TheIndoIslamic/deccan-history-wiki-citations

Deccan History Citations

A comprehensive bibliography of Deccan history, automatically constructed from Wikipedia citation networks using adaptive graph crawling.

Dataset Summary

This dataset contains book citations, Wikipedia articles, and article relationship graphs focused on the history of the Deccan region of South Asia — covering the Deccan Sultanates, Vijayanagara Empire, Bahmani Sultanate, Kingdom of Mysore, Maratha Empire, and related kingdoms from approximately the 13th to 19th centuries.

The dataset was built by crawling Wikipedia's citation network starting from 85+ carefully selected seed topics and adaptively following links based on a Deccan relevance scoring system.

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What is the Deccan?

The Deccan (from Sanskrit Dakshina, meaning "south") is the large peninsular plateau of South Asia, roughly covering modern Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and parts of surrounding states.

This dataset covers the period roughly spanning 1347–1900 CE, with particular focus on:

• The Bahmani Sultanate (1347–1527) and its fragmentation into the five Deccan Sultanates
• The Five Deccan Sultanates: Bijapur, Golconda, Ahmadnagar, Berar, Bidar (1490–1687)
• The Vijayanagara Empire (1336–1646) and its conflicts with the Sultanates
• The Maratha Empire (1674–1818) and Shivaji's rise
• The Kingdom of Mysore (1399–1947) including Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan
• The Nizam of Hyderabad (1724–1948)
• The Anglo-Mysore Wars and British arrival in the Deccan

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Dataset Structure

The dataset contains four files:

data/citations.json

The core dataset. Each record is a unique book or source citation extracted from Wikipedia article references.

{
  "id": 1,
  "normalized_title": "history of the deccan",
  "raw_title": "History of the Deccan",
  "authors": "Smith, J.",
  "year": "1985",
  "publisher": "Oxford University Press",
  "isbn": "978-0-19-xxx",
  "doi": null,
  "url": null,
  "quality_grade": "A",
  "citation_count": 12,
  "first_seen": "2024-01-01T00:00:00",
  "source_articles": "Deccan Sultanates|Bahmani Sultanate|Bijapur Sultanate"
}

Fields:

Field	Type	Description
id	int	Unique identifier
normalized_title	string	Lowercased, cleaned title for deduplication
raw_title	string	Original title as found in Wikipedia
authors	string	Author name(s)
year	string	Publication year (4-digit)
publisher	string	Publisher name
isbn	string	ISBN if available
doi	string	DOI if available
url	string	URL if available
quality_grade	string	A/B/C/D quality grade (see below)
citation_count	int	Number of Wikipedia articles citing this book
first_seen	string	ISO timestamp when first discovered
source_articles	string	Pipe-separated list of articles that cite this book

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data/articles.json

All Wikipedia articles discovered and analyzed during the crawl.

{
  "page_id": 12345,
  "title": "Deccan Sultanates",
  "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_Sultanates",
  "depth": 0,
  "relevance_score": 12,
  "relevance_tier": "CORE",
  "discovered_from": "SEED",
  "processed": 1,
  "citation_count": 24,
  "link_count": 187,
  "timestamp": "2024-01-01T00:00:00"
}

Fields:

Field	Type	Description
page_id	int	Wikipedia page ID
title	string	Article title
url	string	Full Wikipedia URL
depth	int	Crawl depth from nearest seed topic
relevance_score	int	Numeric Deccan relevance score (0–15+)
relevance_tier	string	CORE / RELATED / TANGENTIAL
discovered_from	string	Article title that linked here, or SEED
processed	int	1 if citations extracted, 0 if pending
citation_count	int	Number of citations found in this article
link_count	int	Number of wikilinks found in this article
timestamp	string	ISO timestamp when discovered

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data/graph_edges.json

The Wikipedia article link graph — which articles link to which. Useful for network analysis, topic clustering, and understanding how Deccan history topics relate to each other.

{
  "from_page_id": 12345,
  "to_page_id": 67890,
  "from_title": "Deccan Sultanates",
  "to_title": "Bahmani Sultanate",
  "edge_type": "wikilink"
}

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data/top_books.json

Pre-ranked list of the most-cited books across all articles, filtered to quality grades A, B, and C only.

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Citation Quality Grades

Each citation is graded based on available metadata:

Grade	Criteria	Usefulness
A	ISBN/DOI + author + year + publisher	Directly usable in bibliography
B	Author + title + year	High confidence, may need publisher
C	Title + partial metadata	Usable with verification
D	Title only	Requires manual lookup

Grades A and B together represent the highest-confidence citations suitable for direct academic use.

