Talk:Al-Kindi

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Al-Kindi has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

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Article Grading: The following comments were left by the quality and importance raters: (edit · refresh) I hesitate to list anything as being of "GA" status or better unless it has actually already received that official designation, which is why I chose "B", which often just means that the article might be GA quality, but just hasn't been "officially" recognized as such yet. Having said that, the fact that the "Chemistry" section is only one sentence long is probably the primary single drawback the article has. It should either be expanded or removed and the content placed in another section. All sections of articles should probably be at least three sentences long. Badbilltucker 14:51, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
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Al-Kindi isn't persian .... and Al-Kindi is drived from Kinda a great arab tribe.

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since when Al-Kindi become a persian? he is from an arab tribe in yemen ... so please check this link before making any changes on the article: http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/kindi/default.htm--212.138.64.176 00:52, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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Many Famous Arab Scientist and Thinkers are being falsely claimed persians!! If not stopped or at least hindered, the credibility of Wikipedia will heavelly suffer!! And this is not good neither for the arabs nor for the persians. Since both of them use this Free Encyclopedia for the promotion of their great cultures.

Contents 1 "number system"? 2 Peculiar recent edits 3 Correct name of Al-Kindi 4 Quotes on Al-Kindi 5 Good article nomination 6 Restarting the work on al-Kindi 7 some notes for improvement 8 Peer review 9 Article's name 10 Article ready? 11 Article name argument 12 Article renaming

[edit] "number system"?

What is meant by this term where it appears in this article? Is it about a particular numeral system (in which case it is mis-directed and should be changed to numeral system) or about something else (what?)? Michael Hardy 01:10, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Peculiar recent edits

Perhaps the oddest is the insistence that al-Kindi was Christian; where exactly does this claim come from? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 12:03, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

try here The APOLOGY OF AL KINDY IN DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY AGAINST ISLAM --CltFn 14:07, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Actually, most sources I've read insist that he was a Muslim.Heraclius 15:01, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Of course there are a lot of muslim websites that would like to portray him as a Muslim to perpetuate a myth of a great Islamic philosopher, but no , he was a Christian.--CltFn 15:14, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

So you have most websites calling him a Muslim, but one or two calling him a Christian. Until this dispute is solved, I will just stick with the "Arab" description.Heraclius 15:15, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Well why do you not read The APOLOGY OF AL KINDY IN DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY AGAINST ISLAM for starters?--CltFn 15:24, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Have you actually read the text to which you link? Try reading the introduction by its translator. It's a different al-Kindi... Why are there so many anti-Islamic bigots on Wikipedia at the moment? They seem to crop up everywhere. A "myth of a great Islamic philosopher" indeed! Every book on the history of philosophy includes al-Kindi, and correctly describes him as an important Islamic philosopher. No-one considers al-Kindi to be one of the greatest Islamic philosophers, mind you, though he's in the top ten, perhaps the top six. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 16:18, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Maybe this will help: [1] from the Wikipedia entry on Cryptanalysis

The line in the middle reads: "والحمد لله رب العالمين وصلى الله على نبيه محمد.." or "..And praise to Allah, and may peace be upon His prophet Muhammed". I suppose that should be conclusive.

I too observe this anti-Islamic bigots phenomenon.. It's very sad.

--Estr4ng3d 05:20, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Why are there so many anti-Islamic bigots on Wikipedia at the moment? This may explain it [2].Heraclius 16:55, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes; how depressing. Mind you, it's a symptom rather than a cause. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 18:43, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

You may also want to look here, just for kicks User:Saduj_al-Dahij.Heraclius 04:13, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

It is called Peer Review. When information is not seen as accurate or impartial it is challenged by fellow editors and corrected. This process takes place on both sides of any given topic in Wikipedia. The question I would ask is why is it that whenever one challenges any assertions in Islamic related topics the source of the challenge is immediately labelled a bigot or an Islamophobe particularly by Muslims.? --CltFn 08:26, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

1. In what sense are you a peer in this case? You insisted on an obvious mistake on the basis of one document which you hadn't read... I mean, I've read some poor referee's reports from academic journals, but rarely anything like that. (Note, incidentally, that Wikipedia:Peer review means something specific.)
2. I don't use the label immediately; in this case, I used it when you made giveaway comments ("there are a lot of muslim websites that would like to portray him as a Muslim", when the references are to two non-Muslim books on philosophy, and "to perpetuate a myth of a great Islamic philosopher"), though the extreme flimsiness of your evidence coupled with your certainty and obduracy helped. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:03, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Correct name of Al-Kindi

The complete name of Al-Kindi in Arabic characters is أبو يوسف يعقوب ابن إسحاق الكندي . It was wrong in the previous edition ("abu ya'qub yusuf" instead of the correct form "abu yusuf ya'qub").

