Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Arabic Scripts'

Over the past decade, there has been a tremendous development in e-publishing tools. The Arab world tendency towards electronic publishing has facilitated the prosperity of Arabic e-publishing over the Internet. Likewise, it has enabled the ordinary user to deploy documents, letters, opinions, and ideas with freedom and ease of use. Although freedom of expression should be guaranteed to everyone, it may be used to disseminate false or distorted information. This may lead to the loss of ordinary user's confidence in e-content. However, the user's confidence in e-content will increase if the credibility of the content is emphasized. There are many factors that challenge this task including not only the rapidly growth of Arabic digital publishing, the absent from control over electronic content, and the lack of e-publishing regulations and laws, but also how to develop an efficient framework to confirm the digital content authenticity. Therefore, the need to monitor the credibility of Internet content while maintaining freedom of expression to its users has become an urgent matter of debate. A flexible framework needs to be developed that will overcome these issues and allow for a comprehensible and comfortable content validation environment that would satisfy the end users' desires. This thesis proposes a framework that serves to confirm fundamental text authenticity in Arabic scripts on the Internet. This framework will demonstrate the design and the development of new quotes verification algorithm and the necessary components of framework design, development and implementation based on Service Oriented architecture.

This thesis aims to study the origin and development of Maghribī round scripts, i.e. the highly distinctive writing styles employed in the Arabic manuscripts and documents produced from the 4th/10th century onwards in the western Islamic world, and more specifically in the Iberian Peninsula, North-West Africa, and the Balearic Islands. In order to reconstruct the activity of Maghribī calligraphers, copyists, and secretaries, and to follow the development of their practices, the present work lists and discusses the earliest dated material written in Maghribī scripts, in chronological order: 123 non-Quranic manuscripts, 25 Quranic codices and fragments, nine chancery documents, and two private contracts, all of which produced between 270/883 and 600/1204. The palaeographic analysis of the scripts has made it possible to distinguish between different Maghribī sub-styles and 'schools' of calligraphy, some of which have been given a new definition. A particular attention has been devoted to the geographical and historical context in which these scripts developed - i.e. Umayyad al-Andalus - and to the cultural, and even ideological implications of their use and diffusion throughout North-West Africa. Codicological aspects have also been taken into consideration, such as the quality of scribal supports, the composition of quires and gatherings, the methods of ruling the pages, the choice of inks and pigments of different types, the style and techniques of illumination. Where possible, the autoptic study of the material has been combined with the information offered by primary sources of various kinds (historical treatises, biographical dictionaries, handbooks for notaries ...) so as to present a comprehensive picture of the Maghribī scribal tradition until the Almohad period. The resulting image is that of a calligraphic culture as rich and sophisticated as the eastern one, which constituted a key element in the creation and promulgation of the Andalusī identity throughout the Mediterranean, but whose formative process and full aesthetic range were still poorly understood.

Throughout the past few decades, global brands with strong visual identities have been entering the Arabic market. From the start, the Arabic language was integrated into packaging, signage and advertisements in an unstructured style. Today, some regulations require the translation of brand names and adaptation of the Latin logo mark and the rest of the visual identity. However, logo marks are still not always adequately designed and managed when adapted to different markets with a new language, script, and culture. The study seeks to explore the phenomenon of logo mark adaptations in the Arab region from Latin to Arabic scripts, to provide a toolkit for designers and the process of brand management to maintain the visual identities. This research investigates the subject by using a qualitative multi-stage case study approach to investigate the subject visually, linguistically, and culturally. A conceptual framework adapted the concept of third culture to identify three cultures for global brands; the first culture consists of the brands’ logo mark and visual elements. The second culture consists of the new market into which it is expanding, and the third culture is created by the global brands where the first and second cultures overlap. This study is divided into three stages: (1) describing the current state of Arabic adapted logo marks by conducting visual observation and archival research; (2) exploring how the brands managed their visual identities by performing document analysis on guideline manuals; and (3) investigating designers’ perspective of Latin logo mark adaptations into Arabic by carrying out interviews. The findings of this study indicate that every global brand that expands to a new market creates a third culture brand. Thus, each global brand has a third culture logo constructed as a result of the overlap of the first and second cultures. Each visual element that constitutes the third culture logo contains different factors for adapting to the new market linguistically, culturally and visually. The study develops the Third Culture Brand and Third Culture Logo models adopted from the concept of the third culture to a context that has not been applied before, creating an adaptation tool to aid maintaining the consistency of the corporation’s visual identity. Also, the research presents a practical recommendation presented in a guidebook as a toolkit for global brands adapting their logo marks to regions with non-Latin scripts. The guide advises both the brand managers and the designers to work side by side from the beginning of all the major decision-making steps to implementing the adaptations.

