Template:Did you know nominations/Al-Sahifat al-Ridha

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 Allen3 ^talk 13:15, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Al-Sahifat al-Ridha[edit]

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... that the Sahifah of al-Ridha is a collection of 240 hadiths narrated by Ali ibn Musa al-Ridha, the eighth Shia Imam?

Comment: Article created in my userspace on October 30, moved to mainspace on December 15.

Moved to mainspace by Samaneh-davoudi (talk). Self nominated at 12:34, 15 December 2014 (UTC).

Long enough, moved to main space on the indicated day, and reliably referenced. There are two issues that I see, though: First, the article needs a copyedit by someone who knows more than I about the topic. I fixed a few grammar lapses (also in the hook) but a number of phrases in the article are incomprehensible to me (and, by extension, some readers without a strong background in the topic). Second, the lead phrase (first paragraph) is too closely paraphrased from its source. I would further prefer a hook that directly conveyed the message that this is a 9th century book. --Pgallert (talk) 19:29, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Pgallert, I see that you've been working with the creator on your own talk page, but it's been about six days since the last comment. Is progress still being made? BlueMoonset (talk) 02:49, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, have been a bit busy lately. Will definitely get back to this one soon. --Pgallert (talk) 05:32, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

I believe that a series of Q&A on my talk page and subsequent edits have made this article more readable to the general audience. By now--accidentally, it seems--the first phrase also is no longer a close paraphrase of its source. However, as I have been doing many of those edits myself I feel that another reviewer should okay this nomination. I'd also like to suggest an alternative hook phrase that I personally find more interesting: --Pgallert (talk) 20:19, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

ALT1: ~~... that there are five surviving copies of Al-Sahifat al-Ridha, a 9th-century collection of 240 hadiths narrated by Ali ibn Musa al-Ridha?~~

On it. Gimme a minute. [Emended hooks to reflect that "hadith" is the ENGLISH name of hadith and hadiths is its plural. (Alt., you can just go with hadith.) Also, that Shia isn't a placename.] — LlywelynII 13:44, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
Ok for original hook. Moved to main namespace in time; long enough; no plagiarism; doesn't seem to need a QPQ; and (now) within policy.

General notes: Samaneh-davoudi, if you're going to be writing more articles on hadith, great! But 1st, go find out what its common English name is. (In this case, it definitely includes an "of" and probably ends with "Reza". I can't be certain but the present name seems to be some odd mix of the Persian form of sahifah and the Arabic form of al-Reza's name.) 2nd, if it's a Shi'ite text, it's advisable to provide its Persian transcription along with (or even instead of) its transcription in modern Arabic. 3rd, for a hadith page, you should go ahead and include a section providing the nominal chain of authority being invoked, with links to those figures' articles. At minimum, you need to do that to the figure claimed as the first narrator; if it's available, what's better is to also provide the (cited) chain from the actual common modern text, which will include the chain from the narrator forward until the first reliable, available printed copies.

4th and most importantly, with all respect to your faith and the good work of sharing its teachings in English, do kindly review WP:NPOV and WP:RS. You can write articles that assume the truth of your religion and use patently biased sources hosted by mosques as your references; you can include a reliable source (EI) and then ignore it to give the curated hagiography from your biased source; you can write articles that primarily use AH dating and only use CE as a parenthetical... but it just creates more work for the rest of us as we go through and correct it. Wikipedia aims for a neutral point of view, not a devout Islamic (or Christian) one. When your reliable source says the birth—over the span of a decade—is uncertain and the prophesied date is the least likely possibility, don't give that exact date as the only one. Better still, stop phrasing the religious texts' claims as Full Truth statements and couch it in more specific terms: "he said...", "they claimed...", "it states...", "according to...", "traditionally..." In all GF, Pgallert, if you didn't notice any of that and really thought it was within policy, please don't review religious or controversial articles. The former draft of this page is precisely the kind of NPOV violation that the "within policy" check is meant to avoid.

