This collapsed section contains some old archived talk page threads that for various reasons I think are interesting enough to keep on display here. Lurkers enjoy!
Attempted translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs by pseudo-Ibn Wahshiyyah
Hi Apaugasma! First off, thanks for the warm welcome and for the balanced edits :-). One request, though: I think "[...] was able to identify the phonetic value of a few Egyptian hieroglyphs" gives the wrong impression. This suggests that Ibn Washiyya was following the correct method like an early Young / Champollion, as per Dr. El Daly's claims. I would be very excited if that were true, but looking e.g. at the picture shown with the article (from Dr. El Daly's presentation), it clearly is not:
Going through the list from the upper left, 𓊰 is not a uniconsonantal sign at all, certainly not "aleph", 𓏌𓏤 is /nw/ + determinative stroke, not "y", 𓏏 𓏥 is /t/ + plural strokes and not "q", 𓉻 is ayn+aleph (the word "great"), not "g", the next character 𓏌 is /nw/ again, now interpreted as "b", 𓊹𓊹 "two gods" (nTr.wy?) is certainly not "k" and so forth ... I could go on for the rest of the chart: it is not just that the phonetic values are misidentified but that word signs are interpreted as phonetics and the author clearly did not even understand which signs belong together. This impression is confirmed by a quick glance through the translation of the work linked to in the article: whole groups of glyphs are given allegorical translations "if a man was poisoned they would write it with XYZ glyphs" with no basis in the actual text displayed. So, if any glyphs were identified correctly I would ascribe that to mere chance (sadly, again - if the work had been done 1,000 years ago, I would be extremely excited).
I think the reason why this never gets called out is because the number of reporters that can read Hieroglyphs and Arabic is vanishingly small if not zero. I would give Ibn Washiyya credit for trying and for his assumption that signs could be read phonetically (rather than just allegorically / as ideographs) - in itself an important step. But "correctly identified some signs" gives the wrong impression IMHO, especially since this has been hyped so much in the media and there has been no critical reporting whatsoever (outside of specialist circles). Can we find a better way to phrase this? I struggled, that's why I took the identification part out completely in the lead section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MikuChan39 (talk • contribs) 12:35, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi MikuChan39! Thank you for posting here. However, since what you wrote could be of some benefit to future editors of the article, I moved it to the article's talk page and replied to you there. If you want to notify other editors that you wrote something on a talk page you can do so by using templates such as {{u|Apaugasma}} or {{ping|Apaugasma}}. Last but not least, don't forget to sign your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~) at the end. ☿ Apaugasma (talk☉)18:23, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You appear to be an extremely knowledgeable person to me. Will come to visit you from time to time to discuss few things or to get some book recommendations on the history of philosophy, religion and science if you don't mind. I have started reading Kevin Van Bladel's "The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science." Interesting study. But the book I suppose suffers from some Hellenocentric biases. I don't know. That is just an opinion. I haven't even finished the book yet. Have you come across this term before? I mean, Hellenocentrism? I suppose you have. The article is not an well developed one. Need more references to enrich that entry. Anyways, Bladels' book is great. Learning many things from it. Wanted to let you know that I came to know of this book from one of your comments in a talk page. And yes, pardon my English, I am not a native speaker. Best wishes for you. Mosesheron (talk) 17:58, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Mosesheron: Thank you for the compliments! You're always welcome here to ask for references; I would be glad to help if I can.
As for Hellenocentrism, I had not yet come across the term itself, but judging from the article it can refer to several different concepts which do sound familiar:
Understood as 'Ancient Greek exceptionalism' (i.e., the idea that the cultural accomplishments of the ancient Greeks happened in complete isolation from the surrounding cultures and that they represent some kind of 'miracle'), it's of course a well-known position in the older historiography of philosophy and science which slowly but surely is getting exposed as the ahistorical nonsense it really is. The main problem with it, as I see it, is that it entirely ignores the fundamental role played by textual transmission: what we do and do not know about the cultural accomplishments of people who lived more than 2000 years ago is entirely determined by the people who lived in the two intervening millennia: its their interests, their preservation efforts, their politics, and their military successes and failures which have resulted in the survival of some texts and the perishing of others. Basically, most of what we know about the ancient Greeks is due to the efforts of Byzantine copyists, their intellectual (Eastern Christian) predilections, and the fact that Constantinople remained unconquered until the 15th century. If Alexander had never conquered the cities of ancient Egypt and Persia, and if the Muslims wouldn't have done the same a thousand years later, we might have had access today to a rich Coptic and Persian literature similar to what we now have in Greek. There is no doubt in my mind that if that would have been the case, the whole idea of the 'Greek miracle' would have been an obvious absurdity that no one would even ever had thought of.
