About
Al-Bazra Initiative for Heritage and AI
An initiative for Arabic and Islamic cultural heritage and trustworthy AI. This page sets out its purpose and values, and states plainly what has been achieved so far and what has not.
Mission and vision
Mission
To open up Arabic and Islamic cultural heritage with trustworthy AI, to strengthen the Arabic language in AI systems, to help institutions run AI securely and under their own control, and to train the next generation, without distorting this heritage, appropriating it or taking it away from those who preserve it.
Vision
Anyone who meets Arabic and Islamic cultural heritage through AI can trace every statement back to its source and to those who keep it, in good Arabic, on systems that institutions themselves control.
Our approach
The Initiative starts from questions familiar in information security, asked of every piece of information: has it remained unchanged, can its origin be established, and can it be verified? Editors of texts have long asked the same questions, and the spread of language models has made them more pressing. Hence the line that guides the Initiative's work: from information security to textual integrity.
The Initiative does not compete with the institutions that preserve this heritage and claims no authority to interpret it. It aims to serve them with tools and standards that anyone can examine.
Arabic first
Arabic comes first in the Initiative's work because it is the language of the sources and of the scholars who study them. Arabic therefore leads on this website; an English version with the same content accompanies it, and legally required pages are also provided in German.
Putting Arabic first is not a claim of ownership. Scholars of Persian, Turkish, Malay and many other backgrounds contributed to the heritage written in Arabic script, and the Initiative serves that heritage as a whole, without assigning it to any one people or country.
When we speak of Arabic and Islamic heritage, rather than Arab heritage, we mean what was written in Arabic or in Arabic script, wherever its authors lived.
Values
Six values govern the Initiative's work, and each has a practical consequence:
| Value | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Trusteeship (الأمانة) | Sources are not altered, smoothed over or reinterpreted. |
| Documentation (التوثيق) | Every statement, figure and link states its method, its date and its level of confidence. |
| Link back to the source (الإحالة إلى المصدر) | Manuscript images stay with the holding institution and are accessed only through IIIF. |
| Sovereignty (السيادة) | Institutions and states keep control over operation, data and the choice of models. |
| Methodological modesty (التواضع المنهجي) | Limits are published before results are announced. |
| Neutrality (الحياد) | No side is taken between states, schools of law or schools of creed. |
The name
The Initiative bears the name of its founder, following a widespread custom in the Arab world of naming initiatives and bodies after their founders. In Latin script the name is always written Al-Bazra, with the article; the scholarly ALA-LC romanisation would be al-Bazrah.
The name says who started the Initiative, not who decides on its content. The plan is for an Academic Advisory Board to hold a right of veto over the Charter, the methods and the publication of figures, and for a Supervisory Board to oversee management under an independent chair who is not the founder of the Initiative. For the same reason, this website puts work and methods before persons.
Where the Initiative stands today
The Initiative would rather state its limits than overstate its progress. This is where it stands today.
What exists
- The guardrails and values published on this website, which bind all of the Initiative's work.
- arabianscript.com, an existing platform operated by a commercial company belonging to the founder of the Initiative, on which the application of some of the Initiative's principles can be examined. The platform is not one of the Initiative's projects.
What is in progress
In progress The draft Charter.
In progress A methods report on the manuscript record search and on name matching, stating the measurement run, its date, the sample and the limits.
What is planned
In progress A public comment period on the Charter before it is adopted, from 15 September 2026 to 10 November 2026.
Planned The Citation Fidelity Standard and an open test set, within the Arabic Language and AI programme.
Planned The Academic Advisory Board and the Supervisory Board. Members will be named only with their written consent.
Planned Rules on conflicts of interest and independence, and an external review of published figures.
What is still open
Open Legal form and seat: the Initiative does not yet have legal personality of its own. At this stage, support for the Initiative is therefore limited to scholarly contributions, such as corrections and comments on the Charter.
Open Funding: the principles of funding and the upper limit for any single funder have not yet been set.
Open Scholarly review: no specialist in philology has yet been named to review publications. Until then, nothing that requires such review is published.
Open Partnerships: there is no cooperation agreement with any institution yet.