Academic works by Clément Salah
Mémoire de master 2 sous la direction du Pr. Mathieu Tillier (Sorbonne-Université), 2018.
Special Issues by Clément Salah
Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 2024
Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques, 2024
Papers — Islamic Law by Clément Salah
Arabica, 2024
Based on the close examination of 32 manuscripts produced in Kairouan between the 9th and the 11t... more Based on the close examination of 32 manuscripts produced in Kairouan between the 9th and the 11th centuries, this article reassesses the content and function of their paratext and interrogates some diagnostic features of their scripts and page layout. In the first part, we demonstrate that some dated notes can refer to auditions and readings that occurred decades before the production of the manuscripts on which they appear, and therefore cannot be used as termini ante quem for dating them. In the second part, we discuss some key palaeographic parameters for a better understanding of Ifrīqī scripts, their origin, and their development, with a view to establishing a set of reliable criteria for a more accurate dating and contextualisation of this little-known material.
Asiatiche Studien - Études Asiatiques, 2024
Abstract. The establishment of doctrinal schools of law from the 4th/10th century onwards led jur... more Abstract. The establishment of doctrinal schools of law from the 4th/10th century onwards led jurists to undertake a process of harmonizing their legal doctrines. Within the Mālikī maḏhab, the opinion qualified as mašhūr appears from then on as the one possessing the highest degree of authority. The contours of this notion, however, are not clearly defined and have largely evolved over the centuries. This article focuses on the period of introduction and emergence of mašhūr in Mālikī legal literature, from the mid-4th/10th to the mid-6th/12th century. By examining twenty-five Mālikī works and analyzing a dozen occurrences of the mašhūr, we show that it is a legal tool that bears witness to the evolution of Mālik from a legal community of interpretation into a genuine school of law. By focusing on Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s (d. 463/1071) use of the mašhūr – from whom nine occurrences taken from his Kāfī are translated in the appendix – we finally highlight that this tool serves both to recognise and to build up the legal authority of Ibn al-Qāsim (d. 191/806), one of the disciples of Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/795), to the detriment of his contemporaries in a context of profound recomposition of all forms of authority in the Muslim West.
Islamic Law and Society, 2023
Abstract. Although recognized as an important legal authority in the formative period of Mālikī l... more Abstract. Although recognized as an important legal authority in the formative period of Mālikī legal doctrine (2nd-3rd/8th-9th century), Ašhab b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (d. 204/820) is portrayed in narrative sources after the 4th/10th century as a scholar who diverged from or even contradicted the master’s doctrine, Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/795). This article examines Ašhab’s divergence and independency through the analysis of seven anecdotes consigned in the Mālikī biographical literature between the 4th/10th and 6th/12th centuries. By placing these anecdotes in their political, social and doctrinal contexts of writing we emphasize that: 1. Ašhab’s divergence is a historical construction that is 2. the corollary of the evolution of Mālikī legal doctrine between the 3rd/9th and 6th/12th centuries. In fine, we show that an interconnection exists between the biographical tradition built on Ašhab and the evolution of the Mālikī maḏhab (doctrinal school of law).
Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques, 2022
Abstract. The Qayrawānī scholar Asad b. al-Furāt (d. 213/828) is regarded as an authentic Mālikī ... more Abstract. The Qayrawānī scholar Asad b. al-Furāt (d. 213/828) is regarded as an authentic Mālikī jurist at the origin of one of the first compilations of the teachings of the Egyptian disciples of Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/705): al-Asadiyya. Rather, the manuscripts in the Kairouan-Raqqāda collection mentioning his name suggest that he served as a cornerstone of the ḥanafī networks in Ifrīqiya. We show in this article that Asad b. al-Furāt played a key role in the transmission in Kairouan of the Kitāb al-aṣl of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Šaybānī (d. 189/805), one of the main disciples of Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767). Through an analysis combining a palaeographic approach and the study of texts and paratexts preserved in the Qayrawānī manuscripts of the Kitāb al-aṣl, we emphasise that: 1. the establishment of the written form of ḥanafī teachings was undertaken in Kairouan in the 3rd/9th century and continued until the 4th/10th century; 2. persistent ḥanafī circles were formed around the transmission of these texts in Ifrīqiya; 3. the Kitāb al-aṣl was already in the first part of the 3rd/9th a fixed text, taught in Kairouan, and which influenced the construction of Mālikī and Ismāʿīliī legal doctrines.