Very accurate name and ancestry information (34 generations) is in the following Arabic page: http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/kindi/kindi-bio-ayun.htm

--Filius Rosadis 23:14, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Quotes on Al-Kindi

The exact words of what Ibn al-Nadim said about al-kind is not repeated. Why in the world do you keep deleteing it??!!! Jidan 18:37, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

1. Calm down.
2. The quotation adds nothing to the article; it says nothing that isn't already said. It's one of many, many possible quotations from writers who say the same thing.
3. Why did you revert all my careful changes of characters with diacritics? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 19:31, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Mel Etitis, I really appreciate your effort in maintaining the qualtity of this article. In this article, al-kindi, is mentionend as the "philosopher of the arab" (by arab is meant arab-speaking not arab ethnic, this should be mentioned in the article), but by whom? and when? I have other qoutes on al-kindi from german and english scientists on al-kindi, will you keep deleting them? Jidan 20:28, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

In fact the article says: "he was often referred to simply as 'the Arab philosopher'" (by which was meant, according to all my sources, ethnic Arab — another reason that calling him Persian is anomalous). That's the point, of course — he was often referred to in that way; I know of no reason to suppose that Ibn al-Nadim was the first person so to refer to him. If he was the first, though, then that is better mentioned in the article. Generally speaking, it's much better to add important material to the article than to stick it into a quotations section. Would you mind placing the quotations you have in mind here, so that we can discuss how best to incorporate them into the article? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:48, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Good article nomination

TheGrappler nominated this article for Good article status, & I must sadly write that while it is better than many articles on Wikipedia, it fails to pass the bar for being considered a "Good article". The reasons include:

1. The article states that he is "the greatest philosopher of Arab descent", yet the explanation for this value judgement only gets one short paragraph. More space is devoted to his accomplishments in medicine.
2. This article needs a more clear attribution of claims. In one passage, this article states that "al-Kindī was the first pharmacologist to determine and apply a correct dosage for most of the drugs available at the time" -- an important point, yet this statement needs an authority to confirm it. Although there are 2 sources cited at the bottom, it is not clear how their writings relate to the details given here; even to say "John Doe believed that X" -- then list the publicaiton where John Doe made this claim under "References" would be an improvement.
3. A glance at this Talk page shows that the accuracy of the article is still under debate.
4. And lastly, for such an important person, the article is surprisingly light. I'd really expect to find a more full discussion of this interesting person. -- llywrch 01:08, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Restarting the work on al-Kindi

Hi everyone,

When I came across the al-Kindi article, I thought it would benefit from some attention.

My initial assessment of it was that what was already there was good. However, I considered two things:

1) What needs improving: it needs referencing and in places correcting (if you read Richard Adamson, he says Kindi actually set out to merely introduce Greek thought to the Islamic world, but ended up reinterpretting alot of it in a very original manner - the article says he was unoriginal!).

2) What needs adding: more work needs to be done on his contributions to Islamic Philosophy and his specific ideas in certain areas. It would also be good if we could do likewise with his contribution to the sciences.

This should hopefully get al-Kindi recognized as a "good article"!

If anyone has any ideas, please feel free to post them up.

Alexander.Hainy 19:53, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, lots added to both philosophy and scientific contributions, references from no less than three seperate academic books (although if anyone could add some more it would be great!), I think this article is on track to becoming a "good article". After I add the sub-section on optics to the section "Contributions" I think I might try to get it put forward. Alexander.Hainy 10:03, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] some notes for improvement

the article has wondeful potential to become a good article and maybe even a featured article, especially because of the significance of this personality in the light of Islamic philosophy. there are some things needing improvement if the article is to attain GA status.