Multiculturalism constitutes a mixture of expressions where languages are fundamental, not only as the vehicular form of thought, but also as a powerful tool for social cohesion and relationships within a community. Languages are often the first barrier encountered when communicating or relating to other culture. Whereas, typography can provide valid solutions, not only in terms of text layout but also regarding the specific aspects of multilingualism: the design of glyphs for multilingual text composition. Type design is at the core of how communication takes place in our multicultural society. As multilingual communication becomes more apparent, the need for multi-script fonts including more than a single script is unquestionable. This practice-based research focuses on the designing of a multi script Latin-Arabic typeface for literary reading text purposes based on an understanding of Arabic script in order for the result obtained to be respectful of the tradition of Arabic calligraphy. The approach to Arabic has been carried out taking into account the Spanish Arabic tradition from a study on the Arabic types which were designed and in use in Spain during the Printing Press years. The methodology proposed tries to complete every stage in the work process, from sketching to final font production, with the aim of harmonising both Latin and Arabic scripts in the same font file: Pradell Al-Andalus. Pradell Al-Andalus, although not designed to be a revival of any specific Arabic Spanish typeface, establishes a link with Spanish type History in order to build a bridge between tradition and our contemporary multilingual needs.

Si les documents rédigés en kiswahili à l’aide des caractères arabes provenant d’Afrique de l’Est sont bien renseignés depuis longtemps, qu’il s’agisse de correspondance ou de littérature, l’existence de tels documents provenant d’Afrique Centrale, et en particulier du Congo, est encore très mal connue. Pourtant, outre les témoignages de divers observateurs ou acteurs européens des débuts de la colonisation, plusieurs documents conservés pour la plupart en Belgique ont subsisté jusqu’à nos jours. Il s’agit essentiellement de la correspondance de marchands swahilis établis dans l’ancien district des Stanley Falls, mais aussi de traités, d’échanges «diplomatiques» ou de notes personnelles, remontant essentiellement aux deux dernières décennies du 19ème siècle. Ces documents se révèlent être une source intéressante à la fois pour l’Histoire du Congo précolonial et pour l’étude diachronique du kiswahili et de son expansion géographique
Though the existence of Swahili documents in Arabic script originating from East Africa – mainly Tanzania and Kenya – has been well documented for a long time (see for instance Büttner 1892, Allen 1970, Dammann 1993 and the recent Swahili Manuscripts Database of the SOAS), very few things regarding such manuscripts in Central Africa, and especially the Congo, have been reported up to now. However, several museums and archives in Belgium and elsewhere hold documents written in Swahili with Arabic script coming from what is today the DRC, along with other documents in the Arabic language.1 All of them date back to the two last decades of the 19th century. Most of these documents are to be found in the Historical Archives of the Royal Museum of Central Africa (MRAC), Tervuren, but some other Belgian institutions like the African Archives (AA) of the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Library of the University of Liège (ULg) and the Army Museum (MRA) in Brussels, also contain some examples of these documents. Other possible sources should be explored, like the personal archives of families whose ancestors worked in the Congo during the colonial time – most of the Swahili documents in Tervuren are personal papers belonging to former Belgian officers, which were donated to the Museum after their death – as well as the archives of Christian missionary orders. Nevertheless, nothing is known about the presence of such documents in DRC today, but we can suppose that some of them have been preserved in places like mosques, Koranic schools or personal archives