5th, it's very true that the word "scientist" originated as a word to describe theologians and scientists were called "natural philosophers" instead; the word does not ever have that meaning in modern English and you should not call someone a "scientist" or performing "science" when "theologian" or studying scripture is what is intended. Similarly, in general English, "narrator" is going to mean the person who narrates: the person who is saying the words "he said..." and not the person being quoted. If there's a term of art in hadithic transmission (might be: you have "other narrators" listed, whatever that means), you need to explain that. Otherwise, Ali al-Ridha is quoted narrating these hadith, but Abdallah ibn Aḥmad ibn Amer is the narrator of this Sahifa. 6th, the ahl al-Bayt is capitalized "ahl al-Bayt" or "Ahl al-Bayt" or (even better) given in English as the household of the Prophet Muhammad. It's not written "Ahl al-bayt". 7th, other issues at the talk page.

Specific comments: ALT1 struck. It could be rephrased as something like"recensions" or some caveated form "copies from before the year 1000", but as it stands it seems like a WP:LIE violation: the article seems to be talking about entirely different versions deriving from separate chains of authority, not copies. (At least, there are four "other narrators" listed and then five MSS shown extant.) If the lead of the article accurately describes its importance, there were no doubt other newer copies prior to the 1921ish print run and, regardless, there will be variations between the surviving medieval MSS to the point where "copy" is rather misleading, especially given that the article doesn't detail any differences between the MSS. If the texts have been authenticated to the middle ages and have no differences among them, that should be the hook.
Original hook good to go. Given minor rephrasing to reflect what seems to be more common phrasing. Links added. Shia seems like what we go with instead of Shiite or Shi'ite, so that's fine. I don't think 9th-century is important at all (8th imam places him within 8 generations of the Prophet) and no one's all that interested in the 9th Century as a separate topic. It might be helpful to somehow explain "hadith" (either replace it with sayings of the Prophet Muhammad or traditions concerning the Prophet Muhammad or gloss it somehow: "hadiths—sayings of the Prophet Muhammad"), but it's not a big problem: hadith is the common English name and it's possible people will be curious and click through to find out what it's all about, which is good for DYK entries. One that described a Chinese official as a zhiqing produced more click-throughs to zhiqing than to the official's own page. — LlywelynII 04:56, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
- This is a lot of advice, LlywelynII, and the article seems to have improved considerably through your comprehensive rewrite. I have no problem that you don't like my ALT, of course it only was a suggestion. I still don't see that blatant NPOV violation that you claim I have overlooked. In a 9th century AD setting it is not completely wrong to call a religious teacher a scientist. IIRC theologians today are still seen as scientists in some corners of the world.
  It is indeed suboptimal that the version I thought to be somewhat okay contained several errors. But complete factual accuracy is not the goal of the DYK process, otherwise we would only allow reviewers that can read all of the cited sources in their original language. By the way, the source that you now cite extensively, and from which you have produced a sea snake like sentence of no less than 196 words (!) writes in their own voice and on the same page: "...narrated on the authority of his grandfather, may Allah bless him and his family, and on the authority of his pure fathers, peace be on them." If theologians aren't scientists then this is not a scientific text. I cannot evaluate this source because the rest of this web site is mojibake to me, so I have to take your word that this is now the reliable source that the article previously didn't have. Outside religion the monster sentence you created is not English, and I could very well claim that one POV has been replaced with another one, by you.
  This is one of the reasons why I will take the liberty to continue reviewing whatever nomination I find interesting or valuable. Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 07:59, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
  - No one's interested in policing you and I'm sure we appreciate your work here. Many hands make light work.
    
    That said, in modern English, doctors of the church are not simply described as "doctors" and theologians who weren't engaged in natural philosophy are no longer called "scientists" and you know that.
    
