Letter-based classification of Arabic scripts style in ancient Arabic manuscripts

Abstract

Classifying ancient Arabic manuscripts based on handwriting styles is one of the important roles in the field of paleography. Recognizing the style of handwriting in Arabic manuscripts helps in identifying the origin and date of ancient documents. In this paper we proposed using segmented letters from Arabic manuscripts to recognize handwriting style. Both Gabor Filters (GF) and Local Binary Pattern (LBP) are used to extract features from letters. The fused features are sent to Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. Experimental results have been implemented using manuscripts images from the Qatar National Library (QNL) and other online datasets. Better results are achieved when both GF and LBP descriptors are combined. The recognized Handwritten Arabic styles are Diwani, Kufic, Naskh, Farsi, Ruq ah and Thuluth.