How to read this methodology
This page is the public-facing summary of the Shrine Atlas research method. It is written for visitors, scholars, families, local communities, pilgrims, and contributors who want to understand how records are created and how claims are qualified.
The methodology does not attempt to eliminate every historical disagreement. Its purpose is to make the project’s reasoning visible: what evidence was used, how conflicting reports were handled, how locations were verified, and why a record may remain cautious or provisional.
Artificial intelligence assists with drafting, translation, comparison, and quality review in all five publication languages. Historical research, source selection, field and GPS verification, protected record fields, confidence labels, and publication decisions remain under human editorial control. AI output is not treated as historical evidence by itself.
Mission
Why the atlas exists and what a trustworthy record should provide.
The Shrine Atlas documents shrines, maqams, graves, sacred places, memorial locations, and associated historical personalities in a multilingual and geospatially useful form. It brings together information that is often dispersed across books, scholarly articles, institutional websites, maps, photographs, local records, community knowledge, and field observations.
A Shrine Atlas record is not a promotional claim or a simple map pin. A complete record should help the reader understand the identity associated with the site, the nature of the physical place, the strength of the historical attribution, the evidence supporting the description, the method used to determine coordinates, and the areas where uncertainty remains.
Public commitments
- Distinguish established information from inherited tradition and unresolved attribution.
- Publish Urdu, English, Arabic, Persian, and Hindi versions that preserve equivalent meaning rather than mechanically translating words.
- Provide stable shrine codes, usable references, location information, and visible verification levels.
- Respect religious communities without turning respect into unsupported certainty.
- Permit corrections and improvements without silently erasing the history of a record.
Scope
The atlas may include active shrines, attributed maqams, destroyed or relocated sites, historical graves, mosques associated with a personality, memorial places, and significant non-shrine records when these are necessary to explain the historical landscape. Inclusion does not itself confirm every traditional claim; the record type and wording communicate the degree of certainty.
Research Principles
The rules applied to every identity, location, description, and classification.
Documented triangulation
No single book, website, map label, photograph, group post, or interview automatically controls a record. Evidence is compared by type, date, expertise, independence, proximity, and consistency.
Proportionate confidence
The strength of wording must not exceed the strength of evidence. Confirmed, probable, attributed, locally known, disputed, and unknown are not interchangeable.
Separation of questions
The identity of a person, the existence of a site, the location of a structure, and the claim that a body is buried there are separate questions and may have different evidence.
Preservation of uncertainty
Unknown information is recorded as unknown. Gaps are not filled through guesswork, decorative genealogy, or repeated internet claims.
Respectful neutrality
The atlas records traditions respectfully while avoiding sectarian competition, polemical language, and judgments about the sincerity of communities.
Traceability
Important statements should be traceable to references, location evidence, editorial notes, or a documented verification process.
Historical Neutrality
How the project handles tradition, disagreement, and incomplete evidence.
Historical neutrality does not mean treating every claim as equally strong. It means applying the same evidentiary discipline to all communities and avoiding language designed to validate one group by dismissing another.
Tradition and history
A local or religious tradition is documented as tradition when it is central to the identity of a site. It is described as established history only when the available evidence supports that stronger wording. Longstanding public association may establish the historical importance of a shrine without proving the exact burial attribution.
Conflicting reports
When reliable sources disagree, the atlas does not manufacture a single answer. A record may summarize the principal positions, identify the strongest available evidence, explain why the issue remains unresolved, and use cautious wording or a provisional verification level.
Multiple attributed locations
More than one location may be associated with the same personality. Each physical site may receive its own record when historically, architecturally, or socially significant. The existence of one attributed site does not automatically invalidate another, but every record must state the nature of its attribution.
Unknown information
Unknown parents, uncertain dates, disputed lineages, missing graves, and unverified coordinates remain explicitly unknown. “The available sources do not preserve a consistent account” is preferable to invented precision.
Respect policy
Names, honorifics, sacred associations, and community practices are presented respectfully. Respect does not require the atlas to conceal disagreement, and historical caution does not permit insulting or dismissive language.
Source Hierarchy
How books, academic research, websites, maps, media, and testimony are weighed.