However, there also appears to be a secondary meaning of the term 'Hellenocentric' –one that the article strongly focuses on– which seems more closely related to identity politics, and which in my view wrongly blames modern (Western) historians for the vagaries of textual transmission as outlined above. That ancient Greek thought uniquely influenced all later civilizations west of India is not the result of some kind of Eurocentric bias, but merely a historical fact (and one largely due to the conquests of Alexander, which set into motion a process of Hellenization that had already reached levels of near-universality in early Byzantine Egypt and Sassanian Persia). That history books mainly focus on ancient Greek thought is partly due to this unique influence, and partly due to the fact that we have actual ancient Greek texts dating from that period to actually base our history books on. The simple reality is that we do not have an extant Coptic or Persian literature even remotely similar to what we have in Greek. Ancient Egyptian and Persian thought is all but entirely lost, and though what is left has not nearly been studied well enough, most of the pithy survivals were already under thorough Hellenistic influence, and just aren't of the quality and depth of what we have in Greek (and later, in Arabic). Again, this is entirely due to textual transmission, not to any inherent inferiority of Egyptian or Persian thought. But it still is the reality we have to deal with today, and the idea that modern (Western) historians are somehow trying to cover up or deliberately ignoring the evidence is itself a dangerous and damaging delusion.
As such, I do not believe that van Bladel is writing from a 'Hellenocentric' point of view: he is deliberately investigating Middle Persian, Syriac and Arabic texts in order to recover some of the rich intellectual traditions of the late antique and medieval Middle-East. The fact that most of these traditions go back on Greek and Hellenistic thought is not of van Bladel's choosing. Neither is the fact that the Sassanids were already engaging in an early form of identity politics by claiming that Alexander 'stole' all supposed Greek knowledge from the Persians, a theme that would reappear in many different guises in medieval Arabic literature. What exactly the ancient Greeks from the 6th century BCE owed to the Persians has been the subject of some speculation among 20th-century historians, but what Khosrow I claimed about this 1200 years later in the 6th century CE is simply of no historiographical value. Again, the actual facts about this are long lost, and it is wrong to blame modern historians for this.
With all this said, there is also the (different) phenomenon of Eurocentrism, which is a very real and much more insidious problem in Western historiography. Actually, the very idea that the ancient Greeks were somehow 'European' lies at the core of it, though there's of course also the neglect of anything not perceived to be 'European'. In fact, 'Europe' is a cultural construct dating from the 18th century, and the ancient Greeks really had nothing to with it: their world was part of the larger eastern Mediterranean, and they were looking to the inhabitants of Egypt and Mesopotamia as cultural 'relatives', not to the ancient Celts living in what is now Western Europe. Greek philosophy and science spread over Egypt, the Levant, and Persia about 1500 years before it finally reached Western-Europe (during the so-called Renaissance of the 12th century). Like ancient Greek culture itself, the history of Greek influence is a non-European one at least until the late Middle Ages. However, (Eurocentric) books on history of science or philosophy generally skip from ancient Greece to the Renaissance or the Early Modern period, leaving a huge gap that actually constitutes the greatest part of the story. In this context, Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is a wonderful initiative. ☿ Apaugasma (talk☉)00:44, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It was really enlightening. However, do you believe that modern historians have genuinely attempted, or are still attempting, to reconstruct the cultural context in which ancient Greece flourished, with all of its knowledge of philosophy, theology, and so on? Was it that difficult, given the fact that they have “successfully reconstructed" many aspects of history that were almost unknown to us? I'm sure you've considered the time period between the so-called first philosopher of ancient Greece, Thales, and the "all-knowing" Aristotle, in whose figure we see the culmination of nearly all ancient knowledge? How could they achieve so many things within such a short period of time? What are the real sources of pre-Socratic philosophy, theology, and so on? Did it all begin with them? If the answer is no, then, who were their real inspirations? People like Martin Bernal et al might well be wrong in their theses, but what really have the mainstream historians taught us about this aspect of intellectual history? I've been looking for a few works on the history of ancient philosophy, theology, sciences, and other subjects that explore the origins and sources of pre-Socratic philosophy in depth, but to my surprise, I have found none. Now that maybe because I am not an expert in the filed or a student of the history of philosophy and sciences like you. But again why are they so scarce if they really exist, if such works exist at all? Most books or journal papers I read start with the pre-Socratics, with an introduction that largely rejects rather than recognizes the contributions or contacts with other civilizations in a very smart way. They frequently spare a few lines to demonstrate how primitive and mythological other civilizations were, while claiming that the Greeks were unique and original in such and such ways. I made a comment on the Talk Page of the pre-Socratic philosophy about its sources and origin few months ago, which two devoted editors took very seriously. What do we come know about its origin and history from that page now? The straightforward answer is nothing. I am not of course undermining their efforts. Perhaps they did their best. Or perhaps they thought such little description was sufficient for it. Would you kindly recommend me some works that discuss the origins and sources of pre-Socratic philosophy in depth? Lastly, I thank you for your comment. It offers some ideas that our academics frequently fail to express. Best wishes. Mosesheron (talk) 17:13, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hermann A. Diels (1848–1922). His collection of Presocratic fragments, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, is still used by scholars today. Also coined the term doxography, and reconstructed several ancient Greek doxographies in his Doxographi Graeci.
@Mosesheron: it's all about textual transmission, really. To understand this, first you need to understand what our knowledge of ancient philosophy is actually based on.
