Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!usc!wuarchive!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!naim
From: naim@eecs.nwu.edu (Naim Abdullah)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam
Subject: Re: Machine readable Quran
Message-ID: <1680@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 29 Nov 89 07:47:05 GMT
Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu
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Approved: naim@eecs.nwu.edu (Naim Abdullah)


The following note appeared on the Islam mailing list last summer
when Farzin Deravi had asked about this topic:
======================================================================
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 89 17:21:08 EDT
From: Abdelsalam Heddaya <heddaya@BU-CS.BU.EDU>
Subject: Request for Machine readable version of the Holy Quran.

Farzin,

Salaam.  Wilson Bishai, lecturer of Arabic at Harvard, has entered the
Qur'aan (with diacritics <tashkyl>) on the Apple II in the early 80's.
You might want to get in touch with him to find out if he can
distribute it.  He was waiting for Al-Azhar to authenticate his copy.

His address is:

Bishai, Wilson (Feb 89): 617-495-4057.  Semitic Museum, 6 Divinity
	St., Cambridge, MA 02138.

Best of luck, and please keep me informed of the results of your
efforts.

--Abdelsalam Heddaya (Solom)	heddaya@cs.bu.edu	617-353-8922
  CS Dept., Boston Univ.,	111 Cummington St.,	Boston, MA 02215
========================================================================

If anybody else knows about any machine readable copies of the Quran,
please do post to this group.

I know that there are machine readable copies of the hadith (sayings
of the Prophet (peace be upon him)). Somebody in London had entered
the hadith into a database program on an IBM PC. I saw a demo of it: you
entered some keywords and it would retrieve all hadith on that topic.
This whole system was for sale and it was demo'ed for the late Gen. Ziaul Haq
of Pakistan. He was suitably impressed and ordered the Ministry of Religious
Affairs to buy a couple of copies.

     Naim