Sources are evaluated by relevance, expertise, date, independence, proximity to the subject, transparency, and consistency with other evidence. The hierarchy is a guide rather than an automatic ranking: a later critical edition may be more useful than an unverified quotation from an early work, and a field photograph may establish the existence of a structure without proving the identity attributed to it.
| Evidence group | Typical use | Methodological treatment |
|---|---|---|
| Classical and primary texts | Identity, lineage, events, early attributions | Use critical editions where possible; preserve variant reports and avoid isolated quotation. |
| Specialist books and academic research | Historical analysis, genealogy, architecture, regional context | Prefer identifiable authors, publishers, journals, institutions, and referenced arguments. |
| Government, heritage, and institutional records | Official names, protected-site status, reconstruction, administration | Useful for modern status; not automatically proof of an ancient attribution. |
| Scholarly and specialist websites | Accessible research, catalogues, institutional essays | Evaluate authorship, citations, permanence, and editorial responsibility. |
| Maps and geospatial platforms | Discovery, navigation, coordinate comparison | Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, and related tools support location work; map labels alone do not prove history. |
| Photographs, videos, and community groups | Structure identification, signage, recent condition, local naming | Use as supporting evidence; verify date, source, manipulation risk, and location. |
| Local interviews and physical inspection | Access, local terminology, physical condition, exact placement | Document who observed what and when; distinguish observation from inherited narrative. |
| Wikipedia and general aggregators | Orientation and source discovery | Never use as the sole authority for a contested identity, lineage, or burial claim. |
GPS Methodology
How the project discovers, verifies, records, and qualifies coordinates.
Coordinates help users find the physical site represented by a record. They are not treated as proof of the historical or genealogical attribution attached to that site.
Standard verification sequence
- Identify the exact target: entrance, shrine building, grave enclosure, mosque, memorial, or wider complex.
- Compare map labels and coordinates across Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, local map listings, and other relevant platforms.
- Use OpenStreetMap queries, including Overpass Turbo when useful, to discover mapped objects, names, tags, and nearby features.
- Examine satellite imagery, street-level imagery where available, photographs, signs, architecture, roads, walls, courtyards, and surrounding landmarks.
- Compare map evidence with books, institutional descriptions, local naming, photographs, community sources, and field information.
- Manually verify that the coordinate points to the intended physical location before publication.
- Record the source type, confidence level, notes, and remaining uncertainty.
Maps and Overpass Turbo
Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, and Overpass Turbo are discovery and comparison tools. Overpass queries may reveal a mapped shrine, cemetery, mosque, religious building, place name, or nearby landmark. Returned data is reviewed manually and is never imported as unquestioned historical fact.
Photographs and physical inspection
Photographs may confirm signage, building form, current condition, access road, entrance, or nearby landmarks. Physical inspection, when available, provides strong evidence of the actual structure and coordinates, but it does not by itself prove every historical tradition associated with the site.
GPS confidence levels
High confidence
Physical inspection or strong visual confirmation, consistent map evidence, identifiable structure or signage, and corroborating sources.
Moderate confidence
Multiple consistent map or photographic indicators and credible supporting information, but no complete field confirmation.
Provisional or approximate
Local attribution, limited mapping, uncertain entrance or building, approximate area, or incomplete corroboration.
When coordinates remain blank
Coordinates remain blank when the intended site cannot be distinguished confidently from nearby buildings, the only available pin appears copied or inconsistent, a historical grave is lost, or an approximate point could mislead visitors.
One personality, multiple locations
A personality profile and a physical shrine are not automatically the same record. A collection may use a shared parent location for profiles without separate shrines, while personalities with established shrines elsewhere retain their own linked record, GPS, map, gallery, and references.
Location naming
Public labels identify the city, province, country, locality, and physical target as accurately as the evidence permits. Traditional names, modern administrative names, and alternative spellings may all be preserved without confusing them.
Genealogy Methodology
How lineage, family relationships, and attributed descent are documented.
Genealogical information is treated as a research field with its own source problems. A lineage repeated on a signboard, website, family page, or modern social post is not automatically accepted as established nasab.
The atlas gives priority to recognized genealogical works, critical editions, biographical dictionaries, family records of identifiable provenance, specialist scholarship, and comparison across independent traditions. Modern summaries may assist discovery but should be traced to earlier evidence where possible.
Verification principles
- Check whether the named generations are chronologically possible.
- Distinguish direct descent from clan affiliation, spiritual affiliation, honorific use, or local naming.
- Record missing generations rather than silently completing them.
- Preserve multiple genealogies when reputable sources transmit genuinely different lines.
- Use “attributed descendant” when a lineage is respected but not adequately verified.
- Do not infer parents, children, spouses, tribe, or descendants solely from a repeated unsourced chart.
Family trees
Family trees are interpretive research outputs, not decorative graphics. Every relationship should be traceable to a source or marked as uncertain. Conflicting branches should remain visible rather than being merged into a false single line.
Shrine Terminology
Controlled terms for physical sites, attributed places, destroyed monuments, and unknown graves.
| Term | Public methodological meaning |
|---|---|
| Shrine / Roza | A recognized sacred or commemorative structure associated with a person, grave, relic, or tradition. |
| Maqam | A place associated with presence, visitation, memory, an event, or an attributed location; it does not always mean confirmed burial. |
| Mashhad | A site associated with martyrdom, witnessing, memorialization, or a revered burial tradition, depending on historical usage. |
| Grave / Qabr | A specific burial place when the record and physical context support that description. |
| Mosque | A mosque may be included when its historical association is essential; it is not automatically classified as a grave. |
| Khanqah / Takiya | A Sufi or devotional institution documented according to its historical and present function. |
| Imamzada | A shrine associated with an attributed descendant of an Imam; the strength of the genealogy is stated separately. |
| Attributed shrine | A respected site whose association is traditional, local, or disputed rather than conclusively established. |
| Destroyed shrine | A historically documented site whose structure has been destroyed, removed, or substantially lost. |
| Unknown or lost grave | A burial known from historical evidence but not securely located in the present landscape. |
Sect Classification
How the atlas separates personality, historical affiliation, shrine identity, and present administration.
