RETROSPECTIVE OF RELIGIOUS CONFLICTS: A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

            Religious conflicts have historically shaped societies' political, cultural, and territorial configurations, yet the academic understanding of how these conflicts have been studied over time remains fragmented. This article provides a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of scholarly literature on historical religious conflicts, using data extracted from the Scopus database. Covering a 61-year period (1964–2025), the study focuses on identifying major trends in publication volume, citation dynamics, regional contributions, and thematic structures within the academic discourse. While the full dataset includes records since 1964, analytical emphasis is placed on the 2000–2025 interval, reflecting the maturation of digital indexing and a significant rise in scholarly output in the 21st century. The methodology incorporates quantitative techniques of bibliometric mapping, including citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence networks, and country-level output comparisons. Tools such as VOSviewer were employed to visualize the intellectual structure of the field. The results demonstrate a marked increase in publication and citation activity after 2010, with the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany emerging as the most prolific contributors. Conceptually, the field is characterized by five major keyword clusters, reflecting overlapping concerns with identity, violence, interfaith relations, secularism, and postcolonial critique. The study underscores the uneven geography of knowledge production by highlighting both dominant research trajectories and underexplored areas, particularly in the Global South and Central Asia. It also affirms the interdisciplinary nature of religious conflict research, bridging sociology, history, political science, and religious studies. This bibliometric overview provides a foundation for future theoretical innovation and policy-relevant inquiry into one of the most enduring challenges in global affairs.