    Similarly, your continuing difficulty with WP:NPOV really does speak to a need to brush up on it or to avoid controversial topics where well-intentioned true believers may turn Wikipedia into their soapbox. The way hadith works is that a chain of authority needs to traced to the Prophet himself. The chains for specific bodies of hadith should be included on the pages about them. They amount to nothing more than a long series of "X claimed to have heard it from Y" or "vouched for the contents of Z" and there's no need to break that chain into many repetitive sentences. If my formatting seemed unhelpful, you're welcome to cut it up into dozens of short, repetitive sentences: Makes no difference. But claiming it isn't English just because it involves foreign names isn't credible. Further, sourcing for that chain of authority will often necessarily involve citing highly religious works: they are RS for their own contents; they aren't RS for factual events in the real world. A particular translation of the New Testament is a reliable (if primary) source for what Jesus said in that particular form of the New Testament; it's not actually a WP:RS for what he actually said, when he lived, or whether he successfully performed miracles and now sits at the right hand of G-d the Father Almighty. The article currently uses the religious text as a source for the chain of authority claimed by that particular edition. You should understand that but, if you still don't, let me know. (The valid point objection is that it would be better to have a scholarly and neutral second source that separately provides the hadith's chain of authority. There, you're right. It would! In the lack of one, we WP:PRESERVE people's ability to find the information in English easily.)
    
    No one expects you to wade through autotranslated goobledygook to check these articles. (Sure, it's better to leave it for the people who speak the language, but you're right that we're here because we like to go where our curiosity takes us.) The reason to fault you in this case is that the article was openly phrasing things in terms of the prophesied birth of the religious narrator bringing joy to his family upon the death of his sainted grandfather. At that point, you can WP:AGF from the creator (maybe he doesn't even know about WP:NPOV) but you at least want to explain the WP:TONE isn't neutral and have him fix it before giving it a pass. But looking at the (perfectly English-language) encyclopedia entry already provided and checking the page's narrative would have shown the much larger problem: openly preferring a hagiography hosted by a mosque to a well-considered encyclopedia that considers that date of birth explicitly the least likely possibility. Again, at that point that's not on you to fix but it's something like a quintessential failure to keep the article within policy. Fixed now, but kindly do keep the issue in mind going forward. — LlywelynII 10:14, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
  - AGF that you checked the prior version and still didn't see what I was talking about above: Sorry, I was actually trying to be terse in what I knew would be a long set of notes. Here's what I was talking about:
    
    The Scripture of Imam al-Ridha... This scripture (Sahifat) is also known as...
    ...The Sahifat al-Ridha is authored by Ali al-Ridha who was born on Dhu al-Qi'dah, 148 AH (December 29, 765 CE). His grandfather Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq died one month before the birth of Ali al-Ridha. The family must have been consoled by his birth which took place after that great loss. When he was 35 years old, the responsibilities of the Imamah devolved on him. His Imamah coincided with the period of the Abbasid Caliphate. Al-Ma'mun, Caliph of Abbasid, sent some of his special agents to Ali al-Ridha in Medina to force him to set on a journey to Khurasan. When Ali al-Ridha entered Marv, Al-Ma'mun made him the Imam. However, in 818 Al-Ma'mun poisoned al-Ridha, who died three days after the assassination and was buried far off from Medina, at Tus on May 26.[1][5]
    At 183 AH, when the Imamah was transferred to Ali al-Ridha, his predecessor Musa al-Kadhim was imprisoned for many years and therefore promotion of shia's teaching stopped. For cultural and political reason, Ali al-Ridha was allowed to interpret the Qur'an, and train many disciples at Medina. When Caliph Harun al-Rashid died in 809, the relationship between his two sons al-Ma'mun and al-Amin deteriorated, and a civil war broke out over the succession of Harun. In 813 Baghdad fell, al-Amin was beheaded, and al-Maʾmūn became the undisputed Caliph.[6] After al-Amin's death al-Ridha seized the opportunity and performed more scientific works like training narrators of Hadith.[7]
    ... Another narrator was Yahya ibn Isma'il, who transmitted hadiths from his uncle, Hussein ibn Ali Juvayni by chain of historian (scientists that confirm that the chain of narrators is correct).[8]
    Studies on the hadith's books reveal that Ahl al-bayt (the household of Muhammad) have encouraged their fellows to explain and record the hadith and sunnah of the Prophet. Among the hadith, there is one saying: "He who makes my community learn by heart forty traditions and it makes use of them, Allah will raise him from the dead a jurist and scholar on the Day of the Resurrection.". Because of that, some of the followers tried to protect the hadith. Al-sahifat al-Ridha is one of these books.[9]
    