Sect classification is handled cautiously because the historical affiliation of a person, the community that venerates a shrine, the institution that presently administers it, and the way visitors understand the site may not be identical.
Person versus shrine
The atlas does not assign a shrine’s primary category from a broad Sunni or Shia label. A person may primarily be a prophet, companion, tabi‘i, scholar, Sayyid, Sufi, Imamzada, or historical personality. The physical shrine retains that substantive category.
Operational Shia classification
Where relevant, Ahl-e-Tashayyu is recorded as an additional classification rather than a replacement for the main category. A shrine may remain under Ulama, Sayyid, Tabi‘in, Imamzada, or Ziyarat while also appearing in the Shia classification chain.
Default and unclassified treatment
The absence of the additional Shia classification does not require a separate public Sunni chain. Mixed, shared, disputed, or historically complex sites are explained in text rather than forced into an inaccurate label.
Present administration
Modern administration, custodianship, architecture, or visitor majority may be documented separately. These features do not automatically determine the historical identity of the associated person.
Source order without a forced quota
Shared primary evidence and recognized Sunni sources are sought first where available, followed by relevant Imami or Shia sources, academic research, and official, local, or field evidence. This is an order of research effort, not permission to invent a Sunni citation or reject a relevant source merely because of its tradition.
Belief-specific claims
School-specific beliefs remain attributed where they appear. For example, the mainstream Sunni expectation of a future Mahdi is kept distinct from the Twelver identification of Muhammad ibn Hasan al-Askari as the born and occulted Imam al-Mahdi. Neither position is silently presented as the universal historical conclusion.
Publication Ethics
What must be true before a record is presented as public research.
Publication is an editorial judgment that a record is sufficiently clear, sourced, and useful for public access. It is not a claim that every historical question has been permanently settled.
Minimum ethical requirements
- The permanent shrine code, identity, country, and location structure are coherent.
- The names and descriptions in all five languages preserve equivalent meaning.
- Multilingual review compares paragraph and section coverage, names, dates, numbers, cautions, references, closing passages, script purity, unintended language fallback, and protected technical fields. English is the structural comparison baseline for Persian and Hindi, not the sole authority for historical truth.
- Claims of burial, descent, martyrdom, destruction, or historical association are worded according to the evidence.
- References are usable and do not disguise multiple broken links as one source.
- GPS coordinates carry an appropriate confidence level and do not imply false precision.
- The record does not expose private information, copyrighted material without permission, or unapproved user images.
- Community submissions, comments, corrections, and photographs are reviewed before public publication.
Images and community material
User-submitted photographs are held for moderation. Upload success may be shown to the contributor as pending, but the image does not appear in the public gallery until approved. Caption, source credit, consent, relevance, and duplication are considered before publication.
Corrections
A published record may be corrected when better evidence becomes available. Significant changes should preserve an audit trail or version note so that the development of the record remains understandable.
Limitations, Corrections, and Revision
What the atlas can and cannot guarantee.
The Shrine Atlas is a developing research resource. Historical sources may conflict, buildings may be rebuilt or destroyed, administrative boundaries may change, map data may be edited, local names may vary, and new scholarship may alter earlier conclusions.
Limitations
- Published means that a record meets the project’s current public standard; it does not mean absolute historical certainty.
- A coordinate identifies the mapped physical target, not necessarily a proven burial place.
- Absence from the atlas does not mean that a site or tradition is unimportant.
- The atlas may preserve more than one attributed location when the historical record requires it.
- Translations aim for equivalent meaning, but names, titles, and inherited terminology may not have exact equivalents in all languages.
- External websites, maps, and social platforms may change or remove content after publication.
Public correction process
Visitors may submit corrections, GPS suggestions, references, comments, or photographs. Submissions are reviewed against existing evidence and do not become public automatically. Contributors should identify the shrine code, explain the proposed change, and provide a source, image, map reference, or field observation whenever possible.
Revision of this methodology
This public methodology may be revised when research practice improves or the atlas expands into new countries and source traditions. Revisions should remain consistent with the internal Research Constitution and should not silently weaken standards of evidence, neutrality, or transparency.
Closing principle
The Shrine Atlas aims to be respectful without being uncritical, rigorous without being dismissive, transparent without being confusing, and useful without claiming more than its evidence can support.