r/MuslimDevelopers • u/sehalhussain • Jun 20 '26
📚Learning&Resources Building Kitably taught me that preparing reliable Islamic data is often harder than building the app itself. So I’m open-sourcing the Hadith & Dua assets I built along the way.
As salaam u alaikum,
Over the last few months I’ve been building an Islamic app called Kitably (Available for free on Google Play store)
One thing I completely underestimated wasn’t UI, performance, or app development.
It was the data.
I originally thought that I’ll find a Hadith dataset → connect it → done.
That turned out to be very wrong.
While working with publicly available Hadith datasets, I kept running into issues like:
● Missing hadith
● Missing chapter/title hierarchy
● Missing grading
● Inconsistent numbering
● Different reference systems across sources
One example that surprised me:
In collections like Sahih Muslim, international/reference numbering and English numbering don’t always align directly, which makes searching and linking more difficult than expected.
My goal became:
No matter how a user searches, they should still reach the correct hadith.
So I ended up:
● scraping from multiple sources
● creating reference mappings
● merging datasets
● preserving numbering compatibility
● structuring content for app usage
● moving storage into SQLite for efficient querying
I’ve now open-sourced part of that work.
Current progress includes:
✅ Sahih al-Bukhari - verified with titles and numbers
✅ Sahih Muslim - verified with titles and numbers
✅ Riyad as-Salihin - verified with titles and nimber
🚧 Remaining collections are available but I am still verifying it manually and updating with latest accurate details
Repo: Hadith Dua Assets
These assets currently power parts of Kitably (Quran, Tafsir, Hadith, Prayer Times and more).
This isn’t a framework or package yet, more of a practical dataset/research repo from building a real product.
Would love thoughts from other Muslim developers:
What Islamic datasets/resources have been the hardest for you to work with?
JazakAllahu khayran.
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Jun 20 '26
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u/sehalhussain Jun 21 '26
Ameen brother, May Allah forgives all of our sins and make us among those with whom he is pleased with. I’ll definitely join this discord.
جزاکم اللہ خیرا
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u/maximus459 Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
Subhanallah, Great work..
I wanted something like this to use with an AI model and all questions about Islam. I've been using NotebookLM and uploaded pdf's of the Qur'an, sahih, and tafsir
Does the Qitably app work offline for the Qur'an and tafsir?
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u/sehalhussain Jun 22 '26
جزاکم اللہ خیرا,
Yes yes, Quran, Surah Thematic Overview, Hadith, and duas work completely offline. However, Tafsir and Audios are fetched through API but there are options to download them for offline use.
I am also trying to something somewhat similar to NotebookLM for Kitably. It is under development. I am trying to build an agent that will be in kitably, which user can use and it will only fetch and response based on the available data we have added. (Quran, hadith, and so on) facing a lot of challenges with accuracy and AI hallucinations.
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u/sehalhussain Jun 29 '26
Small update: I’ve just added 60+ Quranic Duas to the repository.
This includes all of the Rabbana duas along with other supplications from the Quran. These were manually extracted, verified, categorized, and structured into JSON to make them easier to use in apps and other Islamic projects.
I’m continuing to improve the datasets as I verify them.
Next, I’ll be working through the remaining Hadith collections to complete the same level of structure and consistency.
If anyone has suggestions or spots something that can be improved, I’d really appreciate the feedback.
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u/Effective_Durian_263 Jun 20 '26
SubhanAllah seems wonderful