Template:Did you know nominations/The Mustansirite Hardship

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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 Cielquiparle (talk) 04:45, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

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Mustansirite Hardship

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  • ... that cannibals used hooks to kidnap people during a famine in Fatimid Egypt? Source: Baynes, Thomas Spencer; Smith, William Robertson, eds. (1878). "Egypt". Encyclopædia Britannica. Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 752.

Created by Festucalex (talk). Self-nominated at 21:25, 29 July 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/The Mustansirite Hardship; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

General: Article is new enough and long enough
Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
QPQ: Done.

Overall: Nice work on this article! It's definitely an interesting hook but because of how wild a claim it is and the fact that (I think) only one historian reports it, it should probably be attributed to al-Maqrizi. The sources look reliable but page numbers need to be added for verification. Also a lot of the historical sources are Medieval, are there any works by modern historians that we can add? Earwig pings a major copyvio but it looks like a spam site just copied this article. BuySomeApples (talk) 20:01, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  • Comment Also, I would suggest mentioning the Mustansirite Hardship by name in the hook instead of just calling it a famine. BuySomeApples (talk) 20:02, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
  • @BuySomeApples: I'm not sure what you mean, every single source already cites a page number using the {{rp}} template. I wouldn't dream of researching an article and going through all these tedious historical documents without adding the page numbers :) I chose to cite the Encyclopædia Britannica here because it would be easier for an English-speaking reviewer, but here's a quote from al-Maqrizi:[1]: 337 

    وكان بمصر طوائف من أهل الفساد قد سكنوا بيوتا قصيرة السقوف قريبة ممن يسعى في الطرقات ويطوف وقد أعدوا سلبا وخطاطيف فإذا مر بهم أحد شالوه في أقرب وقت ثم ضربوه بالأخشاب وشرحوا لحمه وأكلوه


    As for modern sources, There's the Encyclopædia Britannica and a book called Natural Disasters by Lee Davis. Davis cites a historian called WR Aykroyd, but I couldn't access his book, so I didn't cite him in the article. The way I see it, those two are just about enough, since al-Maqrizi was basically the only source for many events during this period. Think of him as the Herodotus of Fatimid Egypt. Glad you liked my hook hook [sic], but I think it would be much less punchy if the full name of the famine is added, since the point of interest here is cannibals and hooks, and you wouldn't want anything to distract from that. 〜 Festucalex • talk 07:09, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Festucalex: You did do an awesome job so far! I missed that each one that wasn't paginated inline is paginated in the reflist so we're all good there. I guess if al-Maqrizi is the definitive chronicler of this period than it's OK to focus on his accounts, I just wasn't sure if modern historians had any extra context. I still think it would be better to to attribute the claim to him in the hook but I'll leave the exact phrasing up to the promoter. BuySomeApples (talk) 20:00, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


  1. ^ Al-Maqrīzī, Aḥmad ibn 'Alī. al-Mawāʻiẓ wa-al-Iʻtibār bi-Dhikr al-Khiṭaṭ wa-al-Āthār [The Examples and Lessons of the Tales of the Historical Ruins of Egypt] (in Arabic). Vol. 1.
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