Si les documents rédigés en kiswahili à l’aide des caractères arabes provenant d’Afrique de l’Est sont bien renseignés depuis longtemps, qu’il s’agisse de correspondance ou de littérature, l’existence de tels documents provenant d’Afrique Centrale, et en particulier du Congo, est encore très mal connue. Pourtant, outre les témoignages de divers observateurs ou acteurs européens des débuts de la colonisation, plusieurs documents conservés pour la plupart en Belgique ont subsisté jusqu’à nos jours. Il s’agit essentiellement de la correspondance de marchands swahilis établis dans l’ancien district des Stanley Falls, mais aussi de traités, d’échanges «diplomatiques» ou de notes personnelles, remontant essentiellement aux deux dernières décennies du 19ème siècle. Ces documents se révèlent être une source intéressante à la fois pour l’Histoire du Congo précolonial et pour l’étude diachronique du kiswahili et de son expansion géographique.
Though the existence of Swahili documents in Arabic script originating from East Africa – mainly Tanzania and Kenya – has been well documented for a long time (see for instance Büttner 1892, Allen 1970, Dammann 1993 and the recent Swahili Manuscripts Database of the SOAS), very few things regarding such manuscripts in Central Africa, and especially the Congo, have been reported up to now. However, several museums and archives in Belgium and elsewhere hold documents written in Swahili with Arabic script coming from what is today the DRC, along with other documents in the Arabic language.1 All of them date back to the two last decades of the 19th century. Most of these documents are to be found in the Historical Archives of the Royal Museum of Central Africa (MRAC), Tervuren, but some other Belgian institutions like the African Archives (AA) of the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Library of the University of Liège (ULg) and the Army Museum (MRA) in Brussels, also contain some examples of these documents. Other possible sources should be explored, like the personal archives of families whose ancestors worked in the Congo during the colonial time – most of the Swahili documents in Tervuren are personal papers belonging to former Belgian officers, which were donated to the Museum after their death – as well as the archives of Christian missionary orders. Nevertheless, nothing is known about the presence of such documents in DRC today, but we can suppose that some of them have been preserved in places like mosques, Koranic schools or personal archives.

This PhD explores the strategic decision-making processes of violent Islamist movements in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The primary aim of this research is to investigate how these organisations formulate and select strategy. The research constructs an interdisciplinary approach to decision-making based on strategic scripts, which are viewed as cognitive structures that allow strategists to form expectations about how a sequence of events might unfold, enabling a potentially successful course of action to be selected. The research argues that there are a limited number of scripts available to violent Islamists: survival, power play, mobilisation, provocation, de-legitimisation, attrition, co-operation and de-mobilisation. The case study chapters are devoted to establishing the existence and nature of the eight scripts and to investigating how they unfold when operationalised, focusing on the interplay between terrorist action and government counter-terrorism reaction. The major conclusion is that while scripts govern decision-making by fostering expectations about the outcome of strategic options, there is a pervasive disparity between the way in which scripts, as theoretical visions, should unfold and the way in which strategies actually unfold. The final chapter argues that this disparity is a consequence of ‘narrative delusion’. It argues that strategic scripts are not simply cognitive structures, but also stories about the future, describing how situations evolve and conclude. The problem for strategists is that even credible stories can mislead by smothering the role played by luck, shortening the distance between cause and effect or oversimplifying the impact of human agency. But because scripts are persuasive stories, violent Islamists often remain blind to their inherent fallacies. The research concludes by arguing that, for the violent Islamists under study, narrative fallacies very often render scripts inadequate as well as making some more general observations about strategic decision-making outside the world of violent Islamism.

