Arabic Scholar

Documentation

Arabic Scholar is a connector that speaks MCP. It gives your AI assistant tools to search, read and cite Arabic and international academic papers.

Connect to Claude

Add Arabic Scholar as a custom connector in Claude's settings and paste this link. Then ask Claude in plain language and it picks the right tool.

https://arabic-scholar-dev.engdawood.com/mcp

Connect to Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http arabic-scholar https://arabic-scholar-dev.engdawood.com/mcp

Connect to other apps

Any app that supports MCP over HTTP works with the same link. A Cursor config, for example:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "arabic-scholar": { "url": "https://arabic-scholar-dev.engdawood.com/mcp" }
  }
}

Example prompts

Copy any of these and try it:

  • Find Arabic studies on the effect of e-learning on academic achievement since 2020, sorted by year.
  • Find recent open-access papers on Arabic NLP, then read the best one and summarise its method.
  • Cite this paper in APA 7: 10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2
  • Which papers cite this study? Give me an open PDF link if there is one.

What the tools do

  • Search: one source or several at once with duplicates removed, in Arabic and English.
  • Arabic sources: Dar Almandumah, ASJP, SHAMAA, the Saudi Digital Library, the Egyptian Knowledge Bank and Arab university journals.
  • Paper details: the full record by DOI, arXiv id or PMID, plus citing papers and references.
  • Full text: finds an open-access PDF and reads it page by page.
  • Citations: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard and BibTeX.

Limits

The open international sources work with no account. The Arabic sources, Google Scholar and the search for a PDF on any site ask you to sign in with your email, and the sign-in request appears inside the conversation the first time you use them.

Use has a daily limit and a per-minute limit, and the limit differs from tool to tool by what the tool costs to run. When you reach one, the connector answers with a message that says when you can try again.

Every tool is read-only. The connector never writes or deletes anything in any account of yours.

Troubleshooting

  • "unauthorized": the service is asking for an access token. Request one from the support page and send it in the Authorization header.
  • Limit reached (429): wait for the time given in the message, then try again.
  • No results: try fewer words, the other language, or one named source instead of the broad search.
  • No PDF: not every paper is free to read. The connector returns legal open-access links only, and the publisher page when there is none.
  • Garbled text when reading: some Arabic PDFs are scans. The tool warns you when it detects one.
  • A source does not answer: sources are outside services and can be down for a while. Results say which source failed, and the rest still work.