---
title: "QurSci-Onto — paper by Rashid et al. (2026)"
description: "The authors build QurSci-Onto, a resource with three layers: Ayah Ontology: 194 scientifically relevant verses, each with… 18 references."
authors: ["Ibad-ur-Rehman Rashid", "Junaid Hussain", "Sadam Al-Azani"]
year: 2026
venue: "Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script"
source: "https://aclanthology.org/2026.abjadnlp-1.22/"
doi: "10.18653/v1/2026.abjadnlp-1.22"
licence: "CC BY 4.0 (ACL Anthology)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/rashid-2026-qursci-onto-hierarchical-ontology-dataset/"
---
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# QurSci-Onto: A Hierarchical Ontology and Dataset for Scientific Exegesis in the Quran

**Authors:** [Ibad-ur-Rehman Rashid](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/ibad-ur-rehman-rashid/), [Junaid Hussain](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/junaid-hussain/) and [Sadam Al-Azani](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/sadam-al-azani/) · **Year:** 2026 · **Venue:** [Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/abjadnlp/) ([Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script 2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/abjadnlp/2026/)) · **Publisher:** [Association for Computational Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/association-for-computational-linguistics/) · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0 (ACL Anthology)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/2026.abjadnlp-1.22/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/2026.abjadnlp-1.22.pdf) · [DOI 10.18653/v1/2026.abjadnlp-1.22](https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2026.abjadnlp-1.22) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7140078245)

**Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
Computational resources for the Quran usually store verses as flat text. This discards the ordering and cause-and-effect links that scientific exegesis (Tafsir Ilmi) attributes to phenomena such as embryonic development or the water cycle.

The authors build QurSci-Onto, a resource with three layers:
- **Ayah Ontology:** 194 scientifically relevant verses, each with Arabic text, an English translation, broad categories and topics.
- **Scientific Tafsir Index:** 260 exegetical records that point to exact pages in two exegesis works.
- **Scientific Ontology:** 8 topics broken into 73 nodes.

Each topic is modelled either as a process, with ordered stages joined by relations like transforms_into, or as a static entity built around a central root concept. The ontology was extracted with LLM assistance and then checked by experts. Fine-grained node mappings cover only a subset of verses.

In a small retrieval experiment, adding ontology-derived keywords and summaries to verses improved NDCG in most categories. The resource offers citation-backed grounding for Arabic RAG and QA, a domain where hallucinated answers are unacceptable.

## Key points
- **Sources:** verses were selected from the Ayah Index of Tafsir al-Ayat al-Kawniyah (El-Naggar, 2001; 4 volumes). Exegesis is also linked from I'jaz al-'Ilmi fi al-Quran (1 volume). English translations are by Mustafa Khattab.
- **Schema:** cross-layer pointers (hasTafsirID, scientific topic/node IDs) connect the layers. Nodes are typed as Process (stages ordered via LogicalOrder) or Entity. Example: the Big Bang sequence runs Ratq → Fatq → Musi'un.
- **Retrieval results (NDCG, baseline → ontology-enhanced):**

  | Category | Baseline | Enhanced | Gain |
  |---|---|---|---|
  | Oceanography | 0.541 | 0.775 | +43.1% |
  | Embryology | 0.501 | 0.660 | +31.9% |
  | Hydrology | 0.656 | 0.838 | +27.7% |
  | Cosmology | 0.733 | 0.908 | +23.8% |
  | General | — | — | +7.2% |
  | Bee Biology | 1.000 | 1.000 | no change |

- **Limitations:** each category has only 3–5 queries. The abstract claims support for multi-hop reasoning, but the authors' own limitations section says the evaluation does not yet exploit the ontology's relational structure for this.
- **Release:** the dataset, ontology files and retrieval code are on GitHub (Ebad-urRehman/QurSci-Onto).

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

- [King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/king-fahd-university-of-petroleum-and-minerals/) — University, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia · 52 works · 4,666 citations

Also on the byline: [Hazara University](https://ror.org/018y22094).

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## Cite

Cite as: Ibad-ur-Rehman Rashid, Junaid Hussain and Sadam Al-Azani. 2026. QurSci-Onto: A Hierarchical Ontology and Dataset for Scientific Exegesis in the Quran. Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{rashid2026qursci,
  title = {{QurSci-Onto: A Hierarchical Ontology and Dataset for Scientific Exegesis in the Quran}},
  author = {Ibad-ur-Rehman Rashid, Junaid Hussain and Sadam Al-Azani},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.18653/v1/2026.abjadnlp-1.22},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2026.abjadnlp-1.22}
}
```

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- [next → Qwen-AgentWorld: Language World Models for General Agents](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/zuo-2026-qwen-agentworld-language-world/)
- [↑ back to papers of 2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2026/page/40/)

## References

18 references, 5 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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*Updated 1 November 2026*