Did you know that we do not have even one work from a Presocratic philosopher? All of our knowledge about Presocratic philosophy is based on what we can glean from Plato and Aristotle (who have already been shown by Cherniss 1935 to be rather unreliable when it comes to the Presocratics), and from the fragments that can be found in late (and very unreliable) doxographical collections such as those compiled by Arius Didymus (fl. 1st century BCE), Aetius (fl. c. 100 CE) and Diogenes Laërtius (fl. 3d century CE), as well as in the works of some Church Fathers and other later thinkers (Cicero, Galen, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Plotinus, Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle such as Simplicius, etc.). The most extensive of those later sources are the doxographical collections, but they're also the least reliable: to know how unreliable they really are, it suffices to look at what they say about Aristotle and Plato (whose actual works we do have), which often doesn't even remotely resemble the ideas found in Plato's and Aristotle's extant works. So the whole venture of reconstructing Presocratic philosophy is based on puzzling with mostly unreliable late fragments, and much, much speculation. But at least we do have the Greek works just mentioned to glean the fragments from, which is entirely due to medieval Byzantine copyists and geopolitical vagaries as explained above. On the non-Greek (Egyptian, Levantine, Mesopotamian, Persian) contemporaries of Plato and Aristotle, we have absolutely no textual evidence (apart from some travel tales and myths retold by Plato himself, who in this case constitutes an even less reliable witness).
But there are also important differences between the Presocratics themselves. Of Empedocles (c. 500 – c. 430 CE, not so long before Plato, c. 428 – c. 348 BCE), we have been able to reconstruct two almost complete poems. Of Thales (c. 625 – c. 550 BCE), on the other hand, we have not even one authentic fragment, and only some sparse and very questionable testimonies from Aristotle (i.e., we know almost nothing about him). So what are we going to say to someone who comes asking not about Thales himself, but about Thales' sources? There is a broad consensus today that in all probability, it did not start with Thales, and that he learned what he knew (whatever that was) from Mesopotamian and perhaps also from Egyptian itinerant teachers. But here we have entered the field of complete and utter speculation. There are no sources. This is an important point to grasp, because it both answers all your questions and leaves you entirely puzzled. More precisely, it leaves you as puzzled as scholars are, and I assure you that if there was anything that scholars could do to arrive at a better understanding, however slight, they would do it in a heartbeat.
But the puzzle is unsolvable, because almost all of its pieces are lost. There are some Babylonian clay tablets which contain practical instructions related to sciences like astronomy and medicine, some Egyptian papyri dealing with medicine and mathematics, etc. These are very similar in content to extant ancient Greek papyri such as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, i.e., mainly practical in nature and generally very far removed from the highly sophisticated texts dealing with philosophy and science, which also in the ancient world were very rare and constituted a very small minority of the written material (actually, they were more akin to jealously guarded treasure). This kind of text, which undoubtedly also existed in many other languages than Greek, did not easily end up somewhere buried under the sand, but needed to be diligently copied every few centuries or so to survive, which means that its survival depended on the existence of a scribal class who had the knowledge and the means to read, understand, translate, and copy material. This class of people often perished along with the empire that supported it, although there often was also some form of continuity (most notably in Christian monasteries, or in special cases such as when the descendants of Sassanian administrative functionaries were restored to power by the early Abbasids, most famously the Barmakids). For example, we know that there was an extensive philosophical literature in Middle Persian which was developed under the Sassanids (note, however, that this literature was already thoroughly Hellenistic), but which is almost entirely lost today (some traces of it may be found in the scanty Zoroastrian literature that does survive, such as in the Bundahishn; some works also survive in Arabic translation, such as part of the Arabic Hermetica). When it comes to ancient (before c. 300 BCE) non-Greek philosophical literature though, this was all swept away by the Macedonian, Roman, and Parthian conquests, and there's just nothing left for us but speculation.
Now scholars generally don't write books based on nothing but speculation (OK, Martin Bernal did, but there's a reason why we call his workpseudo-historic around here), so that's why you're not finding such. I don't know any real good reference for pre-Greek science (i.e., Babylonian and ancient Egyptian science), but I highly recommend checking the first chapter of Lindberg, David C. (2008). The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 (2d ed.). University of Chicago Press., which probably refers to some good sources on this in the bibliography (actually, the whole book is worth reading in itself, as it is the standard introduction to the history of science west of India). For Presocratic philosophy, there's Cherniss, Harold F. (1935). Aristotle's Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy. New York: Octagon Books., which is of course outdated in many ways, but remains the go-to classic when it comes to source criticism with regard to the Presocratics. For Presocratic philosophy itself, there are the well-known standard introductory works by scholars such as W. K. C. Guthrie and Jonathan Barnes (especially Guthrie is still very often cited), but I suspect you will find a much more up-to-date historiographical approach (as well as some interesting references) in Laks, André; Most, Glenn W. (2018). The Concept of Presocratic Philosophy: Its Origin, Development, and Significance. Princeton University Press. There's much more where that came from, so please feel free to ask.