Papers — Digital humanities by Clément Salah
Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 2024
Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 2024
CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 2024
Abstract. Recent advancements in handwritten text recognition (HTR) for historical documents have... more Abstract. Recent advancements in handwritten text recognition (HTR) for historical documents have demonstrated high performance on cursive Arabic scripts, achieving accuracy comparable to Latin scripts. The initial RASAM dataset, focused on three Arabic Maghribi manuscripts, facilitated rapid coverage of new documents via fine-tuning. However, HTR application for Arabic scripts remains constrained due to the vast diversity in spellings, ambiguities, and languages. To overcome these challenges, we present RASAM 2, an extended dataset with 3,750 lines from 15 manuscripts in the BULAC library, showcasing various hands, layouts, and texts in Arabic Maghribi script. RASAM 2 aims to establish a new benchmark for HTR model training for both Maghribi and Oriental scripts, covering text recognition and layout analysis. Preliminary experiments using a word-based CRNN approach indicate significant model versatility, with a nearly 40% reduction in Character Error Rate (CER) across new in-domain and out-of-domain manuscripts.
ICDAR 2021 Workshops, 2021
Pre-paper. For the published paper see : Chahan Vidal-Gorène et. al., « RASAM – A Dataset for the... more Pre-paper. For the published paper see : Chahan Vidal-Gorène et. al., « RASAM – A Dataset for the Recognition and Analysis of Scripts in Arabic Maghrebi » in Elise H. Barney-Smith, Umapada Pal (eds.), Documents Analysis and Recognition – ICDAR 2021 Workshops, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 12916, Springer, 2021, p. 265-281.
Abstract. The Arabic scripts raise numerous issues in text recognition and layout analysis. To overcome these, several datasets and methods have been proposed in recent years. Although the latter are focused on common scripts and layout, many Arabic writings and written traditions remain under-resourced. We therefore propose a new dataset comprising 300 images representative of the handwritten production of the Arabic Maghrebi scripts. This dataset is the achievement of a collaborative work undertaken in the first quarter of 2021, and it offers several levels of annotation and transcription. The article intends to shed light on the specificities of these writing and manuscripts, as well as highlight the challenges of the recognition. The collaborative tools used for the creation of the dataset are assessed and the dataset itself is evaluated with state of the art methods in layout analysis. The word-based text recognition method used and experimented on for these writings achieves CER of 4.8% on average. The pipeline described constitutes an experience feedback for the quick creation of data and the training of effective HTR systems for Arabic scripts and non-Latin scripts in general.