    Now, as above, the worst parts aren't immediately noticeable and involved double-checking this passage against the encyclopedia cite and our other articles. What was needful was at least seeing the TONE violations here (such as introducing the text as a specific act of preserving true hadith in response to an unsourced religious injunction quoted at length and of questionable relevance) and bringing them to the author's attention. Not needful but all the better if they had set off some red flags and encouraged a little double checking, which would have revealed the larger problems. — LlywelynII 11:21, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Ah, now you're talking. A technicality, perhaps, but I gave the okay on everything but the prose. I agree that the tone was far from perfect, and I wasn't sure myself what various sentences actually had to do with the book itself. But we're here to vet if an editor whose first language most definitely is not English can get their very first credit for an article they wrote, that's the purpose of DYK. To show them a litany of things that are wrong might discourage them from writing more. They'll learn, step by step, and I'm sure Samaneh-davoudi has already stepped up quite a bit.
POV implies intention, at least in the way experienced editors are using the acronym. In this case I am still willing to agf that the author took the references that they happened to find, did not recognise the different birth dates in the sources (neither did I), does not know EI is superior to mosque publications, and so on. We all started that way. Very few articles are really close to FA when they pass through here, and if you compare the versions before and after my intervention you'll see what I tried to do: To convert sentences that were difficult to understand into a text where a layman has a chance to grok what the article is all about.
The religious reference is not only used to source its own content. I understand that this is allowed, and why. It also backs up a lead statement for an alternative name of the Sahifah, and who its principle narrator is. That's not really a major concern but it provided the reason for me to think that you might count this as a reliable source. Apologies for the misunderstanding.
'Not English' refers to the length, not the content, of the sentence about the chain of narrators, and my hint at POV refers to the situation that it now makes up almost a quarter of the article's prose. Umpteen single sentences would indeed not be more appealing. But if, as I understand it now, that information is crucial for estimating the (scientific/historic, not religious) value of the book, would it make sense to display that in graphical form (a chain) or like the taxonomy in {{Infobox language}}? Thanks again for clarifying, and best regards, Pgallert (talk) 14:20, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

There's nothing 'not English' about lengthy sentences. Something like the opposite. If you don't feel that many repetitive sentences is better, this is what we have. Making it graphical or using a column of bullet points would be worse: it would involve some time setting up, would still have to include verbs or notations marking whether a text was being vouchsafed or personal account being narrated, and would end up using far more of the page. If the article were to include more than one of these chains (it's being discussed on the talk page whether we're doing this for the Cairo-printed edition specifically or for the single chain admitted by the Encyclopædia Iranica or for all of them), I'd say that we should switch over to a drop-down menu but (again) for a single paragraph this is less intrusive.
There's a legitimate complaint to be made about all the red links I introduced but (a) I like needful redlinks since it gradually encourages the creation of needful pages and (b) I can't speak to their notability or the commonality of this way of phrasing/spelling/transcribing their names. It draws a bit of attention to them and hopefully some helpful edits. — LlywelynII 10:32, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

@LlywelynII: Thanks for your suggestion but isn't they much? I think first we must determine the goal of editing. According to DYK process, when we write DYK for an article, it isn't necessary to be empty of mistake. Some of your suggestion are good and i thank you, such as adding chain of authority. But some of them is so stringency. Any way there isn't problem.