I cannot thank you enough. Of course, I will come back to you for more references. But for now I think I will have to meditate upon your comment and look into the sources you have mentioned in order to fully comprehend what you have said. Best regards. Mosesheron (talk) 15:04, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What, in your opinion, is the difference between history and legends? From what I understand, a legend is a folk tale and its historicity can either be:
confirmed by historians, in which case do we still call it legend?
doubted by historians, in which case it is definitely not indicative of historical facts (but still possibly useful as an indicator of what people believed)
neither confirmed, nor doubted, or perhaps a mixture of both, in which case I've seen historical books mention it with attribution ("Locals say the city was founded by..." etc)
From my reading, I'm seeing the legends of Abadir falling into the third category. It seems that historians agree Abadir existed; they doubt some of the more exaggerated tales surrounding him, but consider other stories of him believable enough to mention. For example, A Yemeni Sufi called Abadir migrated to Harar after the conversion and established Islamic schools there. His influence was important and today many Hararis sons of Abadir. The same source then goes on to mention Abadir domesticating hyenas (which sounds mythical to me).[3]
Hello again Vice regent! A legendconsists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived, both by teller and listeners, to have taken place within human history. Contrary to what our article –misleadingly– indicates, this is much wider than mere folk tales: actually, the great majority of serious historical sources contain at least a few legends. It is the historian's task to separate fact from fiction, history from legend, within one and the same primary source. Rather then 'confirming' or 'doubting' narratives that are already known to be legends, historians identify legendary narratives within a wider narrative that may well be, and often is, historical. That's also why you'll commonly see figures like Abadir, Ishaq ibn Ahmad, Darud, etc., being characterized as 'semi-legendary': while almost anything that has been written down about them is probably fictional, it is not possible to completely exclude the possibility that they may actually have existed.
The stories about such (semi-)legendary figures are also commonly interpreted as representing a fictional 'rendering' of historical fact: for example, while the stories about Ishaq ibn Ahmad's 12th/13th century migration from Arabia to Somalia and his conversion of the local population to Islam are undoubtedly legendary, they are commonly understood to reflect a historical settling of Arab Muslim tribes in Somalia during that period.
So your third option, a mixture of impossible, doubtful, possibly accurate, and almost certainly accurate information is in fact how most historical sources may be described. In that spectrum, the existence of Abadir definitely falls within the 'doubtful' range, and this is how you'll find actual subject specialists speak about him. I don't have the wherewithal right now to quote you all of those sources (I've already quoted a few at the AfD[4][5][6], but there are of course many more, and probably more relevant ones too), but as a professional historian broadly familiar with this kind of subject myself, I'm just going to ask you to trust me on this.
Whom you shouldn't trust is non-historians, even if they are scholars, like the politologist and international relations-expert Keith Somerville (the source you cite). It is very common for non-historians to take the information found in primary sources, or at times oral information picked up from locals, on face value. This is an intuitive approach, motivated by an attitude which you'll also commonly find on Wikipedia: this-or-this medieval source says this, or this-or-this local is deeply impassioned by this subject matter and seems to know every little detail about it, so why should some modern, western historian scholar know better? Because they're historians, meaning that they know how to properly interpret that primary source. Because unlike the non-historian, they have examined a broad range of other primary sources, written from different perspectives and often contradicting each other. Because they have gone through the trouble of reading all the studies of those primary sources done by other scholars, from which they have gained a broader perspective, enabling them to judge what is likely and what is not. Because they are independent of the subject matter, and have no personal vested interest in whether this-or-that element of it is true or not. That's why we have historians, and we should trust them, and no one else, especially on a project like Wikipedia. ☿ Apaugasma (talk☉)18:36, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You're right that the source I presented was poor. Mainly because its not on the topic of history, but rather hyenas. History of Harar should come from sources in fields that are more relevant. I found plenty of good sources on Abadir migrating to Harar from Hejaz and spreading Islam, but most of them don't say this in their voice but rather "according to Harari belief"[7] etc. This source seems to treat him like a real person who was influential in spreading Islam in its own voice. Would you agree that wikipedia can mention the legend of Abadir in a History of Harar article, with attribution? VRtalk21:59, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I would much rather insist that Abadir be mentioned in a History of Harar article. Not doing this would be as absurd as writing History of Rome without mentioning Romulus and Remus. But I would strongly disagree with any implication that he was anything more than a legend: we should describe the legend, but as a legend, and also properly contextualize that (as shown by Gibb 1999, there are important religious and sociological factors at play in these legends).
But here's the thing with Wikipedia: editors have this bad habit of going on a googling trip, thus finding all kinds of non-expert sources, and then insisting that these are given the same weight as the views of dedicated experts. For almost any subject, you will find non-expert scholars who have written all kinds of nonsense about it. This is often innocent enough from the point of view of these non-experts themselves: the fact that it's nonsense is in most cases not crucial or even relevant to the topic they are really writing about, and on which they are the experts. But when it comes to evaluating sources it ought to be simple: where non-experts contradict the experts, the non-experts should be flatly discounted.
The problem is that editors are not even interested in identifying who the experts are for any given topic, and just want the view they happened to find on Google to be reflected on Wikipedia (and that's of course already assuming good faith with regard to having an agenda, etc., which really is as often the case as not). The great majority of Wikipedia editors just lack the basic heuristic skills needed to write a truly reliable encyclopedic entry, and that problem is much worsened by the fact that they don't even know they're lacking these skills. They have no idea about bibliographies, about going through the tertiary literature, about checking footnotes to see who is cited for what, to learn whose views are cited with approval and whose views are rejected, etc. They don't realize that this is even something that can be done, let alone that it ought to be done. To put it crudely, due weight on Wikipedia is whatever shows up first on Google and is published by an academic publisher. There's no awareness at all about how one scholar relates to another: if it's a scholar, it's 'reliable', and we should be good to go. Except that most often, the results arrived at through this method are not reliable at all.
