Islam West Africa Collection (IWAC)

Connect it to your AI

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http iwac-mcp-server https://islam.zmo.de/mcp/

Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other apps

Add it as a custom connector with this URL (Streamable HTTP):

https://islam.zmo.de/mcp/

Cursor, VS Code and other apps (mcp.json)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "iwac-mcp-server": {
      "url": "https://islam.zmo.de/mcp/"
    }
  }
}

Tools it offers

39 tools, as the server itself reported during our check on Oct 31, 2026.

• searchSearch the Islam West Africa Collection across newspaper articles, Islamic publications, archival documents, academic references, audiovisual recordings, photographs, and the authority index (persons/places/organisations
• fetchRetrieve the full text and metadata of one IWAC item by an id returned from `search` (format '<category>:<number>', e.g. 'articles:28576'). Returns {id, title, text, url, metadata}: `text` is the item's OCR / abstract /
• explore_corpusSelection workbench: items, concordance, coverage, compare (requires comparison), attention, aliases, or paginated manifest/CSL-JSON/BibTeX exports. Exact filters intersect. limit/offset also page compare/coverage/attent
• search_articlesSearch IWAC newspaper articles by keyword (title + OCR + AI abstracts, French and English), country, newspaper, subject, and date range. Use French concept keywords regardless of the user's report language. Matching is a
• get_articleGet one article (by id): full metadata, the AI abstract (description_ai), AI sentiment, and OCR text, in 25k-char parts (follow `next_offset`). Pass a `keyword` to get ~2000-char excerpts around each match instead.
• semantic_search_articlesSemantic search over article title + full text, including articles whose OCR is not public. Query in any language. Runs the corpus model, EmbeddingGemma 2, locally with no API key (first use downloads ~350 MB). similarit
• search_by_sentimentFilter articles by gpt-5-6-luna sentiment labels (accent/case-insensitive exact match). One model's reading, not a consensus — 4 other models scored the same articles and often disagree; get_sentiment_distribution with m
• get_sentiment_distributionAggregate AI labels over a shared selection. model:"all" compares independent annotators and their coverage; model:"consensus" reads the stored panel majority. Choose compare_models and agreement_field for pairwise Cohen
• search_indexSearch the IWAC authority index (persons, places, organisations, events, subjects) by name. Accent/case-insensitive.
• get_index_entryGet full details of an index entry by id (raw dataset columns, French names — Titre, Prénom, Coordonnées…).
• list_subjectsList sujets from the IWAC index, sorted by frequency (most-referenced first).
• list_locationsList lieux from the IWAC index, sorted by frequency (most-referenced first). The optional 'country' filter selects entries that APPEAR IN records from that country (mentioned-in, not located-in), ranked by collection-wid
• list_personsList personnes from the IWAC index, sorted by frequency (most-referenced first). The optional 'country' filter selects entries that APPEAR IN records from that country (mentioned-in, not located-in), ranked by collection
• get_collection_statsOverall statistics for every IWAC subset, including `fulltext_coverage` — how many items in each subset actually carry searchable full text in this dataset. Read that before treating any keyword count as a full-text cens
• get_newspaper_statsPer-newspaper article counts and date ranges.
• get_country_comparisonCompare article counts, newspaper counts, date ranges, and gpt-5-6-luna polarity across countries.
• get_temporal_distributionCounts by Gregorian or Hijri year/month, or pooled lunar month. Group by country/newspaper. Partial dates and missing lunar dates are disclosed. normalize_by returns numerator counts and per-bucket denominators in the sa
• get_topic_distributionCounts of offline LDA topic assignments, optionally over time. Topic labels are interpretive model outputs; exact topic_id filters select assignments rather than keyword matches. Reports unclassified coverage.
• get_field_distributionRank exact metadata values, splitting pipe-separated tags. Reports missing metadata and optional coverage over time. Choose spatial for mentioned places, country for stored country tags, or subject/author/language.