You have claimed that the article has POV problem. But i can't under stand. When @Pgallert: reviewed article, he did not find that article has POV problem. So there isn't POV problem or that's a little and we can removed sentences that had this problem. For example, "The family must have been consoled by his birth which took place after that great loss", i think that death of the grandfather is great loss. It is not true that we list as POV problem. About" to force him" and " Al-Ma'mun poisoned al-Ridha", you can search in every sources that they are true.
you discussed sources. Sorry, I did not notice the exactly. pleas explain me the problem? Best regards Samaneh-davoudi (talk) 16:01, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

No, I showed the article had a massive POV problem and proved it at length. I also showed how (with all due respect) Pgallert should have done a better job noticing it and pointing that out to you.
With all due respect, go read it.
I'll give you a quick walkthrough about the grandfather, since you patently don't understand that, but for the rest go read WP:NPOV and the specific commentary above.

Now, the death of a grandfather is a great loss; that's beside the point. That loss (to his family) has absolutely nothing to do with the article's topic (a book the grandson narrated 30+ years later) and therefore only serves to manipulate of the emotions of the reader. Don't do that.

The death was being mentioned owing to its relevance w/r/t a prophecy made by a religious leader. You presented it as baldly true without any fact checking on the basis of a religious website. Don't do that.

The prophesy was being claimed to have come true by using dates from an untrustworthy, openly biased source when you had a trustworthy, unbiased source right next to you. Don't do that.

The trustworthy source directly stated that the date you were using was the least likely possible date. And you used it anyway, without even a note that it was questionable. Don't do that. Ever.

Mistakes like that are not little. Mistakes like that undermine the trustworthiness of everything else you are trying to share. We assume good faith here, but such mindful preference for bias will seem ever more deliberate the more it happens.

In short, come here to share, teach, and help but not convert or testify about how one group of people is on the side of the angels and the others aren't. Don't blindly repeat others who do think that way. Where there are scholarly, careful, intelligent sources, use them. When there is anything else at all other than openly biased sources, use them. See also: The Enlightenment. See also: The Encyclopædia Iranica article on Ali al-Ridha. It explictly does say there are sources that disagree that al-Ma'mun poisoned him and it explicitly gives reasons for thinking that might not have been true. Go read it and stop just repeating religious dogma without thinking or checking what you're saying against the source directly in front of you. — LlywelynII 18:48, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

@LlywelynII:, This article was my first experience in the field of religious articles of wiki. I thank you. Because of this I learned a lot from you. I'm not a religious dogma, I am a new user. When I wrote this article I was very careful not to enter personal opinions. However, I think that the Wikipedia articles are written for different people (student, Housekeeper, Professor....), so articles should be written that it is easy for the reader to understand. According to a source that I've used as , I mentioned the toxicity. I thought this is enough. If the reader has any questions, he can go to the original article or source. Am i right? If it does not, what is the benefits of using wiki link or referring to the sources? I would also express this argument to date. I do not think it is necessary to specify the exact date of birth and death of Ali al-Ridha, While I referred to the article Ali al-Ridha. However, in this article, as well as the exact date of birth and his death is not mentioned.

About the data of prophesy, Unfortunately I do not understand your mean. Can you tell me exactly in which part of the article this article I've stated this( prophesy). What exactly is the problem؟ If the data of prophecy is the problem, In your opinion, according to an article that is about the book, Is not Irrelevant that point out unspecified data? I do not know what is your knowledge about topics Shi'a Islam, any way I must say that, although different dates of birth for one of the Imams is quoted, we choose the valid data on the number of narrators and reliability of documents, then we use it instead of the rests.
At this sentense The death was being mentioned owing to its relevance w/r/t a prophecy made by a religious leader. You presented it as baldly true without any fact checking on the basis of a religious website, May I ask what I should check?
Can I ask you that introduce to me a reliable source that you've mentioned it ? I do not understand that the data problem is acute? Can you explain me? thanks for your attentionSamaneh-davoudi (talk) 08:28, 9 February 2015 (UTC)