If you want to pursue this, I've found a tertiary source that should be authoritative and that should refer to authoritative secondary sources which can then be checked: Wagner, Ewald (2003). "Abādir ʿUmar ar-Riḍā". In Uhlig, Siegbert (ed.). Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, vol. I (A–C). Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. pp. 4–5. ISBN978-3-447-04746-3. One slight problem: I don't have access to this source.
I will not pursue this myself though. I think it's very productive for me to be researching and writing content myself, but I should really learn to leave random articles I encounter stay the mess that they often are. Trying to improve them just slightly by removing some unreliable sources or adding some reliably sourced content, or even just pointing out that something is an error, or a hoax (!), turns out to be an exhausting exercise. It's really unproductive to spend days on end explaining basic stuff, and then only scarcely being heard or understood by other editors. I really want to continue patrolling and stewarding the articles I've written even when I'm not writing content, but apart from that I should really adopt a 'live and let live' attitude. Wikipedia's Horn of Africa-related articles are incredibly bad, but that's on other editors, and there's nothing I can, nothing I will do about it.
Anyways, I'm sorry about the rant. I'm really getting at wit's end, and I just need a break from having to argue over every last little thing. One day someone who is academically at home in Somali-Ethiopian studies will come by, and write beautiful articles about Abadir and all the rest. I've come to learn that this is the only true way for Wikipedia. ☿ Apaugasma (talk☉)00:55, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
...but I've seen your name around plenty, and given the current unpleasantries I've finally decided to click on your very interesting-looking signature. Some fun topic area overlaps :) Admirable work on As above, so below -- with some expansion and tweaking (sandwich the images less, maybe a less indiscriminate list at the end) I could envision it making GA, and there'd be a Quarter Million Award in it if that's anything that interests you? (I was working on The Magician (Tarot card) when much newer, with quixotic aspirations to bring the whole Major Arcana to GT/FT, but not for now.) Vaticidalprophet20:22, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Vaticidalprophet! Thanks for coming here, and thanks for the compliments! I've seen your name around a lot too (I'm a big lurker around here ), and I've often appreciated your insightful comments, as well as your enthusiasm for content work. I fear that the As above, so below article looks better than it really is: the topic being rather close to the subject of my original research, I was able to make an OK article out of it, but the sourcing is actually very thin. It's almost all passing mentions, and there's really not much material on it out there. I guess I'm just very happy to have a reliable article on a topic like that.
I'm not really interested in GA/FA stuff, to be honest. I'm mainly here to fight the enormous spread of misinformation represented by Wikipedia, which often means that I'll go through an article replacing and updating the most offensive stuff. Only when I have a lot of time and encounter an article that is disastrous from beginning to end (cf., e.g., [8]), I will rewrite it from scratch. But once everything in it is directly based on impeccably reliable sources, I'm generally happy to leave it at that and move on. There are so many other bad articles out there!
Then again, I do plan to further expand some of the articles I've already rewritten, and I will probably nominate one for GA at some point. Abu Lu'lu'a Firuz might actually already be there, I don't know. I can imagine myself doing a lot of that in the future, but I guess that right now my priorities lie elsewhere (mainly off-wiki, that is). If you stay around here, we'll probably have plenty of opportunity to collaborate! ☿ Apaugasma (talk☉)22:20, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Abu Lu'lu'a Firuz quite likely is already there although I have to query the huge image in the last section -- I understand wanting to get the architectural detail, but it squishes the text quite a lot. I get what you mean about AASB and thinner-than-expected sourcing; it's frustratingly the case for some of my internet-culture articles. That said, you'd be surprised how niche a topic can be and still be able to pass those processes. There are FAs not much longer -- they're very niche topics, but they're as thorough discussions of it as there's possible to write.
The interesting thing about GA is it's not actually, in the end, a very high bar. It fits pretty well with your stated goal, even. I find it's something that looks scary from the outside but winds up being surprisingly easy when you're there; there's a reason the term often applied, not unkindly, to the GAN process is "lightweight". (Hence the comment at the top of User:Vaticidalprophet/GANs, referring to comments by Ritchie333 possibly, IIRC, by way of Eric Corbett? he'd know and Carrite respectively.) One benefit of the process is it lets you take an article through DYK, which can (for exactly the reasons the GSoW is a fan -- it's a powerful tool) be really useful to the combatting-misinformation goal. If an article was in poor shape for years, bringing attention to an improved version on the main page is a powerful way to influence things in the opposite direction. Food for thought. Vaticidalprophet22:34, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What is your issue with mentioning alcohol on al-Razi's page?
Wikipedia is based on reliable, secondary sources. No such source exists for the claim that al-Razi discovered alcohol (for a somewhat thorough discussion of the unreliability of the many non-secondary sources which unduly repeat the claim without evidence, see here), let alone for that he should have coined the term. What's my issue? Just to make sure that Wikipedia presents to its readers reliable information, and avoids contributing to the spread of misinformation.