• get_cooccurrenceCount pairs of metadata values co-tagged on the same items. Matrix/network views show descriptive associations, not causal links. Filters apply before pair counting; top_n caps the vocabulary.
• get_place_distributionPlace tags joined to authority coordinates. Separates publication countries from mentioned places; missing geocodes are counted explicitly.
• get_semantic_mapStable-hash sample of matching stored embeddings, projected with PCA. Reports eligible, invalid, missing and capped counts, seed and explained variance. Group counts describe the sample. Coordinates are chart-only; this
• get_similar_itemsNearest stored embeddings by cosine similarity. Articles and documents lead with the dataset's published top 10. Scores run high (unrelated ~0.7) and rank reading candidates; >= 0.97 suggests a near-duplicate, but no thr
• get_lexical_metricsText length, lexical richness and readability by country/newspaper/year. Metrics are precomputed; readability is French-specific and excludes other languages. Missing values are disclosed. Compare distributions as descri
• search_publicationsSearch Islamic publications (periodical issues, books). `keyword` matches title, subject, table of contents, and full OCR text (TOC hits come back as matching_toc_entries); use French concept keywords regardless of the u
• list_periodicalsList the Islamic periodical/series titles in the publications subset, with issue counts and year ranges. Use the returned newspaper value as the `newspaper` filter on search_publications.
• get_publication_fulltextFull OCR text of a publication in 25k-char parts (follow `next_offset`), or ~2000-char excerpts around keyword matches (accent-insensitive; capped: see match_count vs excerpts_returned).
• semantic_search_publicationsSemantic search over publication tables of contents, present for ~40% of issues (none for An-Nasr Vendredi, 130 of 695 Islam Info issues): use search_publications for the rest. Rows show the first 600 characters of each
• search_referencesSearch academic references (journal articles, book chapters, theses, books, reports) by keyword and metadata. `keyword` requires every word in the title + abstract ("quote" a phrase). References are multilingual: try Fre
• get_referenceFull bibliographic record for one academic reference (by id), including the complete abstract (present for ~51% of references), subjects, DOI/URL, and host-work details (book, volume, issue, pages).
• semantic_search_referencesSemantic search over academic references by title + abstract, across languages. Only references with an abstract (about half) are covered; use search_references for the rest. Runs the corpus model, EmbeddingGemma 2, loca
• search_documentsSearch the small archival-documents subset (~26 items: Islamic association reports, flyers, project documents — mostly Burkina Faso). Use French concept keywords regardless of the user's report language. Most have OCR te
• get_documentGet one archival document (by id): full metadata, AI description, and OCR text, in 25k-char parts (follow `next_offset`). Pass a `keyword` to get ~2000-char excerpts around each match instead, useful for long documents.
• search_audiovisualSearch audiovisual materials by keyword and metadata: francophone web video from Burkina Faso, Togo and Benin (TV reports, association and campus recordings), plus deposited Nigerian Hausa/Arabic recordings. Keyword matc
• list_audiovisualList audiovisual materials, newest first (francophone web video from Burkina Faso, Togo and Benin; deposited Nigerian Hausa/Arabic recordings). Filter by country, publishing channel or `source_type`.
• get_audiovisualGet one audiovisual record by id: full description and transcription (where one exists), creator/publishing channel, duration, medium, subjects, places, language, rights, source, and three distinct links: `url` (the IWAC
• search_imagesSearch the IWAC photographs (30 items: mosques, radio stations, schools, signage and street scenes documented during fieldwork). Keyword matches title, creator, subject, place and the rare caption. Each result carries `i
• get_imageGet one photograph by id: title, photographer, capture date, place and coordinates, subjects, rights, the IIIF manifest, and the full-resolution `image_url`. The server returns URLs, not image bytes.
• semantic_search_imagesFind photographs by describing what they SHOW, in any language ('mosquée en construction', 'street signage in Arabic'). This is cross-modal: the ranking runs against a multimodal embedding of the photograph itself, not a

Questions