Mapping Digital Qur’an Studies: A Scoping Review of Evidence and Gaps

Abstract

Digital Qur’an studies now include Qur’anic natural language processing, semantic search, question answering, mobile recitation and memorisation tools, user-experience research, and digital manuscript preservation. This scoping review maps the available evidence and identifies methodological and governance gaps across this heterogeneous field. Following PRISMA-ScR and JBI-informed scoping review logic, traceable scholarly records were screened from open publisher records, ACL Anthology, DOI-resolvable journal pages, and the five cornerstone references supplied for revision. The evidence clusters into four domains: computational Qur’anic resources, learning applications, digital philology, and user experience or religious-content governance. Computational studies show the strongest signs of maturity because they provide reusable corpora, annotated resources, semantic-search models, and shared question-answering benchmarks. In contrast, mobile learning and memorisation studies show practical innovation but rely mainly on prototype testing, expert review, user acceptance, and small-scale usability designs. Digital manuscript studies extend the field from application development to preservation, public access, and philological infrastructure. The review concludes that digital Qur’an studies should be treated as an emerging evidence landscape rather than a mature intervention field. Future work should prioritise validated learning outcomes, transparent source attribution, scholar-supervised AI governance, multilingual accessibility, privacy protection, and interoperability among corpora, applications, and manuscript repositories.