The word 'alcohol' originally referred not to ethanol, but to the eye cosmetic kohl (from the Arabic, الكحل, al-kuḥl), which consisted either of lead(II) sulfide (produced from galena) or –in the early modern context wherein the Latin term 'alcohol' was coined– antimony trisulfide (produced from stibnite). Antimony-based kohl was produced through sublimation, and somewhere in the 16th century the word 'alcohol' started to be used more generally for any 'raised' substance produced through sublimation or distillation (another word used at the time for this was 'spirit'). The exclusive use of the word 'alcohol' for the substance produced through the distillation of wine dates only from the 18th century.
The author of one of the works attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan (c. 850–950) experimented with the boiling of wine, but does not mention its distillation, giving a good indication that the cooling methods needed for distilling alcohol were not yet developed at that time. The distillation of wine is attested in a work attributed to al-Kindi (c. 801–873, but this could well have been written by a later author who falsely attributed it to al-Kindi) and in a work by al-Zahrawi (936–1013, a likely period for the first successful attempts at distilling alcohol in my view), but not in the works of al-Razi (c. 865–925), who was a contemporary of the anonymous Jabirian author. The first known recipes for alcohol as such (called aqua ardens or 'burning water' at the time) date from 12th-century Latin works, though further research is likely to find earlier instances in as of yet uninvestigated works written in Arabic. ☿ Apaugasma (talk☉)15:20, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi CactiStaccingCrane! Well, I'm supposed to be on a wikibreak, but instead I find myself writing a whole new article with corresponding template, looking to rewrite another article, andproposing a new way to technically distinguish core content with an associated start-up WikiProject.
Clearly something is wrong. I find that most guidance pages on wikipediholism around here 'aren't meant to be taken seriously', but I do think I'm in serious trouble. I do dream of Wikipedia, wake up with thoughts about Wikipedia, edit Wikipedia before even taking breakfast, forget to eat, the whole shebang.
So what I'm going to do is to finish these articles I've been working on (mostly offline, but I'll upload when ready), and then just really get a break. Hopefully other editors will step in at the WikiProject, and if not, it can always be revived in the future. My personal priorities at the moment just lie elsewhere, as I'm sure you'll understand. ☿ Apaugasma (talk☉)17:21, 17 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Considering an academic opinion over the views and opinions of the believers of the Ismaili religion is a form of bias. Also new works have show connections between the Umm-al-Kitab and Ismailism, check Intellectual Interactions in the Islamic World, The Ismaili Thread for more. 201.92.244.22 (talk) 19:00, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that source, it's a really valuable contribution to Ismaili studies! I wasn't aware of it yet, but I have now incorporated it into the article. Do note, however, that this source too says that it is commonly thought today that the doctrines exposed in the Kitāb al-Haft, the Umm al-kitāb and related texts have nothing to do with Ismailism. This clearly is the status quo, and on Wikipedia we always tend to give more weight to long-established views than to cutting-edge insights. In any case, the new source argues for an influence of ghulāt ideas on later (mainly Tayyibi) Isma'ilism, which seems probable enough.
As for bias, the simple fact is that Wikipedia follows academic views. If some would like to call that being 'biased' to academia (see also WP:ABIAS), then so be it. It's not different from a physician being 'biased' to medical sources or a priest being 'biased' to religious sources: writing an encyclopedia is an academic endeavor. But in the end it really doesn't make sense to say we are biased. Summarizing what academic sources say is simply what it means to write an encyclopedia, and being what one is supposed to be is not being biased (see WP:NOTBIASED). I would expect Isma'ilis to understand this though, given the fact that the Agha Khan himself sponsors such excellent academic institutions as the Institute of Isma'ili Studies (which, not coincidentally, published the source with which you delighted me). Again, thanks for the source, and happy days! ☿ Apaugasma (talk☉)12:49, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Almost all of this is based on primary sources (the last paragraph references a secondary source, but comments on it from an authorial point of view, which is inappropriate on Wikipedia), so I think your diagnosis of OR is correct. This IP editor may be an expert who just does not realize that we strictly report the content of secondary sources here, so please go easy on them.
I am currently studying the Vulgate and Septuagint versions of the Psalms, but this really is my first serious dip into Bible study, and I wouldn't say that anything else Bible-related is within my area of interest yet. I am planning to someday study the rest of the Bible, as well as to learn some basic Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac to really get into the depths of it. At that point it will probably be possible to coax me into looking at some secondary literature for a Wikipedia article, although it will still not be my first choice. I also studied the whole Qur'an in Arabic, yet I never write on the Qur'an here. It would be hard too, since I read but very little secondary sources on the Qur'an (perusing Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān entries is mostly as far as I'd got).
This is because my real interest is history of philosophy, and any study of religion only serves as a background to aid my understanding of religious philosophy, i.e., ancient and medieval philosophy which takes pagan ritual or revealed scripture as a starting point rather than secular Aristotelian dogma. Having been derided as 'pseudo-philosophy' in most historiography of philosophy from that discipline's very beginnings in the 17th century until about thirty years ago, the huge and severely neglected field of religious philosophy is still full of surprises and exciting new discoveries for the modern researcher.