• per WP:LEAD, the introduction should be comprehensive enough to quickly overview and "sum up" the article as well as the topics discussed therein.. take a look at some FA-class biography articles to see prime examples of how such is achieved.
• when introducing academics, include something very brief about who the academic is. for example, "According to Henry Corbin, professor in Islamic studies, Al-Kindi was born in Kufa ..." or something like that, from then on he can be referred to simply as Corbin where mention of him is appropriate. the point of this is for ease of reading, you ideally don't want readers having to open a new window to find out who Corbin is (making things more arduous than necessary) when you can succinctly give the reader the essential information within the article.
  • as a sub-point to this, if you are making statements of fact upon which there is no academic dispute, you can get rid of mentioning the academic altogether and (for example) simply say "Al-Kindi was born in Kufa ...". attribution becomes important when elements of individual opinions (i.e. which may be disputed) are involved. this doesn't seem to be much of a concern in the article however.
• from what i could gather in my quick overview, the article says very little about the criticism he must have received, especially from traditionists of his time, as well as the asha'rites and hanbalites of later times. i only managed to find one line which discussed opposition (i.e. that of Ghazzali and his response to the philosophers), although i am sure academics must have covered opposition to him in more depth than just this.
• please be sure to comb through the article with the manual of style, its biography supplement, and the guide on writing better articles

i haven't gone into too much depth over content issues as i've only briefly scanned over the article, but it's been given B-class status (upon the threshold of GA i would imagine), and i would definitely recommend submitting it for a formal peer review and perhaps re-enlisting it as a GA candidate afterwards. ITAQALLAH 18:20, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Thankyou very much for your helpful feedback ITAQALLAH, we'll do our best to implement your suggestions (hopefully a section on "controversies") and then submit it for peer review.

Thanks again! Alexander.Hainy 02:38, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Peer review

Thinking of submitting the article for a peer review, any thoughts/suggestions/objections? Alexander.Hainy 01:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article's name

The article should not use a strict transliteration for its name. According to WP:AMOS, an article's name should be a primary transliteration, or a standard transliteration if no primary transliteration exists. This article uses a strict transliteration in the lead too, which should be really fixed, if you are considering nominating it as a GA or even requesting a peer review. The article should be moved to Al-Kindi, the primary transliteration, and the lead should be fixed and changed in compliance with WP:AMOS. Should I proceed and do that, or does anybody have another thought? ← ANAS ^Talk? 12:48, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with your assessment. Please go ahead and make the necessary alterations to the article :-) thanks for letting us know about that! Alexander.Hainy 13:05, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I moved the page, modified the lead, added the full script, and used a more accurate transliteration. Corrected many typos on my way. Only problem is there's a big gap between the subject's name in the lead and the Arabic script. :-/ Would you like to shorten the name to make it look better, or just leave it as it is? ← ANAS ^Talk? 13:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

On text-size medium there isn't a gap between the lead and the arabic, does wikipedia have any specific policies relating to this? I think it is important to keep the full name if at all possible, as this is how he would have been known in his works. Any thoughts?

Thanks again for your all your help! Alexander.Hainy 17:09, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I interchanged the script and the strict transliteration. I think this is a harmless and fine way, and the gap is gone. Article's looking good; You can request a peer review if you don't have any more work/expansion left in the article. After that, the article will probably have a good chance at becoming a good article. All the best mate! ← ANAS ^Talk? 18:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article ready?

I think the article is ready for a re-review! Alexander.Hainy 12:21, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I couldn't see the point of removing the (grammatically and stylistically necessary) definite article froma couple of the headers, nor the effort to banish "also" from the article (in a number of places it was again grammatically correct, and the changed version either less or at least no more clear.

Also, please use edit summaries. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 12:44, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Alexander, there are some suggestions from the current peer review you haven't implemented yet. A quick look shows that you have not changed the varying spellings of the subject's name to the correct spelling. Also, you have the links and the other names like al-Farabi, which is spelled differently in the article. Perhaps you should check if you have applied all the suggestions in the current PR first. Good luck! ← ANAS ^Talk? 13:00, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Alexander.Hainy: you need to look here for explanations (and give explanations here, too). I reverted most of your edits as you gave no explanation for them, not even edit summaries. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 16:36, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback guys. Sorry about the edit summaries Mel, will remember that in future. I had removed "also" and the definite article in titles at the suggestion of the peer review. I would really appreciate it if you could have a look at the peer review page and flag those suggestions which you feel best be disregarded.

Thanks again, I will review the peer review page and make sure I haven't missed anything.Alexander.Hainy 16:51, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Mel, you have not provided any explanation why you have changed the name of al-Farabi again. As I said on the edit summary, I have corrected the transliteration. Several other editors have been kind enough to keep the article tidy without leaving an explanation on the talk page. I didn't realize it was necessary to leave a summary on the talk page, so please forgive me for the oversight.

Thanks Alexander.Hainy 16:58, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

"Misspelling"? Throughout this Talk page lately, there's been a curious unargued agreement that a certain spelling of "al-Kindī" and other names, which ignores normal Wikipedia practice (to use the most common accurate form of a name) and, in calling one of the most common forms "wrong" and "misspelt" (as below) and therefore changeable without explanation, also goes against Wikiquette.

