In His Name, the Most High
The Model
How a lesson in the hawza becomes something a model can learn from, without losing where it came from.
From a lesson to a training pair
- The lessonA dars or a mubahatha, recorded if the teacher and the students choose.
- The recordA question, its answer and the sources it rests on, written by the person who taught it.
- The reviewA second scholar approves it, holds it for a page reference, sends it back or refuses it, always with a reason.
- The pairAn approved record becomes a training pair: the question, and the reasoned answer with its evidence.
- The modelFrom many pairs it learns the method: how the evidence is weighed, not a list of rulings.
What it learns from
The model learns from training pairs: a question, and the answer the hawza’s method gives it, with its evidence. Each pair is written by a teacher or student of the hawza in Daftar, and a second scholar reviews it before it can be used.
Only a reviewed record with at least one citation and a named reviewer becomes a pair. A page reference that has not been checked holds a record back. A question about a personal ruling must send the reader to a marja‘.
- Discipline and level
- The question
- The answer, with its reasoning
- Sources, each with its edition and page
- Key terms
- Written by
- Checked by
Every pair keeps its whole history with it: what it is about, what it says, what it rests on, and who stands behind it.
What a record must pass first
- At least one source, with a page somebody has opened and checked.
- A named reviewer: a teacher, or a student at the level of dars-e kharij.
- A question about a personal ruling sends the reader to their own marja‘.
- Where scholars differ, the record says what the difference turns on.
- Nothing is silently dropped: a record that does not pass is counted, and its author is told why.
Forty checked records are worth more than four hundred unchecked ones. A model that learns from an unchecked citation learns that inventing one is what an answer does.
Every machine output labelled as one
A transcript, a translation and a reading of a printed page are all a machine’s work, and each says so. Fihrist marks every machine reading as not quotable until a person has read the page itself. A machine translation sits beside its original and is labelled as one. What a machine produced is never passed off as what a scholar said.
The chain
- The source: a book’s page, or a scholar’s lecture as their own site published it.
- The exact passage, with its fingerprint and its place.
- Our tools, which record who did what, and when.
- The writing that cites it, which a reader can follow back.
The great scholars at the start of the major occultation (al-Kulayni, al-Saduq, al-Mufid, al-Sharif al-Radi and al-Tusi) handed on what they knew with its chain: who said it, and from whom. We hold our tools to the same discipline.
A passage moves between them as the exact words of its source, with its place in the book. Every change records who made it. A search that finds nothing says so as a claim about the search, never about the sources. That trail is what lets a reader check our work.
Where it runs
The model runs on our own machines. The lessons, the books and the questions it learns from are not sent to an outside AI service.
Where the model stands
Building25%
Next comes the first set of reviewed training pairs from the hawza’s lessons; then a first trained version, tested by the hawza’s own teachers before anything of it is shown to anyone else.
Three plain questions
Will it issue rulings?
No. A ruling is the marja‘’s, and ijtihad cannot be delegated to a machine. The model explains the reasoning, with its references, and sends a personal question to the reader’s own marja‘.
Who decides what it learns?
The teachers and students of the hawza who write the records, and the scholars who review them. Nothing enters what it learns that its author has not signed off.
Where does it run?
On our own machines. Nothing it learns from is sent to an outside AI service.
More questions, answered plainly: Questions.