of Bern
Unit for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Societies)
Dr. Sefer Korkmaz is a doctoral researcher at the University of Bern, working on the SNSF & DFG-funded project “The Flow.” His academic focus lies in Islamic law and Ottoman legal history. His current research centers on the Shariʿa court records of Ottoman Jerusalem, where he combines historical analysis with machine-learning methodologies to develop advanced tools for Arabic and Ottoman Turkish text processing.