So that's what I'm at, which also means I shouldn't spend too much time on Wikipedia. The very wide field I'm trying to cover with my studies means that I don't have much room left for reading secondary sources anyway (I tend to limit my secondary readings to stuff that is directly about history of philosophy itself, but even that falls by the wayside when I'm studying languages or non-philosophical primary sources). For the time being I'm happy patrolling the 1,439 articles on my watchlist, and I really don't want to do much more than that. I will return to writing articles and to greater availability someday, but given what's on my plate that may well be in twenty years or so. Okay, it will probably be earlier, simply because I won't be able to resist... But for now, I'm only a patroller. ☿ Apaugasma (talk☉)15:15, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Your revert edit summary says I changed the NPOV framing on this article. My edits were in fact to correct editorialising in the article. What facts did i contract from the source material?
The article already explains the Muslim relationship with non-Arabs as mawali and the edits you reverted place undue weight on ethnicity. Sasanian Iran is the focus point of a metric ton of irredentist editing here on Wikipedia that editorialises about an imagined pure Persian past and that's why I made those edits.
In addition, you removed the edits I made that underline the fact that Abu Lu'lu'a is a Twelver martyr. It is a part of Twelverism.
Hi Ogress, perhaps this would fit better on Talk:Abu Lu'lu'a Firuz? Feel free to move both your comment and my reply to the article talk page.
The NPOV issues here are quite subtle, but the basic point is that I wrote this article by closely following all the reliable sources I could find on the subject, and that what is written there now reflects these sources, not only in pure content but also in their choice of words and their general focus. If there is something specific where you can show that the sources speak about it in one way and the article in another, I would very much like you to point that out. But NPOV corrections should be based on the sources, not on one editor's sense of what is appropriate: the point is to neutrally represent the POV of the sources.
With regard to your changes of Shi'ism to Twelver Shi'ism, I suspect that you may be wrong about this. As far as I recall, the sources consistently speak about Shi'ism in general rather than about Twelver Shi'ism in particular. The position on the legitimacy of the first three caliphs has always been a little bit shifty in all Shi'i sects, with attitudes depending on the ever-changing political climate. However, I don't think there's anything to single out the Twelvers for the view that the first caliphs' rule was illegitimate, nor to state that there is one Shi'i sect which absolutely regards their rule as legitimate. Since you mentioned that Isma'ilis do not hold the same views (i.e. that the first caliphs were usurpers of Ali's right), I went looking in Farhad Daftary's The Isma'ilis: Their History and Doctrines (2d ed. 2007), whom I would have suspected to mention something about this if it were true. In stead, I found him writing the following (p. 66):
It was during the period of oppressive Umayyad rule that the radical Shı'ı̄s, out of their exaltation of the Alids, began to curse not only Uthmān and other Umayyads, but also Abū Bakr and Umar, as usurpers of Alı̄’s rights. This public condemnation of the Companions (sabb al-sahāba), especially of the first two caliphs, which probably originated with Ibn Saba' but in due time was to be adopted by almost all Shı̄'ı̄ groups, remained the chief offence of Shı'ism in the eyes of Sunnı̄ Muslims.
Like many things in Shi'ism, the position that the first caliphs were usurpers seems to have originated among the ghulat and was held to be 'radical' at first, but later was adopted by almost all Shı̄'ı̄ groups. About Zaydism, Daftary 2007 writes (p. 74):
During the 2nd/8th century, the Zaydı̄s were doctrinally divided into two main groups, the Batriyya and the Jārūdiyya. The Batriyya represented the moderate faction of the early Zaydiyya, upholding the caliphates of Abū Bakr and Umar. They held that though Alı̄ was the most excellent (al-afdal) of Muslims to succeed the Prophet, nevertheless the caliphates of his predecessors who were less excellent (al-mafdūl) were valid, because Alı̄ himself had pledged allegiance to them. [...] These ideas were repellent to the radical Shı'ı̄s who condemned the early Companions for ignoring Alı̄’s succession rights, but they appealed to the Muslim majority. In fact, in time the Batrı̄ Zaydı̄ tradition was absorbed into Sunnı̄ Islam. On the other hand, the Jārūdiyya adopted the more radical Shı̄'ı̄ views and, like the Kaysānı̄s and Imāmı̄s, rejected the caliphs before Alı̄. By the 4th/10th century, Zaydı̄ doctrine, influenced by Jārūdı̄ and Mu'tazilı̄ elements, had been largely formulated.
Apparently, the one Shi'i group (the Batris) which did uphold Abu Bakr and Umar's caliphates was absorbed into Sunnı̄ Islam. Daftary mentions Jarudis (= Zaydis) and Imamis (= Twelvers) as having adopted the ghulat/radical view, but for some reason doesn't mention anything explicit about the Ismai'ili view on this subject. However, on p. 181 he relates a fairly typical episode about al-Hakim's decrees regarding the public denouncement of the first two caliphs, which does shed some light on the Isma'ili view:
In the meantime, al-Hākim had maintained his anti-Sunnı̄ measures, although at times he intensified them and then had them temporarily revoked. For instance, his order for the denouncement of Abū Bakr, his two successors and others amongst the sahāba, issued in 395 AH and according to which the relevant maledictions were inscribed on the walls of the mosques, was repealed after two years, only to be reintroduced in 403/1013.
