Editorial principles
These are the rules AALAMIN works to. Each one is visible on the pages themselves, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
No machine verdicts
Nothing on this site answers a religious question, ranks one verse above another, or summarises what a passage means. The search returns the passages that carry your words and says why each is in the group it is in. Software assists with indexing, comparison and editorial preparation; no automated output is published as religious guidance without human review.
Every editorial statement is written by a person, and dated
Editorial orientation is written by the AALAMIN Editor, carries that signature and the date it was signed, and shows its review state. A statement whose signature has been replaced does not render: the original is kept, struck rather than deleted, and only the current one is shown.
Translation and editorial work are kept visually apart
A translation renders under its translator's name. Editorial orientation renders in a different class that cannot be mistaken for a translation, and says in as many words that it is not one. Transmitted reports, where they appear, carry their own card class again. What a thing is determines how it looks on the page.
Disagreement is shown, not resolved
Where translators differ, the difference is displayed with each translator named and the distance between them measured. There is no preferred rendering, no confidence score that suppresses one, and no "correct view". The platform never picks a translation to lead by default, because a silent default would rank our sources.
Limitations are stated on the page that has them
Where a layer is empty, the page says it is empty rather than leaving a gap the reader has to notice. Where a measure covers part of the corpus, it prints the size of the population it covered. Where nothing is recorded, AALAMIN says so and does not invent the missing layer.
Changes are recorded
When a study is changed, the earlier version is kept and the change is recorded with its date, and with its reason where one was recorded at the time.
Which translations are included, and why
A translation is included because its legal status can be documented. Inclusion is not an endorsement of its accuracy or its authority. The licence, edition and retrieval date of every one is recorded and shown beside the text it renders. See Our method.
AALAMIN does not decide for you
Muslims hold different views about the authority, interpretation and application of hadith, tafsir, jurisprudence and other later literature. AALAMIN does not determine which position a reader should adopt. Its purpose is narrower: to show which words appear in the Qur'anic text, how named translators rendered them, and which additional explanations come from later sources or from AALAMIN's own editorial work.
Showing that a detail comes from hadith or tafsir is not a judgment that the detail is false, unimportant or unauthoritative. It is a statement about the source in which it is recorded.