L'utilisation de l'arabe écrit en caractères arabes par les Juifs entre la fin du XIX° et la fin du XX° siècle s'inscrit dans la continuité d'un rapport de longue durée entre les Juifs et la langue arabe, et constitue un phénomène linguistique jusqu'à présent peu étudié. Afin d'en délimiter les contours et d'en prendre la mesure, nous avons constitué, à partir du travail de Shmuel Moreh en Israël, un corpus bibliographique de 654 notices de textes publiés en langue arabe par des auteurs juifs. Son analyse nous a permis de mettre en évidence la faible ampleur de ce phénomène. Premièrement du point de vue de son étendue dans le temps, car même si la première notice de notre corpus date de 1847 et la dernière de 2008, ce n'est qu'entre 1930 et 1970 que se concentre la plupart des documents répertoriés. Deuxièmement, du point de vue de son étendue géographique, car c’est essentiellement en Egypte, en Iraq et finalement en Israël que se développe ce phénomène. A ce sujet, nous préciserons cependant que celui-ci s’est exporté vers Israël, suite au départ des Juifs des pays arabes principalement durant les années 1950. Troisièmement, car il n’est soutenu que par un petit nombre d'individus, sur l’ensemble des auteurs de notre corpus. Ces considérations mises à part, nous avons pu observer un certain dynamisme dans cette production écrite. Celui-ci se manifeste d’abord du point de vue de l'hétérogénéité des genres observés dans le corpus, allant de la poésie au théâtre, en passant par les romans, les nouvelles, les essais et le journalisme. Il apparaît ensuite à travers les différentes variétés de langue arabe utilisées, telles que l’arabe classique, ou les dialectes locaux
The use of Arabic language, in Arabic characters, by the Jews between the end of the XIXth century and the end of the XXth century is one aspect of the long-standing relationship between the Jews and the Arabic language, and constitutes a distinctive linguistic phenomenon which has so far been little researched. In order to outline it and describe it, and building on Shmuel Moreh’s pioneering work in Israel, we have established a bibliographic corpus of some 654 texts and works published by Jewish authors in the Arabic language in Arabic characters. Its analysis has enabled us to highlight the limited extent of this phenomenon. First of all, from a chronological point of view: although the first reference at our disposal dates back to 1847 and the last one to 2008, most of this literature was produced between 1930 and 1970. Secondly, from a geographical point of view: this phenomenon is associated mainly with Egypt, Iraq and later Israel. In this regard, it must be noted that the phenomenon was exported to Israel after the departure of the Jews from the Arab countries principally during the 1950s, and involves almost exclusively émigré writers. Thirdly, because it involves only a small number of individuals, out of the total number of authors listed in our corpus. However, despite all these considerations, this literature is characterised by a certain degree of dynamism. This can be seen first of all in the heterogeneity of the genres observed, spanning poetry, theatre, novels, short stories, essays and journalism, and in its employ of different varieties of Arabic, such as Classical Arabic or local dialects

This thesis investigates the transition of the Arabic script from written to printed form and the influence that this process had on the evolution of Arabic typeforms. This study aims to acknowledge and interrogate the factors that influenced the typographic shaping of the script in response to typemaking and typesetting technology, and the cultural environment in which these developments took place. The historical scope of the research covers the pre-industrial production of Arabic founts, focusing on letterpress printing and types for hand composition, beginning with the first Arabic movable types in Italy in 1514. The thesis covers developments to 1924, when the Biilaq printing house in Cairo produced the first typographically composed Qur'an to be approved by a Muslim authority. The Biilaq edition marked what could be arguably considered the highpoint of composing Arabic with foundry type and its typeface supplied the model for the development a hot-metal fount, formally bridging hand-set and mechanical technologies for the typesetting of the Qur'an. The research investigates the relationship between the manuscript models and the typographic representation of the Arabic script; and outlines significant developments in Arabic typographic history with selected case studies, chosen to high¬light various aspects of the design and manufacturing processes, as well as discuss approaches of different type-makers and printers. This study draws on primary sources that have not been examined as a set before, employing a methodology of visual documentation that supports detailed comparative analysis. This approach enables a focus on the critical assessment and qualitative appraisal of the Arabic types according to specific parameters. The research aims to shed light on the reasons for the discontinuity between manuscript and print forms, and reveal relationships between the visual forms of letters and the skills, knowledge and resources available to the people involved in the type-making process. It also aims to trace the establishment of typographic conventions for the Arabic script that either originated or departed from manuscript practice. In conclusion, this research extends and deepens the historical narrative of Arabic type history, and provides a valuable source for scholars, students and practitioners in the field.

