QESC — Quranic Emotional Situation Corpus

Dataset Description

QESC is the first structured corpus of Quranic prophet situational scenes annotated for emotional intensity and narrative resolution type, designed for child-facing emotional support retrieval in multilingual contexts (English, French, Moroccan Darija).

The corpus supports the CASS (Context-Aware Semantic Similarity) framework — a lightweight safety-aware retrieval system that matches a child's free-text emotional expression to the most contextually appropriate prophet story, while preventing emotionally dangerous mismatches.

• Paper: CASS: A Context-Aware Semantic Similarity Framework for Safe Retrieval in Child-Facing Educational Applications (Sadouk and Gadi)
• GitHub: https://github.com/lsadouk/CASS
• Application: Ya Allah — Islamic children's emotional support app

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Dataset Summary

Property	Value
Total entries	100
Quranic figures covered	26
EI scale	1–5 (mild → severe)
RT scale	1–3 (immediate → delayed)
Primary language	English
Additional languages	Arabic (names), French, Moroccan Darija (paraphrases)
License	CC BY-NC 4.0

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Supported Tasks

• Emotional situation retrieval — match a child's free-text emotional query to the most appropriate prophet story
• Emotional intensity classification — predict EI level from situation description
• Resolution type classification — predict RT from situation description

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Dataset Structure

Fields

Field	Type	Description
id	string	Unique identifier e.g. moses_003
prophet_latin	string	Prophet name in English e.g. Moses
prophet_arabic	string	Prophet name in Arabic e.g. موسى
situation_en	string	3–5 sentence English description of the emotional situation
emotions	list[string]	2–5 primary emotion labels
EI	float	Emotional Intensity 1.0–5.0 (half-point increments)
RT	int	Resolution Type: 1=immediate, 2=gradual, 3=delayed
RT_label	string	Human-readable RT label
child_paraphrase	string	Child-friendly multilingual explanation and lesson
quran_ref	string	Quranic verse or hadith reference
RL	int	Recitation Level 1–3
gender_of_protagonist	string	male or female
annotator_agreed	bool	Annotation confirmed by domain reviewer
version	string	Corpus version

EI Distribution

EI	Label	Count
1	Mild everyday emotion	19
2	Low-moderate distress	19
3	Moderate distress	19
4	High distress	24
5	Severe crisis-level distress	19

RT Distribution

RT	Label	Count
1	Immediate resolution	27
2	Gradual resolution	29
3	Delayed resolution (long patient endurance)	23

Quranic Figures Covered

Prophets: Adam, Idris, Noah, Hud, Salih, Abraham, Lot, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job, Shuaib, Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Jonah, Zachariah, John, Jesus, Muhammad.

Key figures (non-prophets): Mary, Hagar.

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Example Entry

{
  "id": "joseph_003",
  "prophet_latin": "Joseph",
  "prophet_arabic": "يوسف",
  "situation_en": "Joseph was separated from his beloved father Jacob
    and thrown into a well by his own brothers out of jealousy.
    He was then sold into slavery in Egypt, far from everything
    he loved. Despite years of separation, Joseph never lost hope
    in Allah or stopped praying for his family.",
  "emotions": ["grief", "loneliness", "abandonment", "yearning", "patient_hope"],
  "EI": 3.0,
  "RT": 3,
  "RT_label": "delayed_resolution",
  "child_paraphrase": "Prophet Yusuf missed his father every single
    day for many years. He never stopped loving him even when they
    were far apart. Allah never forgot Yusuf, and one day reunited
    them in a way more beautiful than either could have imagined.",
  "quran_ref": "12:15-18",
  "RL": 2,
  "gender_of_protagonist": "male",
  "annotator_agreed": true,
  "version": "1.0"
}

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Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("lamyaa/QESC")

# All entries
print(f"Total entries: {len(ds['train'])}")

# Filter by EI level
mild = [e for e in ds['train'] if e['EI'] <= 2.0]
severe = [e for e in ds['train'] if e['EI'] == 5.0]

# Filter by prophet
joseph = [e for e in ds['train'] if e['prophet_latin'] == 'Joseph']

# Filter by resolution type
immediate = [e for e in ds['train'] if e['RT'] == 1]

Use with CASS retrieval

# See full code in: https://github.com/lsadouk/CASS

# English query
retrieve("I feel sad and nobody understands me")
# → joseph_003 (EI=3, RT=3)

# French query
retrieve("Je me sens abandonné par mes amis")
# → muhammad_002 (EI=3, RT=2)

# Moroccan Darija query
retrieve("ma kaynch had li yfahmni")
# → shuaib_001 (EI=3, RT=3)

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Safety Properties

QESC is designed with child safety in mind. The EI annotation enables the CASS framework to prevent emotionally dangerous matches:

• A child at EI=1 (mild embarrassment) will never receive an EI=5 story (extreme suffering)
• A child at EI=5 (severe crisis) will never receive an EI=1 story (gentle everyday lesson)
• Safety filtering is automatic — no user configuration required

Across 5 diagnostic queries, CASS suppressed 27 of 28 emotionally dangerous entries with a mean rank drop of 37 positions and maximum of 62 positions.

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Annotation Guidelines

EI scale:

• EI=1: Mild everyday emotion — embarrassment, small disappointment, gentle worry
• EI=2: Low-moderate distress — social exclusion, mild loneliness, minor conflict
• EI=3: Moderate distress — betrayal, sustained loneliness, public humiliation
• EI=4: High distress — acute fear, grief, unjust accusation, family conflict
• EI=5: Severe crisis — extreme suffering, hopelessness, years of loss

RT scale:

• RT=1: Immediate resolution — comfort or answer arrives quickly (within the same scene)
• RT=2: Gradual resolution — situation improves over weeks or months
• RT=3: Delayed resolution — resolution requires long patient endurance (years)

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Citation

@article{sadouk2025cass,
  title     = {CASS: A Context-Aware Semantic Similarity Framework
               for Safe Retrieval in Child-Facing Educational Applications},
  author    = {Sadouk, Lamyaa AND Gadi, Taoufiq},
  journal   = {Education and Information Technologies},
  year      = {2025},
  publisher = {Springer}
}

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Dataset Card Authors

Lamyaa Sadouk Ecole Marocaine des Sciences de l'Ingénieur, Casablanca, Morocco

Taoufiq Gadi Laboratoire de Recherche en Mathématique, Informatique et Sciences de l'Ingénieur (MISI), Morocco

License

CC BY-NC 4.0 — Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

You may use and share this dataset for research and educational purposes with attribution. Commercial use is not permitted without explicit permission from the author.