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Main Authors: Alhathloul, Zainab, Ahmad, Irfan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.16138
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author Alhathloul, Zainab
Ahmad, Irfan
author_facet Alhathloul, Zainab
Ahmad, Irfan
contents The Arabic language has undergone notable transformations over time, including the emergence of new vocabulary, the obsolescence of others, and shifts in word usage. This evolution is evident in the distinction between the classical and modern Arabic eras. Although historians and linguists have partitioned Arabic literature into multiple eras, relatively little research has explored the automatic classification of Arabic texts by time period, particularly beyond the domain of poetry. This paper addresses this gap by employing neural networks and deep learning techniques to automatically classify Arabic texts into distinct eras and periods. The proposed models are evaluated using two datasets derived from two publicly available corpora, covering texts from the pre-Islamic to the modern era. The study examines class setups ranging from binary to 15-class classification and considers both predefined historical eras and custom periodizations. Results range from F1-scores of 0.83 and 0.79 on the binary-era classification task using the OpenITI and APCD datasets, respectively, to 0.20 on the 15-era classification task using OpenITI and 0.18 on the 12-era classification task using APCD.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_16138
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Automatic Classification of Arabic Literature into Historical Eras
Alhathloul, Zainab
Ahmad, Irfan
Computation and Language
Machine Learning
The Arabic language has undergone notable transformations over time, including the emergence of new vocabulary, the obsolescence of others, and shifts in word usage. This evolution is evident in the distinction between the classical and modern Arabic eras. Although historians and linguists have partitioned Arabic literature into multiple eras, relatively little research has explored the automatic classification of Arabic texts by time period, particularly beyond the domain of poetry. This paper addresses this gap by employing neural networks and deep learning techniques to automatically classify Arabic texts into distinct eras and periods. The proposed models are evaluated using two datasets derived from two publicly available corpora, covering texts from the pre-Islamic to the modern era. The study examines class setups ranging from binary to 15-class classification and considers both predefined historical eras and custom periodizations. Results range from F1-scores of 0.83 and 0.79 on the binary-era classification task using the OpenITI and APCD datasets, respectively, to 0.20 on the 15-era classification task using OpenITI and 0.18 on the 12-era classification task using APCD.
title Automatic Classification of Arabic Literature into Historical Eras
topic Computation and Language
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.16138