Arabic text recognition was not researched as thoroughly as other natural languages. The need for automatic Arabic text recognition is clear. In addition to the traditional applications like postal address reading, check verification in banks, and office automation, there is a large interest in searching scanned documents that are available on the internet and for searching handwritten manuscripts. Other possible applications are building digital libraries, recognizing text on digitized maps, recognizing vehicle license plates, using it as first phase in text readers for visually impaired people and understanding filled forms. This research work aims to contribute to the current research in the field of optical character recognition (OCR) of printed Arabic text by developing novel techniques and schemes to advance the performance of the state of the art Arabic OCR systems. Statistical and analytical analysis for Arabic Text was carried out to estimate the probabilities of occurrences of Arabic character for use with Hidden Markov models (HMM) and other techniques. Since there is no publicly available dataset for printed Arabic text for recognition purposes it was decided to create one. In addition, a minimal Arabic script is proposed. The proposed script contains all basic shapes of Arabic letters. The script provides efficient representation for Arabic text in terms of effort and time. Based on the success of using HMM for speech and text recognition, the use of HMM for the automatic recognition of Arabic text was investigated. The HMM technique adapts to noise and font variations and does not require word or character segmentation of Arabic line images. In the feature extraction phase, experiments were conducted with a number of different features to investigate their suitability for HMM. Finally, a novel set of features, which resulted in high recognition rates for different fonts, was selected. The developed techniques do not need word or character segmentation before the classification phase as segmentation is a byproduct of recognition. This seems to be the most advantageous feature of using HMM for Arabic text as segmentation tends to produce errors which are usually propagated to the classification phase. Eight different Arabic fonts were used in the classification phase. The recognition rates were in the range from 98% to 99.9% depending on the used fonts. As far as we know, these are new results in their context. Moreover, the proposed technique could be used for other languages. A proof-of-concept experiment was conducted on English characters with a recognition rate of 98.9% using the same HMM setup. The same techniques where conducted on Bangla characters with a recognition rate above 95%. Moreover, the recognition of printed Arabic text with multi-fonts was also conducted using the same technique. Fonts were categorized into different groups. New high recognition results were achieved. To enhance the recognition rate further, a post-processing module was developed to correct the OCR output through character level post-processing and word level post-processing. The use of this module increased the accuracy of the recognition rate by more than 1%.
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM)