In what sense are these forms wrong? They're used in most of the modern sources at which I've looked. Debates at related pages have been resolved in favour of this sort of transliteration; I haven't checked yet, but I expect that consensus has been overturned by this new and (to my mind, at least) unwelcome approach. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:38, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Ahah! I think I see the mispelling of al-Kindi... its in that blue box :-P Alexander.Hainy 17:08, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

OFFICIAL APOLOGY: Sorry, there is al-Kindī everywhere! I am correcting it now ;) sorry Anas, you were right! Alexander.Hainy 17:17, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

No worries mate. ;) ← ANAS ^Talk? 17:51, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article name argument

Mel Etitis, I didn't understand your last comment well, but I think we have an issue with the naming of the article. Perhaps it's just a misunderstanding. All guidelines, discussions, and consensus are in favor of using a common, primary transliteration for an article's name. Al-Kindi is, in this case, the more common and used name. A Yahoo! search yields 433 results for Al-Kindī and 212,000 results for Al-Kindi, where it also recognizes him and provides search filters. A staggering margin, eh? Also in published media, see here. Furthermore, it is never favored to use a strict transliteration for an article's name. It is both uncommonly used and difficult to use. Do you have another opinion? :-)

By the way, I have never said these spellings, or more accurately transliterations, are wrong. I'd have to say, I would be slightly offended by your comments if they were pointed towards me. ← ANAS ^Talk? 12:53, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Yahoo or Google searches show what's most common on the Internet; the use of diacritics and other symbols is much less common on the Internet than in published sources, in which "al-Kindī" is much the more common transliteration. Little or no discussion was offered on this, above — the claim was simply made that "al-Kindi" is standard. Just pulling recent general reference books books off my shelf, the following use "al-Kindī" (I didn't find one that used "al-Kindi", except for a book dating from the 1970s):

• Carr & Mahalingam [edd] Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy (Routledge, 2001)
• Dronke [ed.] A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy (CUP, 1992)
• Deutsch & Bontekoe [edd] A Companion to World Philosophies (Blackwell, 1999)
• Flew & Priest [edd] A Dictionary of Philosophy (Pan, 1984)
• King One Hundred Philosophers (Barrons, 2004)
• Watt Islamic Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh UP, 1987)

In the discussions above, I should also note, are various references to "al-Kindi" being a misspelling, including your own reference to "al-Kindi" being "the correct spelling". --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 13:08, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

You said it yourself, "the use of diacritics and other symbols is much less common on the Internet". As much as the references you provided are significant, the 800-something books in an Amazon book search and the Yahoo search results do have their significance too. You can't treat Wikipedia the same way printed references are treated; for example, any English user will probably search for al-Kindi, not al-Kindī when he looks for information online. This issue has been discussed deeply in many talk pages. As an example, see the recent debate in Shia Islam talk page. I, myself voted 'support' for the strict transliteration and 'weak support' for the standard English transliteration, but I now know it is, although inaccurate, the preferred transliteration.

When I said al-Kindi was the correct spelling, it was logically obvious that I meant it was the spelling supposed to be used throughout the whole article. Anyways, this is not the real problem here. ← ANAS ^Talk? 14:06, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

1. Internet sources are often inaccurate, misrepresenting (for example, by omitting diacritics) the titles of and quotations from books and papers.
2. "any English user will probably search for al-Kindi, not al-Kindī" that's what redirects are for.
3. We should be representing most common best practice, not most common poor practice. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 14:18, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Mel, I agree with your points, believe me (see my votes/opinions in the Shia Islam debate), but I am only working according to the consensus. Personally, I would definitely love to name every article accurately, but then again this isn't my encyclopedia. :) Remember there are thousands of articles with Arabic names that are rendered somehow inaccurately, like Saddam Hussein (Ṣaddām Ḥusayn). Perhaps a poll should be started to gain consensus for naming this article, what do you say? :) ← ANAS ^Talk? 15:07, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

The policy has always been that we use the most common and readily understandable form (as used in English-language publications). That's overwhelmingly "Saddam Hussain", not Ṣaddām Ḥusayn, but in cases like this one, where the person is referred to almost solely in academic or semi-academic works, the most common academic or semi-academic form is used. In other words, we don't have, and have never claimed to have, a consistent method of transliteration; it depends upon the individual case.

A poll is a last (and much deprecated) resort. A formal discussion of a renaming proposal would be fine, though. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 15:36, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Fine, I agree, you can start a rename or move proposal if you'd like to. All the best. ← ANAS ^Talk? 16:08, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article renaming