Talk:Mark Ibn Kunbar

A fact from Mark Ibn Kunbar appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 26 June 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Mark Ibn Kunbar was excommunicated by two Coptic popes and one Monophysite patriarch in the 12th century?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2020/June. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Mark Ibn Kunbar.

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Did you know nomination[edit]

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by 97198 (talk) 01:27, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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... that Mark Ibn Kunbar was excommunicated by two Coptic Popes and one Monophysite patriarch in the 12th century? Source: [24 of the Churches and Monasteries of Egypt and Some Neighbouring Countries by Abu Salih the Armenian]
- ALT1:... that in the 12th century, Mark Ibn Kunbar preached against the practices of private confession of sin and circumcision in the Coptic church? Source: [History of Christianity: Volume I, Page 587]

Comment: my first submission, let me know if I missed some instruction.

Created by Awsomaw (talk). Self-nominated at 16:13, 17 May 2020 (UTC).[reply]

New enough, long enough, neutrally written, well referenced. As all sources are offline, unable to check for close paraphrasing. Both hooks are interesting; I'm unable to make up my mind which is better, so will leave it to the prep promoter. ALT0 hook refs are AGF and cited inline, but the ALT1 fact about circumcision needs an inline cite. No QPQ needed for nominator with less than 5 DYK credits. Yoninah (talk) 16:03, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Added inline citation for circumcision fact in ALT1. Awsomaw (talk) 21:23, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. This nomination is good to go. Yoninah (talk) 21:38, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Arabic name[edit]

In this edit, I added the Arabic name مرقس بن قنبر المنشق (Marqus ibn Qunbar al-Munšaq), sourced to this page, because the subject matter is closely tied to the Arabic-speaking world. However, I noticed later that the epithet al-Munšaq might be derogatory and non-NPOV; while I don't speak Arabic, from what I do know about the language, it appears that the root n-š-q-q, from which this word is apparently derived, has to do with splitting (consider e.g. the Qur'anic verse اقْتَرَبَتِ السَّاعَةُ وَانشَقَّ الْقَمَرُ, The Hour has come near, and the moon has split [in two].) منشق is also listed as a translation for separatist and dissident at Wiktionary.

The reason that I find this to be a potential issue is that the source could be implying, using this name, that Ibn Qunbar was a heretic who sought to divide the religion. (I'm not familiar with the terminology that Christianity uses in such matters, but hopefully my point is understood.) The problem is that I was not able to find any other RS that mentions him in Arabic, and I don't know if it would be a good idea to remove the epithet from the end of the name while citing a source that contains it. M Imtiaz (talk · contribs) 17:21, 27 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@M Imtiaz: Thanks for the edit. I was hoping someone would add that in; I don't know any Arabic. The thing with Mark Ibn Kunbar is that according to most of the tertiary sources I found, all of the extant secondary sources are anti-Mark Ibn Kunbar. The most information is from Abu Salih the Armenian, who said that he was also known as Marqus ibn Qunbar al-Munšaq. Abu Salih was pretty anti-Mark Ibn Kunbar. Since Mark was excommunicated three times and officially declared a heretic by the Coptic church, I think it's not surprising that epithet was attached. Let me know what you think. Awsomaw (talk) 14:51, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I guess that makes sense, Awsomaw. So, if I'm understanding you correctly, we have a situation where the WP:COMMONNAME in the sources happens to be one that appears biased against Ibn Qunbar. If I'm not mistaken, the meaning of NPOV is that our "bias" must match that of extant sources... so I guess al-Munšaq can stay, then? M Imtiaz (talk · contribs) 17:56, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

M Imtiaz, I would say so. Honestly, I wonder of "the blind" is also just a biased name, but it's really unclear from the sources I gathered if he was blind for his whole life or not. But we do have "Ibn Kunbar" as a disambiguator, so we in theory could remove it. Many tertiary sources don't mention al-Munšaq at all, they just have Mark Ibn Kunbar (or Qanbar, Kanbar). Awsomaw (talk) 19:41, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]