Arabic text recognition was not researched as thoroughly as other natural languages. The need for automatic Arabic text recognition is clear. In addition to the traditional applications like postal address reading, check verification in banks, and office automation, there is a large interest in searching scanned documents that are available on the internet and for searching handwritten manuscripts. Other possible applications are building digital libraries, recognizing text on digitized maps, recognizing vehicle license plates, using it as first phase in text readers for visually impaired people and understanding filled forms. This research work aims to contribute to the current research in the field of optical character recognition (OCR) of printed Arabic text by developing novel techniques and schemes to advance the performance of the state of the art Arabic OCR systems. Statistical and analytical analysis for Arabic Text was carried out to estimate the probabilities of occurrences of Arabic character for use with Hidden Markov models (HMM) and other techniques. Since there is no publicly available dataset for printed Arabic text for recognition purposes it was decided to create one. In addition, a minimal Arabic script is proposed. The proposed script contains all basic shapes of Arabic letters. The script provides efficient representation for Arabic text in terms of effort and time. Based on the success of using HMM for speech and text recognition, the use of HMM for the automatic recognition of Arabic text was investigated. The HMM technique adapts to noise and font variations and does not require word or character segmentation of Arabic line images. In the feature extraction phase, experiments were conducted with a number of different features to investigate their suitability for HMM. Finally, a novel set of features, which resulted in high recognition rates for different fonts, was selected. The developed techniques do not need word or character segmentation before the classification phase as segmentation is a byproduct of recognition. This seems to be the most advantageous feature of using HMM for Arabic text as segmentation tends to produce errors which are usually propagated to the classification phase. Eight different Arabic fonts were used in the classification phase. The recognition rates were in the range from 98% to 99.9% depending on the used fonts. As far as we know, these are new results in their context. Moreover, the proposed technique could be used for other languages. A proof-of-concept experiment was conducted on English characters with a recognition rate of 98.9% using the same HMM setup. The same techniques where conducted on Bangla characters with a recognition rate above 95%. Moreover, the recognition of printed Arabic text with multi-fonts was also conducted using the same technique. Fonts were categorized into different groups. New high recognition results were achieved. To enhance the recognition rate further, a post-processing module was developed to correct the OCR output through character level post-processing and word level post-processing. The use of this module increased the accuracy of the recognition rate by more than 1%.

Éclairer la variabilité du traitement médiatique des événements politiques survenus en Égypte en 2011 et 2013 constitue notre objectif de recherche. À cette fin, nous étudions deux moments discursifs déterminés dans cinq quotidiens nationaux de la presse française (Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, La Croix, L’Humanité) et un échantillon de la presse égyptienne arabophone (Al-Ahram, Al-Masry Al-Youm) et francophone (Al-Ahram Hebdo). Notre thèse s’attache à la construction du sens social des événements par les discours journalistiques, en tenant compte des territoires de diffusion et des représentations en vigueur dans les deux sociétés. Nous visons à dégager des stratégies discursives à partir d’une analyse sémiolinguistique du discours faisant toute sa place à l’énonciation scripto-visuelle de la presse.Considérant que les Unes, les titres ainsi que les éditoriaux sont trois « zones » textuelles privilégiées pour observer ces stratégies et l’orientation idéologique et politique propre à chaque organe de presse, nous cherchons à montrer que le récit médiatique et la désignation des acteurs et des événements politiques se nourrissent de l’influence des contextes socio-politique et illustrent les prises de position des journaux. Nous constatons un traitement différencié des deux moments discursifs (déséquilibre quantitatif entre 2011 et 2013, approbation du soulèvement populaire de 2011 qui se trouve mythifié tandis qu’en 2013 se manifestent perplexité et ambiguïté), ainsi que des contrastes très marqués des acteurs mis en avant aussi bien que de leurs désignants selon les journaux
Our research objective is to shed light on the variability of the media coverage of political events in Egypt in 2011 and 2013. To this end, we study two discursive moments identified in five national dailies of the French press (Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, La Croix, L'Humanité) and a sample of the Arabic-speaking (Al-Ahram, Al-Masry Al-Youm) and French-speaking (Al-Ahram Hebdo) Egyptian press. Our thesis focuses on the construction of the social meaning of events through journalistic discourse, taking into account the territories of diffusion and representations of force in both societies. We aim to identify discursive strategies based on a semiolinguistic analysis of the discourse, giving full importance to the scripto-visual enunciation of the press. Considering that the headlines, titles and editorials are three privileged textual "zones" to observe these strategies and the ideological and political orientation specific to each media organization, we seek to show that the media narrative and the designation of political actors and events are informed by the influence of socio-political contexts and illustrate the positions taken by the newspapers. We note a differentiated treatment of the two discursive moments (quantitative imbalance between 2011 and 2013, approval of the 2011 popular uprising, which is mythified, but perplexity in 2013), and also very marked contrasts between the actors put forward as well as their representatives according to the newspapers