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Relevance Tiers

Articles are classified into three tiers based on a keyword scoring system across 7 categories (geographic, dynasties, people, events, architecture, culture, economy):

Tier	Score	Description
CORE	≥ 8	Directly about Deccan history
RELATED	≥ 3	Closely related (Mughals, British in Deccan, etc.)
TANGENTIAL	≥ 1	Peripherally connected

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Methodology

Crawl Strategy

The dataset was constructed using an adaptive Wikipedia citation harvesting system with the following approach:

1. Seed topics (85+): A comprehensive list of Deccan-specific Wikipedia articles was manually curated, covering major kingdoms, rulers, battles, monuments, cultural works, and geographic features.

2. Relevance scoring: Each discovered article is scored using a keyword-matching system across 7 categories with weighted scores. Articles scoring below 1 are discarded.

3. Adaptive depth:

   • CORE articles: crawled to depth 5
   • RELATED articles: crawled to depth 3
   • TANGENTIAL articles: crawled to depth 2

4. Citation extraction: Raw Wikipedia wikitext is parsed to extract {{cite book}}, {{citation}}, and related templates.

5. Deduplication: Citation titles are normalized (lowercased, whitespace cleaned, punctuation stripped) before deduplication to merge variant forms of the same title.

6. Quality grading: Each citation is graded A–D based on available metadata fields.

Tools Used

• Wikipedia API (MediaWiki REST API) for article content and links
• mwparserfromhell for wikitext template parsing
• SQLite for storage during crawl
• Python crawler with adaptive depth and rate limiting

Limitations

• Citations are extracted from Wikipedia templates only. Plain-text references and footnotes without templates are not captured.
• Author name normalization is minimal — variants of the same author may appear as separate entries.
• The crawl reflects Wikipedia's state at the time of collection. Wikipedia is continuously edited.
• Some highly tangential articles may be included; the relevance scoring is heuristic, not perfect.
• The dataset covers English Wikipedia only. Important scholarship in Urdu, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, or Persian is not captured unless cited in English articles.

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Intended Uses

✅ Suitable For

• Digital humanities research — studying Wikipedia's coverage of South Asian history
• Bibliography construction — building reading lists for Deccan history research
• Network analysis — studying how historical topics relate through citation and link networks
• Information extraction research — Wikipedia citation parsing
• Historical coverage analysis — identifying gaps in Wikipedia's Deccan coverage
• Library science — automated bibliography generation from open web sources

❌ Not Suitable For

• Direct academic citation without manual verification of each source
• Completeness claims — this is not an exhaustive bibliography of all Deccan scholarship
• Non-English scholarship — limited to English Wikipedia citations

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Seed Topics

The crawl was seeded with 85+ carefully selected topics including:

Kingdoms & Sultanates: Kingdom of Mysore, Bahmani Sultanate, Vijayanagara Empire, Deccan Sultanates, Bijapur Sultanate, Golconda Sultanate, Ahmadnagar Sultanate, Berar Sultanate, Bidar Sultanate, Maratha Empire

Key Rulers: Tipu Sultan, Hyder Ali, Krishnadevaraya, Shivaji, Malik Ambar, Yusuf Adil Shah, Ibrahim Adil Shah II, Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, Chand Bibi, Firoz Shah Bahmani, Mahmud Gawan

Battles & Events: Battle of Talikota, Anglo-Mysore Wars, Battle of Seringapatam, Siege of Bijapur, Siege of Golconda

Architecture: Gol Gumbaz, Charminar, Ibrahim Rauza, Golconda Fort, Bidar Fort, Mahmud Gawan Madrasa, Qutb Shahi Tombs

Culture: Deccani painting, Deccani Urdu, Bidriware, Kitab-e-Nauras, Carnatic music

Geography: Deccan Plateau, Hyderabad, Bijapur, Gulbarga, Bidar, Ahmadnagar, Krishna River, Tungabhadra River

Full seed list available in the crawler source code.

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Citation

If you use this dataset in your research, please cite:

@dataset{deccan_history_citations,
  title     = {Deccan History Wiki Citations: A Wikipedia Citation Network Dataset},
  author    = {The Indo Islamic},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url       = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/TheIndoIslamic/deccan-history-wiki-citations},
  license   = {cc-by-sa-4.0},
  note      = {Derived from English Wikipedia under CC-BY-SA 4.0}
}

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License

This dataset is released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC-BY-SA 4.0), consistent with the license of its source, English Wikipedia.

You are free to share and adapt this dataset for any purpose, including commercial use, provided you give appropriate credit and distribute any derivative works under the same license.

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Acknowledgements

• Wikipedia contributors for the source articles and citations
• Wikimedia Foundation for the MediaWiki API
• Dataset constructed using the English Wikipedia snapshot accessed in 2026.