Reviews by Clément Salah
Islamic Law and Society, 2024
Islamic Law and Society (31), 2024
Bulletin critique des Annales islamologiques (37), 2023
Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée (152), 2022
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (85/1), 2022
Dutton presents in this book a new reading of Mālik's Muwaṭṭa', to "fill certain gaps and develop... more Dutton presents in this book a new reading of Mālik's Muwaṭṭa', to "fill certain gaps and develop certain arguments, in order to arrive at a better understanding of the first period of Islam and its subsequent development" (p. 1). The introduction clarifies the purpose of his study: to go beyond the "very critical, and often ignorant" readings (p. 4) of Mālik and Mālikism proposed by Western scholars. After expressing the intention of his commendable project, the author subsequently develops his arguments over five chapters. In the first chapter, "The man and his family" (pp. 9-13), the author reconstructs the biography of Mālik b. Anas, taking up what he had left in footnotes in his Origins of Islamic Law and relying on the Tartīb al-madārik of al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (d. 544/1149). The second chapter, "His teachers" (pp. 15-37), follows a similar logic: Dutton draws on the list of Mālik's masters that he published in his first book, and offers short biographies of these scholars, taken mainly from al-Tahmīd of Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (d. 463/1071). The author carefully selects the sources he uses in order to present and justify his discourse. Texts and authors are not contextualized within their cultural and social environment, nor within the broader history of Islamic law or of the Māliki maḏhab. Moreover, Dutton relies exclusively on Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr and al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, while their accounts should be compared with other sources. The third chapter, "al-Muwaṭṭa'" (pp. 39-61), is divided into three subsections: after a brief apologetic introduction aiming to put forward the "high standing" and the "excellence" of Mālik (p. 39), the author returns to the question of the transmission of the Muwaṭṭa'. As in the previous chapter, he relies principally on the list of transmitters of the Muwaṭṭa' already established in his Origins of Islamic Law. Dutton's objective is to bestow upon the work of Mālik b. Anas "a very strong textual tradition whichexcepting only the Quranis unparalleled in the history of Islam" (p. 59). However, the attentive reader cannot subscribe to his argument since the author's methodology suffers from several shortcomings. Not only does Dutton lean towards an uncritical reading of sources, he also neglects part of the scientific literature on the subject. Regarding the transmissions of the Muwaṭṭa' by Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā al-Layṯī (p. 41), the author fails to mention Maribel Fierro's observations that he never studied under Mālik's authority. On Ibn Wahb's transmission (pp. 44-5), he does not mention any of Miklos Muranyi's works. In the second part of the third chapter ("The differences between the transmissions", pp. 45-59), Dutton argues that the various extant recensions of the Muwaṭṭa', except that of al-Šaybanī, are all close to each other, and this would be evidence of a "highly reliable text" (p. 59). Yet the author's conclusions are based on the study of only three short extracts from the Muwaṭṭa', and not on a complete and detailed analysis of all the recensions. In the final part of the third chapter ("The form and general content of the Muwaṭṭa'", pp. 59-61), Dutton attempts to demonstrate that the Muwaṭṭa'
Events by Clément Salah
Uploads
Academic works by Clément Salah
Special Issues by Clément Salah
Papers — Islamic Law by Clément Salah
Papers — Digital humanities by Clément Salah
Abstract. The Arabic scripts raise numerous issues in text recognition and layout analysis. To overcome these, several datasets and methods have been proposed in recent years. Although the latter are focused on common scripts and layout, many Arabic writings and written traditions remain under-resourced. We therefore propose a new dataset comprising 300 images representative of the handwritten production of the Arabic Maghrebi scripts. This dataset is the achievement of a collaborative work undertaken in the first quarter of 2021, and it offers several levels of annotation and transcription. The article intends to shed light on the specificities of these writing and manuscripts, as well as highlight the challenges of the recognition. The collaborative tools used for the creation of the dataset are assessed and the dataset itself is evaluated with state of the art methods in layout analysis. The word-based text recognition method used and experimented on for these writings achieves CER of 4.8% on average. The pipeline described constitutes an experience feedback for the quick creation of data and the training of effective HTR systems for Arabic scripts and non-Latin scripts in general.
Reviews by Clément Salah
Events by Clément Salah
Abstract. The Arabic scripts raise numerous issues in text recognition and layout analysis. To overcome these, several datasets and methods have been proposed in recent years. Although the latter are focused on common scripts and layout, many Arabic writings and written traditions remain under-resourced. We therefore propose a new dataset comprising 300 images representative of the handwritten production of the Arabic Maghrebi scripts. This dataset is the achievement of a collaborative work undertaken in the first quarter of 2021, and it offers several levels of annotation and transcription. The article intends to shed light on the specificities of these writing and manuscripts, as well as highlight the challenges of the recognition. The collaborative tools used for the creation of the dataset are assessed and the dataset itself is evaluated with state of the art methods in layout analysis. The word-based text recognition method used and experimented on for these writings achieves CER of 4.8% on average. The pipeline described constitutes an experience feedback for the quick creation of data and the training of effective HTR systems for Arabic scripts and non-Latin scripts in general.
English abstracts / ملخصات بالعربية