Nothing here indicates that the Isma'ilis, or any other Shi'i sect, regarded the rule of the caliphs before Ali as legitimate. Clearly, at least in some periods the Isma'ilis participated in the tradition of publicly vilifying (sabb) the first caliphs, which is also described in the Abu Lu'lu'a article in relation to the Safavid institution of this practice and its retraction in the Qajar period. While such practices of public denouncement shifted, the basic doctrine that the caliphs before Ali were not legitimate seems to be something historically held in common by all Shi'i groups.
Finally, it has to be kept in mind that while those who celebrate Abu Lu'lu'a and Omar Koshan are Twelver Shi'is, not all Twelver Shi'is participate in this, and the large majority of Twelvers in fact condemns it. For this reason too, it's not a good idea to link Abu Lu'lu'a too closely to Twelverism in particular: the sentiment behind it is a general Shi'i one, but also a 'radical' one that has historically shifted and changed and that is highly politically charged.
In fact, the topic of the article in general is politically charged and highly controversial. As I mentioned in my revert, some parts of your edits were good copy-edits, but with this type of article, anything that changes the text's meaning or tendency should be approached with utmost care, and be thoroughly grounded in the sources. If you're not going to dive into the sources (which would be totally understandable), it's better to stick to pure copy-editing (rephrasing, breaking up sentences, etc.) and MOS-related stuff. If, on the other hand, you do have something to be improved or corrected based upon a close reading of the sources, I would be happy to discuss it on the article talk page. ☿ Apaugasma (talk☉)01:08, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The image under discussion, removed by me from Umar and from Arab sword; diffs [1][2].
Hi SufficientChipmunk3! This is because of the nature of Wikimedia Commons, to which anyone can upload any file and claim whatever they want about it. I would be trivial for any sword owner to take a picture of their sword and have it end up on Wikipedia as the sword of some famous historical figure, making millions of people believe it (4,928,037 views in 8 years). That is why we need some verification that archeologists and historians indeed regard the sword in question as Umar's.
Unfortunately neither Commons nor en.wiki has a fully fitting policy for this, but I would say that the contents of an image is a type of information ('this is the sword of Umar'), and all information on Wikipedia needs to adhere to Wikipedia:Verifiability. If there is no way to verify that archeologists and historians indeed identify it as the sword of Umar, it does not belong on Wikipedia per WP:V. I hope this helps, ☿ Apaugasma (talk☉)13:01, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Trs9k, in your Special:Preferences page, under 'User profile', 'Signature', you can enter a custom signature. Be sure to check the box 'Treat the above as wiki markup.'
The shadow is created by prefacing the text with <span style="text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 1em"> and putting </span> after it. For example, <span style="text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 1em">This text has shadow.</span> will produce This text has shadow. Fiddling with the numbers will change the position of the shadow (the middle two numbers), its thickness (the last number) and/or its color (the first number). As you can see, this also works when regularly editing wiki pages.
Similarly, <span style="color:#6a0dad">colored</span> will change text color as in colored. You can replace #6a0dad with any other hex number to produce a different color; to pick a color you can type in 'hex color' on Google and it will show a hex color picker.
One more useful thing to know is that will produce a non-breaking space, which is helpful to keep your signature from line-breaking in an inappropriate place (this one actually also comes in handy on article pages, e.g. to keep something like CE on the same line as the date to which it belongs, as in 1258 CE for 1258 CE to avoid "1258" being the last word on a line and "CE" the first word on a new line).
thank you for filling out Ibn Arfa Ra's page. I have a question, does Ibn Abbar say that Ibn Arfa or Ibn Naqirat were both born in Andalusia? Is a birth in the Maghreb excluded or possible?
Hello Hayani-maghrebi! I'm not sure about that. When writing the article, I have followed Forster & Müller (2020) (this source is open access, so you can read it for yourself if you're interested). They mention that according to Ibn al-Abbar, Ibn al-Naqirat was born in al-Andalus (so not in Morocco), but I don't think they went into further detail. If you want to know more about that, you should take a look at Ibn al-Abbar's biographical dictionary itself: maybe he mentions the city. In any case, his nisbas point to Medinaceli (al-Sālimī) or Jaén (al-Jayyānī).As for Ibn Arfa' Ra's, if he is not identical with Ibn al-Naqirat, his birthplace is unknown, but the fact that he is sometimes given the nisba "al-Andalusī" makes Forster & Müller 2020 think he was also from al-Andalus. I do not remember their reasons, but Forster & Müller 2020 seem to think that he was most likely born in Granada. Granada was of course part of the Maghreb at the time, but he was probably not born in Morocco. On the other hand, nisbas are not always reliable, and I do not think that Forster & Müller 2020 would say that a Moroccan origin is excluded: it is possible (after all, he also carried the nisba al-Maghrebi), it's just that an Andalusian background is more likely (please read Forster & Müller 2020 for the evidence they lean upon). Also keep in mind that it would be strange for someone born in Morocco to be called "al-Andalusi", while "al-Maghrebi" both includes al-Andalus and was a common nisba for Western Muslims who migrated to the Mashreq. ☿ Apaugasma (talk☉)16:11, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
