Talk:Uqbar

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Contents 1 Recent rewrite 2 Al-Waraq 3 Uqbar? 4 Tsai Khaldun and the Axa Delta 5 Wheee! 6 Ubar 7 double negative as a positive

[edit] Recent rewrite

My recent rewrite of this article is a result of communication from User:Cibeckwith, who I presume is Christopher Beckwith of Indiana University; the relevant portions are reproduced at Talk:Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. I've done the best I can to get the Uqbar-related portions of what he communicated into this article, and into Wikipedia style, but I'm not fully conversant with our conventions for transliterating Arabic, so someone else may want to clean that up; the direct quotations, especially the one about "the massif of ‘Uḳbâr", should presumably be left with the transliterations that they use. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:30, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Al-Waraq

Since the link Al-Waraq ([http://www.alwaraq.com/ Al-Waraq]) is to an Arabic-language page, I'm not sure of the significance of what it leads to. Could someone who understands this -- maybe Mustafaa who added it -- flesh this out with a proper explanation in the References section? Thanks. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:49, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

We're getting closer. This is great stuff you turned up, Mustafaa, I generally know Borges well and I don't think any of this has been out there in the critical literature on this story. Could you be more specific about exactly what articles on Al-Waraq were used as references? I'm guessing that they have stable URLs even if registration is needed to access them. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:55, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Uqbar?

I had an alarming thought: could the supposed Algerian "`Uqbâr" be a misprint for the well-known town of that area, Sidi `Uqbah (Sidi Okba)? - Mustafaa 01:46, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Borges could still easily have seen it. The inaccuracy would be worth noting , but it would still be relevant. -- 06:07, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tsai Khaldun and the Axa Delta

Mustafaa, I see you added into the article the quoted phrase "the lowlands of Tsai Khaldun and the Axa Delta marked the southern frontier". Yes, it's a phrase from the story, but I'm not sure of the relevance to this article, and just quoting it doesn't make the relevance clear. Would you agree with me that this is merely a fictional embellishment to the geography of the fictional Uqbar? We do discuss both of these names in the Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius article. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:07, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not totally clear what the subject of this article should be, though; is it about the fictional Uqbar and its origins, or the real (?) Uqbar in Algeria? If 1, the quote is relevant; if 2, then the article might need some trimming... - Mustafaa 01:24, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think this should focus on the fictional Uqbar, since that is by far the more likely thing for someone to be looking up. Do we know enough about the Uqbar in Algeria to do an article? If so, I guess there should be one. And so, yes, I guess you are right, the quote is relevant, but I guess we ought to give a "see also" to where we discuss those names. I'll add that. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:38, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wheee!

This has been so cool watching this one come together!

[edit] Ubar

I have found this article of Ubar by mistyping the word Uqbar in the search form. What do you think? Could this be another potential source to the name?

Good idea, but I don't know. Are there any similarities in their descriptions? - Mustafaa 23:46, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

In any case, getting that into this article would probably amount to original research, unless there is a citation to connect them. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:55, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

Applying the two words "ubar" and "uqbar" on google I only have found a bunch of wikipedia mirrors, one blog entry about the topic and this page. The page, written by Professor Harry Vélaz Quiñones, links to a New York Times article about Ubar's discovery. Did he put it only to tickle the minds of his students or did he really mean it, that this is the source of the name? I don't know. cow_2001 15:27, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, his name is spelled Velez not Velaz, and it was intended to "tickle the minds of his students." In case you are wondering, I did ask him, because I stumbled across this page and recognized his name. While it is a fun premise to ponder, there really is no evidence of it to my knowledge. --Actiasluna 00:14, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't think it would be fair to extrapolate any significance from an uncommented link like that. I say we leave it out of the article unless we get something more solid. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:37, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] double negative as a positive

The typical clever humour of Borges could be mentioned here - the idea he was trying to engender was that, similar to a double negative being a positive, so that a double fiction could be non-fiction. Surprising that this 'joke' of Borges is missing from the current article. (20040302)

Do you have anything citable for this interpretation? It is "left out" (here and at Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius) for the simple reason that we do not report opinions of random Wikipedians: this is part of what WP:NOR and WP:NPOV are about. - Jmabel | Talk 06:23, 30 May 2006 (UTC)