31/08/2026
The WP8 Research Team of the ITSERR Project (https://www.itserr.it/), coordinated by Anna Mambelli (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia / FSCIRE, Bologna), is pleased to announce that uBIQUity, a new free and user-friendly digital platform, is now available to all those interested in exploring intertextual relationships in religious literature.
Developed over the past three and a half years within the framework of the NextGenerationEU programme, uBIQUity is a semantic research tool designed to investigate the sacred texts of Christianity and Islam across diverse historical and cultural contexts, providing a higher level of accuracy than other available resources. Its title incorporates the “BI” of the Bible(s) and the “QU” of the Qur’an. By combining traditional philological methods with state-of-the-art computational approaches, uBIQUity enables the identification of both literal and non-literal biblical references in Greek and Latin Christian exegetical works composed from the Patristic era to the Late Byzantine period. It also supports the detection of Qur’anic quotations and, more broadly, the identification of intertextual relationships among the Qur’an, the collections of the Sayings of the Prophet (aḥādīth), and Qur’anic commentaries (tafāsīr). In doing so, uBIQUity accounts for and sheds light on the internal dynamics and reciprocal interactions that shape these distinct yet interconnected textual traditions. Whether employed consciously or unconsciously, the intertextual references embedded in ancient and medieval commentaries function as (in)visible “places of memory,” rendering the sacred texts effectively “ubiquitous.”
At the link below - within the HORTUS platform and the European digital research infrastructure D4Science - you will find a detailed presentation of the tool and the research team behind it, direct access to the application via the "Go to uBIQUity" button, as well as user guidelines and a range of training materials:
https://hortus-itserr.d4science.org/en/projects/project/ef4aacdb-944f-488d-976d-0812d3e4363b
We wish you all an enjoyable and rewarding exploration of Greek, Latin, and Arabic texts!
